Week 27

There is a rumor going around that Miss H is pregnant. I have heard this from three different moms. I want to ask her about it but one mom suggested we respect her privacy. "By spreading rumours?" I want to say.

Last night, despite not going to bed until after 12:30, I set my cell phone alarm to wake me from its recharging post in the bathroom. It wakes Mac, too. He whispers questions to me about why I am getting up and where I am going. “I just don’t want to be late,” I tell him, “and I told Sailor I would make pancakes this morning.” I tell him to go back to sleep and he says ok, and rolls over.

I crawl across him and make my way quietly to the bathroom. It feels like 5a.m. but is in fact 10 to 7:00. I am nearly done with my shower when I hear the silent mouths but thunderous footsteps of two small boys who have to pee – now! They enter the bathroom without a word and when I peek out from behind the shower curtain, through my extremely myopic vision I see the double image of two small boys hunched over the toilet peeing together. They are utterly silent until: “Mac your penis is big and my penis is little.”

More silent peeing and then they flush and there is a small squabble over the soap and then Mac exits, leaving the door open and letting out all my warm, steamy air. “Shut the door,” I protest.
I look out to see Sailor on his way out, pulling the door closed behind him. “Mac left it open!” he retorts, and he’s gone.

Then, a moment later he is back. “Are you the one who cleaned up the playroom?” Do I confess and let them realize that if they leave their mess long enuf I will give in and clean it? Or do I give credit to fairies or the house monster? Unsure, I reply a tentative, “I guess so.”
To which Sailor exclaims, “You’re the best Mommy I ever had,” proving to me once and for all that honesty really is the best policy.

He is back again as I am getting out of the shower. He sits down on the pot and begins his pooping conversation with, “I am so happy that I go to school today.” I am floored.

“I can lift a chair,” he switches topic so effortlessly.
“You’re very strong,” I comment.
“I know.” Deadpan. “That’s cuz am Herc’leez.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, and the baby Herculeez and Mac is the grown up Herc’leez. He has a sort [sword]. I have a little sort. A big sort.”
“Baby Hercules has a sword?”
“Yeah.”
He hops off the potty, flushes and starts to leave.
“You forgot to wash your hands,” I remind him.
“Oh, yeah, I ‘bout forgot,” he laughs at himself. “I ‘bout thought the sink was the shower,” he jokes.
“You’re silly.”

He goes back to his StarWars play with Mac, rather than heeding my suggestion to get dressed, G-d forbid!

I figured last night that he has about 8 weeks of school left. I was realizing this right after he mentioned that he likes school now. Eight weeks, that amounts to just about 16 days.

Tuesday. The day starts out warm, like we should have been wearing sandals. Mac is in a short sleeved shirt. I break a serious sweat while standing outside the preschool at pick-up. And then we start to walk to the big school. Halfway there I feel the cool breeze come in. By the time I pick up Mac from school two and a half hours later, Sailor is tucked in the stroller under a blanket and I have changed into a turtleneck sweater and wool pea coat and I am freezing!

Thursday after school we have planned to play at the home of the new Australian family from school. They live near school so our walk takes a mere five minutes. The children play well – or I should say mine do. Hers bicker with one another all afternoon. But they all play with each other nicely and I find a kindred spirit in mothering with this Australian mom. At 5:00 she breaks out a bottle of wine to go with the cheese, crackers, grapes and lemonade we have been snacking on since 3:30. Shortly, she pulls out some leftover pizza, or as she calls it with her charming Australian accent: “peet-zer.” She puts out some other leftovers and eventually I am persuaded to taste vegemite, the Australian staple. The kids finish off much of the fruit that was left over from our snack and we pick and pick until I know I have eaten more than I usually eat in a whole day. We discuss all manner of things while the kids play upstairs with Polly Pockets and downstairs with trains. We are mid-discussion about how names are pronounced with different accents, when I mention a name of the one other Australian family I know in the area. She questions the woman’s first name and we realize we have both been talking about a former colleague of my mother’s who is also a good friend of this mom. And so I ask if she knows this family’s good friends, whose daughter was in Mac’s preschool class two years ago. “That’s the little girl my daughter is going to play with tomorrow!” I declare! It is a small world. Who else might we know in common? I try: Olivia Newton-John. She confesses to a long love of the Aussie singer and I confess the same. I indicate the t-shirt I am wearing. “What about the BeeGees?” I ask. “Actually,” she says, “My father lived across the street from them when he was about 10. They used to go surfing together.” WHAT?! I am floored! My mouth is on the floor, anyway. She continues on with the conversation, but I draw it back to the BeeGees! “Does he still know them?!” Of course he does not, as “the brothers,” as she calls them, only lived there for about a year. I am just so beside myself and she promises to email her father and get the whole story for me. It’s after 8:00 p.m. when we finally head home. It was a really fun evening.

Saturday morning my sister and I hold a Green Art session at our art studio. It’s Mac’s inspiration, really. He has been bugging me about having a workshop at home. I think he aspires to build C-3PO, as Anakin Skywalker does as a boy in Episode One of the StarWars series. We don’t have easy access to our basement so he wants to hold this workshop in his room: The 6’x8’ blue rectangle he sleeps in. "Expect half of my room to be messy all the time," he tells me. "No," I say. "We are not having a workshop of garbage in your room." I am inspired, however, and announce a Saturday morning recycled art workshop at our art studio. We have had so many requests for Saturday morning classes. The parents of our students all agree this is a great idea. And only one family shows up. The mother drops off her two small children, ages 3 and 5. And essentially we babysit them for 2 hours. By noon, with 30 minutes to go, Mac has been in time out twice and Sailor has given my sister quite a bit of lip. As in, “Sailor, please clean up your area.” “FINE! I’m NOT cleaning up!” Whatever that is supposed to mean in 3-1/2-year-old speak. He wanders to the front area where I am stationed to check in children who should be showing up in droves. He looks at the juice box display and remarks how Mac wants a juice box and some fruit snacks. I tell him he may not have fruit snacks but he may have a juice box if he can behave for the next 30 minutes. He folds his arms across his chest and announces, “See! I am behaving!” I go in the back (there are no children to check in or out at this point) and whisper this display to my sister for her amusement. “Let me see you behave,” she asks him. He again crosses his arms over his chest and declares, “See! I am behaving!”

Twenty minutes to go before the other two children are picked up and we can venture out into the sunny but cold spring afternoon. It’s the last day of March, and typical of Chicago, especially at this time of year, the weather has vacillated between warm enough to be at the beach and cold enough to snow this week. In fact, the temperature did all that on Tuesday. Literally. I am not lying.