Rip my heart out, why don’t you? I know this is within the realm of “normal,” but that doesn’t make it easier. Yesterday, he told me he cried “only one time!” (which Sam told me had happened on the bus), but then he spent the next couple of hours at home being a raging terror, screaming about everything. I’m not sure that’s better.

But here’s the thing: last night, after I put them to bed with a story and a kiss, I was suddenly struck with a memory I hadn’t had in a while. I recalled lying on the floor in the hallway outside their room, waiting for them to drop off to sleep so that I could sneak down the stairs. At the time, it felt like such a crazy annoyance; why couldn’t they just go to sleep without me? Surely, they were big enough? But that period is long over, so that even the memory hasn’t drifted into my head for ages. I actually felt incredibly sad for a moment, because it struck me that the period of goodnight kisses and bedtime stories, too, would become nothing more than a memory in the not-so-distant-as-I-might-hope future. They’ll crash into their beds without Mommy even being a blip on their horizons, and the freedom to spend my evenings as I wish will taste a little bittersweet, I think.

Someday – soon, probably, as such things are reckoned – Gabe will climb onto the bus without a backward glance or thought. Soon, it’ll be a friend’s car instead of a bus. And I don’t even want to think about what comes after that, in those days when even a teenager’s rolled eyes at my peck on his cheek will be a precious memory.

So when he clings to my hand and tells me that a whole day is just too long to miss me, I’ll hug him and kiss him and tell him that, yes, it’s an awfully long time. But I’m right here, and I’ll always be right here for him, and he’ll carry my heart with him, on his wrist and in his own chest.

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But he seems to be adjusting otherwise, at least. He had Spanish today; they learned “hola” and “adios,” though he scoffed and told me how he already knew that.

Sam…continues to attend school. He did have to write me a letter today, as an assignment, informing me of some of what they’re doing, which includes this. Pretty cool!

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Then Alysia came.

I think it’s safe to call that an “up.” We had so much fun all weekend long, including retrieving a giant aviary she’d bought on eBay. (Good friends don’t point out when their friend has obviously lost her mind, devising ways to house, not just one, but MANY birds inside their home…)

And then she went home. (Down again go I. ) And we got ready for school, and there was much excitement for my boys as they chattered eagerly about the fun they’d have. I, too, shared in the joy, and it came down to the first day, this morning, when all was in readiness, and they’d met their teachers last night, and it all seemed a definite “up.” I put their happy little butts on the bus, and I ran (yes, literally) the two miles to their school, beating them there so that I could see Gabe into his classroom.

Unfortunately, their bus was running late, so almost everybody was in the class already. I stood in the courtyard outside the window, peeping in to see if I could see Gabe. Finally, there was commotion at the doorway, as they arrived from the other side of the building. Gabe stood still in the door…chin ducked, eyes huge, lower lip wobbling.

Oh, dear.

An adult helper whispered in his ear, talked him into the classroom, and he began getting out his things. I started on the run home, not nearly as light in my running shoes as I had been on the way there. I didn’t cry when I took Sam to kindergarten, and I wasn’t going to cry today…until I saw that face. My baby is scared and sad at school. You can tell me about how quickly he’ll get over it, and about all the wonderful things he’s doing there, but until he’s home this afternoon and telling me himself, that’s the picture I’ve got in my head. It’s why my own lower lip is a bit wobbly now, too.

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Gabe loves salt. This morning, trying to go behind my back and steal a pinch to eat, he managed to spill the entire salt cellar (thankfully a small one) all over the kitchen floor. He tried to clean it up, futilely, before finally breaking down, finding me and confessing.

Dad had his surgery yesterday. The inflammation was too great to go in through his side and manipulate the stone, so they placed a stent in his urethra instead, which had the effect of pushing the stone back into the kidney, anyway. The urologist said, “He’s hanging in there; he’s a very sick man.” Now they say he might be in the hospital another week; the stone was giant, and it was producing gas in the kidney, and the infection was massive and will take time to clear. But we believe it will clear, now that the blockage is out of the way. The pain level, thankfully, should improve soon; Dad’s not in pain now, he says, but that might be due to meds.

Mom said yesterday that, after the surgery, Dad kept saying, “I don’t know why I’m here…I don’t know why I’m in this hotel. I don’t know why I have to play cards for money.” Ah, anesthetic.

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GABE (to Eric): “I love you more than ten megapixels.”

ME (hearing a noise): “Who’s in the kitchen?”
GABE (from the kitchen): “Nobody.”

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Oh, yes; I know how to schedule my time and energy.

Right now, the kids’ workroom is getting closer to where it’s going to be; there are still things in there that need to come out, and a few surfaces that need emptied, and we need to get the computer hooked up in there, but it’s at least mostly usable space. The living room, on the other hand, was collateral damage. Sam’s desk that was in here needed to be taken upstairs, and so it needed to be cleaned out first, and…let’s just get the mental image of the whole “Snakes in a Can” gag, or perhaps a clown car spouting out passenger after unlikely passenger, because good GRAVY, I don’t see how all this madness was contained in that little wooden desk. It’s not all fitting back in there, certainly – not that it needs to, after having filled almost two large garbage bags as I emptied it. And there are still large piles, even now that the trash has been removed and the pens, pencils, crayons, glue bottles (we had six!), and other items have been organized into the craft cart. Yikes.

(But let me take a moment to just stand in amazement that I am the mother of a kid who can actually help lift and carry a heavy wooden desk up two flights of stairs. Of course, the same son collaborated with another boy just older than him yesterday in maneuvering a few other mid-sized pieces of play furniture into the back of a car without so much as being asked to, so maybe it’s not so shocking, but it continues to be so to me.)

So, I press on. And Gabe is a little confused but game about the how and why of all this commotion; he knows that it’s related to his starting school, and he knows that he’ll be doing more Work in the near future, but he’s still trying to fill the emptied desk drawers with toys and to decide whether he’s willing to let Sam continue to work at the desk, now that it’s been declared community property.

Back to work!

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Found out yesterday that Gabe got assigned to what’s been reported to me as the “easier” of the two kindergarten classes. Not that they use different curricula or anything, but I guess one teacher prefers a “sit down and write” approach, while the other is a bit more chill about things, and Gabe got the latter. I hope it works out and makes things pleasant for him, though he did do better at the less play-based preschool than he did at the opposite. We’ll see. For some reason, the kid who’s never been scared of school is now telling me that he’s afraid of kindergarten. His reason? “I won’t be in the same class as Sam.” Well, he’s never been before! Maybe he was hoping it’d be like Wednesday night class at church, where when he graduated from the nursery, it was to sit next to his big brother. In any event, this all started coming out after I read him Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus, where she went to kindergarten; it was a wild romp of naughtiness that reminded me so much of him, but perhaps Junie’s apprehension of the bus let Gabe feel free to express his own anxieties. Poor guy. I reassured him that what Junie needed was what he’ll have: a big brother on the bus.

Sam got the teacher about whom we know nothing, good or bad. Keeping fingers crossed that he finally, finally, didn’t get the strict one. Not that there’s anything wrong with firmness, but after a few years, I think he’s served his time and has earned the right to the smiley teacher who giggles a lot, right? (Maybe I’ve earned it, too?)

Anyway. Supposed to be hot today, and I’ve got seven miles scheduled. I should work hard on waking up a little more, or I might doze right off in the middle of the run.

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Everything here is…going. Nothing wild, nothing wonderful, nothing much new. I did volunteer at a local half-Ironman triathlon last weekend, which was a lot of fun.

I handed out sports drink at an aid station along the run route and got rather sunburnt. But I looked and felt better than some of those athletes, though; it was super-hot, and some of them were pretty destroyed by the time they got to us.

My running has just about recovered from Devil’s Lake, and I’m ensconced in training for the Haunted Hustle, now that Eric’s fairly certain he’ll be in the country for me to run it. That’ll be fun. I don’t know whether to set a time goal or just have fun; think I’ll leave that decision for a little further out, when I can wrap my brain around it a bit better. It’s only been a couple of weeks, after all. There won’t be pace groups or anything like we had at Green Bay, which was a big help to me. This weekend, I’m scheduled for thirteen miles (already? Again?), and it’s supposed to be flirting with thunderstorms, but I’ll manage. Ran in the rain this morning, and it’s not bad, even if it does slow me down a touch. (That was the dark, too; this morning nearly hit two points of my “Do Not Like” trifecta – heavy rain/snow, dark, and strong winds – that will sway me towards the treadmill when all three are touched. But the rain wasn’t all that heavy, and the darkness was lifting, so there wasn’t really much temptation there – just a slower-than-usual pace.)

The kids are kids. Gabe is doing fantastically in his summer class, with his teachers praising him to the heavens. Sam is doing well, too, though he’s had some issues with the older kids in his class, some of whom are naturally a bit sneery at the younger kid who’s there voluntarily instead of having been placed there for being behind. That’s been hard on Sam, and I don’t know if I’d have made the same decision to put him there had I really anticipated it. (He didn’t make things easier on himself by cheerfully announcing on the second day, “I’m here because I’m really good at reading!” ) His teacher’s standing up for him, thank goodness, but…I’ll breathe a sigh of relief when it’s over next week.

Summer is going quickly. How did that happen?

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Somebody is going to be super fun until his summer classes start, can’t you tell?

Saw the doctor this morning. I decided when I woke up that I should take the day as a full rest day, no cross training, just to be safe. The doctor examined me and saw no signs of torn cartilage or anything like that; she thinks simple overuse, possibly with a touch of Runner’s Knee. I got a referral for physical therapy, and I asked her to make sure it was somebody aggressive and athlete-friendly. My appointment with them is on Monday; she thinks I probably should hold off running until then. Walking should be okay, but pain is to be my guide. That’s tricky when my brain is playing the “OMG, what was that twinge?” game, but I’ll try. I was listening to an episode of The Extra Mile with a Jeff Galloway interview in which he spoke of having injured runners, training for marathons, cut back to walking, and how they were really resistant to the idea but were able to recover and even come close to or meet their original race goals. That said, I want to keep my planned mileage, so I may be starting the weekend’s training sessions a bit earlier in the day than I planned. Can’t be helped.

Wish I had access to a pool. I’m not a Swimmer by anybody’s definition, but I can swim, and right now, pushing myself like that sounds awesome and safe at the same time.

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Others rock out.

And yes, I cried. But only a little. Not that Gabe didn’t try to provoke, with his, “I’m sorry you won’t have a preschooler anymore. Will you be sad when you don’t have a preschooler anymore?” on the way into the building. Little stinker. But it’s hard to be mopey, I have to tell you, when you’re listening to a herd of precious voices singing the months of the year to the tune of, and while dancing, “The Macarena.” And the metal horns he kept tossing up were priceless.

(For comparison. If you’ll excuse me, I need to find a rocker and a cane now.)

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Poor Sam, on the other hand, is still emotionally recovering from yesterday, when he had a recheck on his allergies. It’s been a long time since he was examined thoroughly, and back then, we were assured that he might grow out of some of those allergies and possibly into new ones. Recently, he’s been acting as though he’s allergic to pollen, for which he didn’t test positive back then, so I figured it was high time he got rechecked. This time, it was 52 pricks to the skin, and they were on his forearms, and he suffered much more visibly. It wasn’t just overreaction, either; one of his arms, the one exposed to tree and grass allergens, was visibly inflamed almost immediately from wrist to elbow. Poor kid has himself some nasty ragweed and related weed sensitivities. He’s also allergic to cats now. That’s just the icing on the cake, as far as he was concerned. So he’s on a new regimen of meds, which I hope helps in short order. It would probably explain some of the attention issues he’s been having in school lately; the doctor affirmed that.

Tangentially, the yard is in serious need of mowing. I suppose I’ll need to be ever more diligent about that from now on; can’t have the boy too miserable to play in his own back yard!

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GABE: “Are all these houses on sale?”
ME: “No, just the ones with signs in front. But these are too expensive for us to afford.”
GABE: “We should buy $100 from the bank, and then another $100, and then another $100.”
ME: “I don’t think we’ll be able to afford these, even then.”
GABE: “Oh. But it’s still a good idea, anyway.”

ME: “What do you think of this house?”
GABE: “Oh! It’s really big! Whoa!”
ME: “It sure is! And so pretty.”
GABE: “But…maybe it’s just really big and pretty on the outside, and inside, it’s all crabby and cracky and ugly.”
ME: “Hmmm. What makes you think that?”
GABE: “I don’t think that. I’m just suggesting it.”

GABE: “I like that one! It’s got a really nice door! And look at the deer statue!” [Note: it was a plastic, tacky lawn ornament, about two feet tall.] “I would love the door, and Sam would love the statue, because he loves nature, and deers are nature! It would be perfect for us! I want to break down the door and take it now!”

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Gorgeous day, lovely and sunny and just right in temperature, but the wind was pretty wretched, especially on the southward segments. Yeow. Those exhausted me more than the pace, just about.

Took one gel at the hour mark, along with race course water. Worked well, and I never felt really depleted beyond what was predictable.

So! Official finish time: 1:46:43. Came in 6th in my age group (out of 43) and 48/348 overall. Took 5 minutes off my “PR” (from the WW Festival of Races last year, the only other half I’ve done). Not bad for a day’s work, but tomorrow’s recovery run is going to be VERY, VERY easy.

Oh! Forgot one of the funniest parts! I just missed the start of the kids’ Fun Run, and though I thought to try to catch up, I could see Eric and Sam moving on the far side of the course’s 1-mile loop, and I knew that at my shuffling pace, I couldn’t make it. So I turned around, walked back to the finish…and there was Gabe running up to the finish line. “Did I win?” he panted. I stared over his shoulder and asked where Daddy was. “I dunno!” he said.

Turned out that Gabe ran the course about half a mile in front of Eric and Sam, leading the group with one other woman. So…yes. Yes, you did win, Gabriel. (His prize: the free ice cream Georgie Porgie’s restaurant was handing out. I think that beat a medal in his mind, no contest.)

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“I don’t feel good!” he said.

“Well, try to go to sleep, and you’ll feel better.”

“No, not that kind of not good! I mean…you’re always nice to me, and I’m not nice to you! I say bad things to yoooooooooou!” And he cried and cried. I tried to console him, telling him that I love him and would always love and forgive him, but that didn’t seem to help much. He was hot and sweaty, which I assumed was from the crying…

…but then he woke me up at 5:30 this morning to tell me that he kept waking up with his bed all wet. He was completely drenched from head to toe. I pulled his soggy clothes off and plopped him into a bathtub, where he shivered and whimpered (until I washed his hair, and the whimper became howls that brought the much-preferred Daddy in to finish the job), and then I put him into clean pajamas, since I had no idea whether he was sick and would stay home from school or not.

By an hour later, he felt fine and dandy. At this point, I think what happened was a fever in the night that broke, leaving him sweaty and shivery, and now he’s all better. Good appetite, good spirits, wholly normal. His temperature is fine; of course, I didn’t take a temp last night, so that doesn’t tell me much.

(Of course, it’s also possible that he just peed the bed. I’m not burying my face in the sheets to check!)

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But Gabe actually let the dentist hold his hands when it was all over, listening to what he was saying, with the last of his whole-body shudders and lower-lip quaking. The dentist was remarkably calm and patient through the whole thing; I think it was me, honestly, who tipped the event into the “Let’s just get it done” territory. Mom Fail, probably. But, hey, Sam did well! As well he might, considering that it’s still a distinct possibility that he could need orthodontia for the laterals that look to be coming in via the Soft-Serve Ice Cream Swirl Method.

Phew. Glad that’s over for another six months. Somebody please tell me that we’ll see remarkable strides in self-control between now and then? Doesn’t have to be the truth, so long as it’s convincing. (Not gonna go look through my archives at Sam’s history; it’s becoming less and less relevant, anyway, as Gabe grows and evermore plows his own path.)

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Eric did himself proud! I was in culinary heaven from beginning to end. Now I’m all sad, because he’s away for the week for work; after this, we’ll have him home for one week, and then he’ll go away again for yet another week. It’s easier to weather these trips now that the boys are a bit older and busier, as well as able to comprehend that a week is a finite thing, but…I miss him. I miss him so much. Even nights where I don’t see him, because he’s out past the time when the boys and I go to bed, I’ll stir in the dark and be happily aware of his presence. It’s hard not to have that.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. I’m supposed to sing with the choir, but I’d thought to skip the service, since there’s no childcare and I don’t trust Gabe to sit in the sanctuary without me next to him. One of his Wednesday night teachers, however, offered to let him sit with her during the service, so I might be able to go after all. I’d like to; Ash Wednesday service has become rather special to me, since I first attended one while I was in college. My childhood church didn’t follow a liturgical calendar, so I’d never experienced it before, and certainly never had the imposition of ashes. When I first had that at the Episcopal church where Eric and I would eventually be married, it was such a powerful moment – a time when my own humble position in the world and relationship with God was made so perfectly clear that I nearly shook in the knees.

Sam is slowly working his way through all this, but Gabe…well, I tried to talk with him a little about it today, but it’s harder than it was with Sam at this age. He’s finally beginning to move a little out of his “I am the center of all things!” mindset, but there’s still much of that going on, and he doesn’t really want to think about sacrifice or reverence or any of that. On the other hand, trying to explain how Christ’s resurrection applies to him was a nearly complete failure. It necessarily involves mention of his own mortality, you see, so…”You’re making me SAD! You’re making me want to CRY! I don’t want to DIE!” And then it devolved into discussion about Grandma being in heaven, which is safer territory for him, I suppose: eternal life as something Other People will have the pleasure of experiencing.

I don’t even want to think about trying to explain the ashes to him tomorrow night. Man, do I wish Eric was here to help.

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We watch for commercials, and so that Sam can sort of fit in at school when the other kids talk about having watched, and so that we can have an excuse to eat appetizer-type foods for dinner. Sadly, we seem to have no ability to estimate what our family will consume when it comes to this sort of food preparation, so we ended up with enough food to host a Superbowl party, only with no actual party taking place. The nachos were great, and there were two kinds of wings and hot dogs and cake and ice cream…sheesh. We should have put up a sign or something: “Come on in! Eat up!”

It was a great evening, right up until this commercial came on:

…and Gabe lost his mind in terror, screaming and sobbing and freaking the heck out. It was epic. We just about had him calmed down when this one started:

…and it had to be bedtime. My poor, poor, traumatized baby…

(He talked about it all morning, too, asking why they wanted to make him scared like that.)

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Results: I had several large mugs of coffee this morning, with no food to cushion the blow to my system, as I flung together random ingredients and made this:

Red pepper and goat cheese frittata. I think it looks good, but I also think my computer chair is softly bouncing as I type this. Or maybe it’s the computer screen. Bounce, bounce…

Gabe is dressed up for MOPS, for some reason. He wore a necktie last night for our church portraits (side note: it takes a special kind of optimism on a photographer’s part to push forward in trying to sell packages to couples who burst out laughing, harder and harder, with each take shown to them. “I look completely drugged!” “Sam looks like he’s about to barf!” “So…we can do twelve wallets, and a lovely eight-by-ten for you?”), and now he’s taken with the idea. Never mind that one doesn’t usually sport an ivory necktie with a long-sleeved tee-shirt; he thinks he looks “fancy.” Well, I suppose he does, at that.

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…and now he’s yowling that he’s “stuck in the middle of the stairs,” which presumably means he can’t walk up or down them, and he wants me to carry him. This, he’ll let me do, but if I even think of mentioning rash cream (I don’t even know if there is a rash, but it’s all I can suggest to him), there’s such drama as is not to be believed this side of Broadway. Help?

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I know that I need to be finished running before Eric leaves for work, since neither kid is in school anymore. (Merry Christmas!) Also, tomorrow is the last day of work before Eric’s company holidays, and that means that he and many other employees are bringing in food to share. He’ll be up even earlier than me, getting everything ready to go, and I said I’d help him with last minute work before he heads out the door. That means I really need to be done running by 6:30 at the latest. I’d like to get in an hour, meaning I need to be up by 5 to be on the safe side.

To make the morning easier, I don’t leave a single task for then that involves thinking. The weather gets checked now, not then; too many good runs get sacrificed when a runner decides to “see what it’s like out” before getting dressed. In the frigid winter pre-dawn, if you’re not ready to go before you find out it’s not Paradise outside, it gets much easier to give up before you even start. No, the clothes are in a pile next to my bed, ready to grab and throw on my body before I can do much more than rub my eyes and blink.

Garmin and iPod charging: check. It bites to find out, just as you’re ready to go, that the batteries are dead, and nobody needs extra reasons to throw in the towel on a morning run. Flashlight at hand: also check. YakTrax, just in case.

All that’s left is to get to bed and close my eyes. This is the part that takes practice, unfortunately. Over time, though, I’ve managed to teach my body this: when I’m going through my pre-flight check, it means that sleep has to be imminent. I begin to feel drowsy even as I lay hand on the heart-rate strap. Also, I’m usually able to wake up before the alarm goes off on run mornings. Maybe I’m becoming a bit of a puppy in that aspect.

Three more sleeps to Christmas, if you’re celebrating! Gabe’s getting a little anxious, I think, though he’s trying to be subtle. This afternoon, he lay down to rest on the floor, with his head between a couple of presents under the tree, and I caught him holding and caressing the gift from his preschool teachers. He was told that he could open that one, but he refused, shoving it deep under the tree with the other packages; he did that with a few other goodie bag treats, as well, including one he got in church Sunday for attendance, not holiday-related at all. Who is this kid?

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We walked into his classroom, and he dropped off his things at his hook, then stared across the room at his teachers, bracelets gripped in his fist. “There they are,” I nudged him. “Why don’t you go give them their presents?” He slowly walked over to them, then stood quietly in completely uncharacteristic silence.

One teacher smiled at him and waited a moment, but he didn’t speak. Then she broke the silence by asking, “Do you have something for me?” He thrust both bracelets forward, making her guess which was hers; luckily, he’d spelled out their names in the beads, so it was obvious. She thanked him and hugged him, praising the bracelet. He blushed and didn’t say a word. We then repeated the gifting with the second teacher, who he again didn’t address verbally. After she hugged him, he walked a few steps away and stood still.

I came up behind him and touched his shoulder. “Gabe, you okay?”

His face was red, and his eyes were watery. “I felt like my eyes were getting tears in them, but I’m okay now.”

I don’t know what hit him. Embarrassment? Shyness? He likes his teachers, but he’s never really shown me signs of strong emotions toward them, whether proto-crush or hero worship. Whatever it was that made him get teary, it was gone after a few minutes, and it didn’t return, even when we were leaving in the afternoon and they gave him a little gift bag and more hugs. “Merry Christmas!” he grunted, hauling me out the door.

A couple of little girls in his class gave him cards. Not, mind you, the little girl whose mother has informed me that her daughter has declared Gabe her “boyfriend.” These girls both decorated the cards with hearts, and one of them wrote “LOVE” on it. They probably did that for cards for every classmate, but, boy, did Gabe go wide-eyed. “I don’t know why they said that!” he spluttered in denial. But he smiled a little as he walked away.

He’s such a dynamite personality, and a part of that includes strong positive emotional reactions. It’s what makes it a little easier to get through the strong negatives. There are few mild responses from him, and it can wear out those around him, but I think it will serve him well in the end – I hope.

(And as I typed this, he broke an ornament on the tree. Only a little glass ball, and not one with any particular sentimental value, but that didn’t matter to him. You can see the fallout:

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Sam brought home math homework tonight concerning money and making change. It’s a skill plenty of adults struggle with, I think, and Sam was not finding it intuitive at all. He got pretty frustrated, actually, especially when I went over the worksheet he’d finished and found that he hadn’t gotten a single answer correct. (I’d have stopped him long before that point if I’d realized how much he was struggling, but, alas, he didn’t let on to me at all.) So I went back over the assignment with him, and, you know, it’s not that easy a concept to explain; a practical skill like change-making has a way of becoming automatic, and the brain learns shortcuts that are difficult to break down into steps for those who don’t know how to do it. But we fumbled through. As usual, the best method for getting Sam to relax and stop fighting the work was to add in the element of story and make it as fun as possible; I growled with mock frustration as the imaginary bake sale customers kept coming to me with five-dollar bills, depleting my cash box, and he giggled wildly.

I have no idea how much he’ll retain of the math part, though, so I think we’ll play some more games with it this weekend. In the meantime, I had to chill him out a bit more, since he’s actually had a few nightmares about math class. That’s no way for an eight-year-old to live. His teacher had given each of the students a small gift card to the book store at our conferences before Thanksgiving, and at my encouragement, Sam chose The Chocolate Touch. Even though we’ve been whipping through the Wimpy Kid books, this new book made for a light diversion tonight, and I have faith he’ll sleep well now. On the other hand, when we finished reading, he was yawning hard…but craving sweets. Go figure. (I’d be lying if I tried to claim that by that point, I wasn’t having my own fantasies regarding the secret stash of gourmet dark chocolate in the cupboard. Shhhh.)

GABE: “I’m not a baby.”
ME: “No.”
GABE: “I’m five, so I’m a kid.”
ME: “How old is a baby?”
GABE: “Two. Or one.”
ME: “And you’re not two.”
GABE: “I hope you decide to have another baby.”
ME: “Um. Wouldn’t count on that.”
GABE: “I think you should!”
ME: “I like the babies I already have.”
GABE: “But…!”
ME: “I know, I know. You’re not a baby.”
But you’re MY baby.

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So his teachers and I have been gently encouraging him to branch out into other themes. Christmas trees, perhaps. With no avenging angels of doom on the top, preferably.

Today when I got to his classroom, one of his teachers saw me in the hallway and turned to call into the classroom that I was coming. “He’s been saying he missed you today,” she told me. I went in the room, looked toward the art table where he can usually be found, and saw him sitting with lips out and eyes near tears. I said his name, and he jumped up and ran to me.

His other teacher followed. To my questioning expression, she told me that he’d been trying to “draw war” again, and she asked him to stop. “Then he drew this,” she said, “and I told him we weren’t drawing weapons, so I folded it for him to take home.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s how he draws hands.”

To her credit, his teacher was mortified. She’d jumped to the wrong conclusion and brought Gabe near to crying because of it. She quickly smoothed the paper and apologized repeatedly to him, and he gave her a hug to make up. As we were leaving, she kept telling him how sorry she was; she must have felt terrible about it! Meanwhile, Gabe explained to me how the picture was going to be a robot…making him pizza and doing his work while he rested on the couch. No blood involved! Only minor tyranny!

So I feel bad for Gabe, having been misunderstood, and I feel bad for his teacher, who was only trying to keep the art table G-rated, and I feel bad for me, because my coffee tastes bad. Not that the last is related, except in how it’s affecting my mood in handling the rest of it. Sigh.

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…totally equals…

And now the amusing part is that he knows it. He loves the comic. Guess who’s getting a stuffed tiger for Christmas?

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Doesn’t help that I’m still being a “good girl,” mostly, and sticking to my recovery plan, which is preventing me from ramping up my miles too quickly. I feel down, and running lots and lots of miles helps, but that’s something I “can’t” do right now – not and steer clear of injury. Tonight, a cross-training night, I went to the gym and hiked up a mountain on the treadmill for an hour, which was all right, but sort of like a friendly handshake when what you need is a lengthy Swedish massage. Five miles of running allotted to me tomorrow. Like Oliver, I’m all, “Please, sir, might I have some more?” only slightly more pathetic-looking.

Sam had a church play this morning. It went fairly well, though I do wish he looked a little less like he’d rather be undergoing dental surgery when he’s up on the stage. (At least he didn’t fall clean off the front of the stage, as one little girl did; the look on her face before she burst into horrified tears almost made me cry.) Sam just grimaces and does the choreography in a halfhearted, slightly delayed, manner, conveying extreme discomfort and reluctance. But he voluntarily auditioned for and was given a group solo part, which he performed without reluctance, so…I dunno. In the fall, Gabe will be in that class, too, and will therefore also be in the plays; when we told him that today, he reaction was vehemently negative. Not sure what to do; we have to attend that service, as choir members, and there’s no other Sunday School class for their age group. I don’t know whether kids can opt out or not. Of course, with Gabe, it’s likely he’ll change his mind a zillion times about being on stage before it’s even an issue.

Head hurts a little. I’m thinking early bedtime tonight, if it can be arranged.

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ME: “What did you dream about?”
GABE (snuggling into my lap): “Nothing. Except the crystal.”
ME: “A crystal? What about that?”
GABE: “It was just a crystal that could control everyone’s minds.”
ME: “Um…who had the crystal?”
GABE: “It was in a cave. I was going to go get it.”
ME: “And…what were you going to do with it?”
GABE: “Bring it home. Shine it. Look at it.”

As far as his world domination schemes go, this one was actually fairly benign, don’t you think?

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When I say “a selection,” I’m being very generous. What they were was cheap, so I bought two and haven’t made up my mind yet. Oh, the shame:Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Forgive me for making you look at that. For the record, the “Sugar Baby” dress is slightly more flattering, but…well…and Eric will be wearing a latex mask of a Jack o’Lantern. Very creative; we’re sure pulling out all the stops this year.

Gabe is making up for it. He was given a scarecrow art project to do yesterday at MOPS; they were to color the scarecrow, cut it out and glue it to a paper plate, and decorate the plate like a field. I give you his results:

DO make sure to click it and read all the notes, just to get the full effect. I anticipate more than one trip to the school counselor’s office in his future. Possibly also a highly successful career in the arts, though; seems like most of the artists I’ve known head this way at some point.

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Gabe’s birthday party last night went very well. We had it at a pottery-painting place, and each kid got to paint a little figurine. Then there was cake, which was a very pleasant surprise. I mean, here’s how the talk went with the bakery lady:

“I want zombies crawling out of the cake!” [ME: "Honey, I don't think they can do that."] “Okay, ghosts and tombstones. And a yellow cake, with white frosting, and blue! And yellow! And orange and green, and no chocolate, and Halloween on it, but not too scary!”

Give that woman a raise. (Other pictures at Flickr; click that photo to get there.) And it was just the right size cake, with no leftovers! (This was a fairly important point to me, in my current state of “Let go of the taper weight-gain.” ) Actually most of the kids ate only about half their piece; it was a very rich frosting, and what they did eat was more than enough to turn the end of the party into a wild sort of affair!

I’m going to finish drinking this coffee and try to warm myself up a bunch before we trudge out into the wind tonight. Hopefully, it won’t be too scary out there for Gabe – but, then, sometimes it’s worth it. The other night, we were tickling him and roughhousing, and he squealed, “Stop! I’m a-feared!”

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Of course, on the one hand, those five years themselves don’t feel as though they’ve flown by. Five years in a place that was unfamiliar from the start, all of us learning and adapting, little by little, have felt like a monumentally difficult period. I feel every bit of five years older than I was when we moved here. But the changes in me (other than the running and subsequent shrinking) don’t nearly compare to what this child has done with the same time period. I mean, all I had to do was figure out that you can actually get an ice cream headache from breathing super cold air, so scarves are an imperative. He had to learn how to walk, feed and clothe himself, and speak (with rather scary fluency) a whole language.

When Sam turned five, I waxed poetically about how being a mother had changed me. And it did, undeniably so. The most significant change Gabe has wrought in me is an ever-honed sense of humility. Some kids, by their nature, allow you to feel self-satisfied and proud of what an excellent mother you must be, having produced such sparkling examples of mankind’s future. Gabe sparkles all right – like a firecracker loose on the ground, possibly in a hospital zone. Even as you’re cringing about what the wide-eyed onlookers are thinking about your parenting skills, or lack thereof, you can’t help but shake your head and admire his ability to shine and make a bang. (Nobody puts Gabey in a corner, if you’ll forgive the bad paraphrase.)

And unlike his brother, who was content on his fifth birthday to have a relaxed day out, with a playground party later on that week, Gabe has been determined to have every last detail arranged to his very specific tastes. I was to bring him his presents in bed, first thing in the morning! He wanted cupcakes, from a mix (no homemade cake!), with store-bought frosting and – this point was heavily and repeatedly emphasized – Halloween decorations. He was quite chagrined that his big party wasn’t able to be both a pottery-painting evening and a costume party (“All the girls have to be princesses, and the boys have to be scary!” Sam was horrified by that, but what can you do?), but I mollified him by assuring him that he could paint scary fangs and claws on whatever cutesy animal he chooses. He’s willing to accept that I share a birthday week with him, but when presents arrived for me today from my parents, I almost had a mutiny to quell.

Gabe, you are the cayenne in my chili. You’re the pickle on my sandwich, and you’re the fizz in my mimosa. You’re the one who makes everybody’s eyebrows shoot upward, and don’t we all need a bit of that in our lives? For five years, you’ve kept us on our toes, and every time I think I’ve got the hang of balancing myself that way, you shake the floorboards with a giggle. I don’t know what the next five years will bring, but I think I’ll stock up on ballet slippers – and pillows to tie to my butt.

Happy birthday, wild child.

  

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By the way, if you’re reading through a feed, there’s a chance that you’re not seeing the videos embedded in the post. Click on through if you don’t see anything!

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It’s not yet noon. Sam doesn’t get home until almost 4:30. This is going to be a long day.

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He explained to me, “I didn’t want to trade, and I was sweating inside my body. My heart was unhappy, and one of my brains said no, but my other brain said yes.” He loves his friends. The idea that his friend was sad made him unhappy, but he wasn’t quite ready to be self-sacrificing, either. He left church crying, holding his toy, and begging me to “Talk to Jesus for me about it!” It’s still bothering him, and he now wants to take one of his soldier’s toy guns and send it to the friend. I told him that his friend probably has his own by now, but Gabe won’t rest easy until there’s closure and he can see that his friend isn’t sad anymore.

Last night, Sam and I went to the Eat Right Racine meeting, and honestly, other than the speaker and the group’s coordinator, Sam probably spoke more than any other person there. Every few minutes, his hand was in the air, and he was asking questions and making points that were actually pertinent and interesting. I mean, some of them were obviously kid-like (“Should we grow gardens in our backyards?” he asked once, and “What would happen if the trucks couldn’t get the local food to the people to buy it?”), but the speaker answered all he asked, and he diligently wrote down the answers as he sat without wriggling in his seat. At one point, the speaker told him that how he was sitting and listening well was obviously a sign that he was eating healthily himself.

I sort of felt a mixture of pride and embarrassment at all the attention Sam was garnering; every time his hand was raised, people were starting to look over and smile, and I had no idea what he was going to say. But it was obvious that he was taking to heart all that was said, and that seemed to impress everybody who was there. At the end, several people asked me how old he was, and one gentleman who had been sitting near us handed me his card. He works in admissions at a very, very good private school in our town, and he said he thought Sam would be a good fit. I chuckled that when we’d looked before, our finances couldn’t quite swing it (it costs as much as some colleges to attend there!), and he brushed that aside, saying that most of the kids he brings in don’t need to worry about that. So. Dude.

One point that really made everybody boggle was near the end, when the speaker offered up a question that I think was meant to be something to take home in our heads and not necessarily answered there: how do we get local foods into the hands of people who can’t afford it or can’t get to farmers’ markets? Sam’s hand was in the air. “I have an idea. We could take the library Bookmobile and turn it into a Foodmobile, to take food to people that way.” Everybody paused, and the speaker said, “That’s…actually a really good idea!” And it was.

We left with Sam’s head (and notebook) full of new ideas. “We are totally joining that club!” he said. “I’m going to start eating even more healthy foods now!” He’s an easy convert on most days, honestly, but this is one area in which I’m especially inclined to let it keep playing out.

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I opted to sleep in this morning and do my run while Gabe was in school instead of pre-dawn. Yes, I probably could have chosen to skip it entirely, but I follow the rule that when an illness is “above the neck,” a run isn’t a bad thing, and this one is confined to my head. The purpose of the run morphed into “just get the miles in the legs,” and that’s what I did. Interestingly, running downtown in the mid-morning, I saw many, many runners out and about! Felt like we were all gearing up for a race or something. I actually do wonder how many of them were preparing for Chicago or Lakefront.

Anyway, I’m exhausted. Might try to catch a little nap before I have to go get Gabe. We’ve got church tonight, and while I really don’t feel up to singing, Eric and I need to be at practice; plus, the boys are ready for another week of Bible Blast. Gabe is hysterical, trying to study all the information; his interpretations are wild and more than a little irreverent. (This morning, he asked if they had street signs in the desert for the camels, and when I said they didn’t, he said, “Wait a minute! I thought Jesus could just say, ‘Let there be’ something, and it was there! Why didn’t he make roads and signs?!” ) In our second week of studying, we’re up to Isaac and Ishmael, or thereabouts, and he’s getting impatient. A few days ago, he interrupted me with something that had apparently been bothering him: “Is Jesus even in this Bible?!” Priorities: he has them.

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Lady next to me at the coffee shop is working my nerves. She has a book, but every few seconds, she stops to lift her head and stare at me. I’m simply not that interesting, and it makes me want to stop and yell, “WHAT?!” when she does it.

In other news, Gabe apparently informed the kids in his preschool class that Eric and I are vampires. One mom had to grab me this morning at drop-off and introduce me to her little girl, who was frightened. Oh, Gabe…mind you, this is the same kid who kept flashing his light in people’s eyes at the candlelight hike this weekend (oh, such fun! I have to get back there to run those grassy trails!) and only stopped when he’d reassured himself that they weren’t aliens. He confessed that near the end, and it busted up the Earthmen who happened to be passing us at the moment and who’d passed the test of planetary orientation, I suppose. There’s really never a boring moment.

Sam and I are diving into the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series; we tried it a while back, and it didn’t capture him, but this time it has. Well, it took convincing; his teacher wants him reading to us about 20 minutes a night, and last night he decided that all the books at his reading level on our shelves were crap. Tears and shrieking ensued before Eric finally stepped in and convinced him to give it a shot. Five minutes later, Sam was apologizing and full of remorse for his overreaction. Love that about him; like me, he tends to blow up quickly and cool down just as fast, and he’s usually able then to realistically grasp what happened and what he did right or wrong. I know adults who have trouble with that.

If it stays this cloudy and dark all day, I’m thinking soup for dinner. Chicken noodle for the kids? Squash for us? Needs thought.

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Alysia would be going nuts about the math homework thing right about now. She and I had a recent discussion about homework as a whole, in which I said that I understood it to be my opportunity to help out my kid, who is likely to have many occasions throughout school in which he doesn’t understand concepts in the way the teacher presents them to the group. After all, everybody learns in different ways, and it’s an unfortunate truism that a lot of classroom education has to be about crowd control. Well, for the past couple of days, Sam’s come home with papers marked, “You don’t understand __________” and “You need to get help with _____________.” Somehow, I get the feeling that I know what Alysia would have to say about that.

And Gabe is sort of baffled but game about the whole Bible Blast thing. He’s listening and trying to remember, but there’s something a little weird about trying to teach particular concepts to a kid whose understanding of the necessary ideas behind them is still sketchy. After all, what is forty? He got the whole “…and on the seventh day, God rested” thing, since he could use his fingers as a cue, but beyond that, he’s visibly deciding to just take my word for it, however dubiously. Oh, and the whole “Cain killed Abel” thing struck me as a dangerous little tale to tell my younger son…

This is why I don’t homeschool. I fret enough when I’m not the primary teacher.

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For the record, other than the “injury report,” he apparently had a good day. Then he saw me, and the chaos began anew. I suppose he had to do something to make up for all that good behavior.

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(Something tells me that movie made something of an impression on Sam, since he only watched it once or twice, at least a year ago. Or maybe Eric and I have quoted it around him once…or twice…)

Tonight’s dinner is experimental. The boys won’t touch it, I know, so they got orzo with cheese and asparagus; I’m nibbling on the asparagus while I cook a pumpkin saag, based on the Veganomicon recipe, only with chard and slightly different seasonings. Heck, this recipe is just lucky I couldn’t time the roasting of the beets I’m also doing to coincide with the pumpkin’s finishing time, or else there’d be those in there, too. Very experimental. Eric is playing Scrabble tonight, so I’m the only one to witness either the success or epic fail. I’ll have it over the last of the orzo, for purely authentic what-on-earth. I’ve been enjoying The Man Who Ate the World quite a lot, and the desire for the new has seized me – even if I don’t have access to blowfish sperm at my local grocer.

Later…
This might have been better before I added the chard. It was smelling and looking pretty good. Still cooking.

Still later…
No, sir, it isn’t great. The chard is way more, well, “chardy” than spinach would have been “spinachy,” despite my best efforts. My excuse is that the whole reason for the dish is that I had the chard, and it needed to be used before it went bad. Well, it’s been used, and it’s certainly edible, so I guess we’ll call it a success in that respect – if in not many others. If Eric had been here, he could have saved it, I’m sure, but he’d have done it with seeds and other things that aren’t even labeled in their containers, so I wasn’t going to try that route.

Oh, well. Tomorrow’s another day. Gabe’s first day of school, in fact, so I have other reasons to remain optimistic.

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Last night, Eric and the boys were playing a video game, and bedtime came – a little earlier than Gabe would have liked, as it turns out. (Dawn would frequently be “a little too early,” but I digress.) So we had the usual hollering and crying, except that Gabe was apparently feeling a titch more sensitive than usual. The sobs were louder, the pleas were more heartfelt…and then he hit his stride.

“I’M GOING AWAY FOR-EVER! I’M LEAVING THIS PLACE!”

Eric, with a straighter face than I know I could have mustered, said something sympathetic, and then he asked Gabe if he needed any help packing.

“NO! I CAN DO IT MYSELF!”

At this point, Eric got interrupted by Sam, so he didn’t hear Gabe wailing to himself in his room. “But what will I EAT?!” Apparently, that thought was too much to bear, so he went running to Eric (I was hiding in the bathroom, stuffing a towel into my mouth.) “I CHANGED MY MIND! YOU CAN HELP ME PACK! AND PUT IN LOTS OF FOOD!”

The crying continued as Gabe considered the more practical sides of running away (“How will I SLEEP with no BLANKETS or PILL-OWWWWWWWS?!”). Sam, ever the gentle older brother, offered some kind words: “Dude, you’re not running away! You won’t even remember this tomorrow.” Cry, whimper, whine. When I left the bathroom and he saw me, the tears began with renewed force: “I’LL MISS YOU, MOMMY!”

I consoled him, and my mom and dad talked to him on the phone to try to make him feel better, too. (He actually got a sparkle in his eye when he had the sudden inspiration that his Papou could come along on the great escape, but it was short-lived, as Dad reminded him that he liked his own pillow too much…and so does Gabe. When we left things last night, Gabe was sniffling into my shoulder that “it all depends on tomorrow!” (From the upper bunk: “BUT HE WON’T REMEMBER IT!” “Sam, shhhhh!”)

I remember wanting to run away when I was a kid, though it was less about injustices and more about the romance of the open road. My main stumbling blocks were a fear of dogs and the fact that I couldn’t get my bandanna (black, with turquoise, pink, and purple paisleys) to stay tied around the stick I found. And you can’t put much in a bandanna, anyway – certainly not “LOTS OF FOOD!” Looks like the son is more sensible than the mother.

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So when the teachers at the open house today shook his hand, watched him run off, and told me he seemed like a sweetheart, it was hard to keep my laugh from sounding a bit like an ominously-pitched cackle. I opted for the subtle track with the forms, but…well, they’ll see. This is, after all, the child who, when I asked him if he was happy about starting school, said, “Can I pretend I’m evil?” I told him it probably wasn’t a good idea, and he glowered. “Then it won’t be fun.” Well, of course not.

But maybe it really is better not to share in this case, because it really does seem like in many cases, he decides to keep his alter-ego hidden fro the adults around him. Plenty of other teachers seem to view him as a cooperative little sweetheart (I’m often tempted to ask whether there’s another Gabe in the class with whom my son could be confused, though I refrain). He did reveal his wilder side to last year’s preschool teachers, though they were polite about it and didn’t let on much, except to joke after the graduation ceremony that they were “just glad Gabe decided not to jump off the stage.” Mostly, though, he charms the grownups he sees; the first time his regular Sunday School teacher saw him throwing a fit for us in the church cloak room (he didn’t want to leave just yet), she was aghast – enough so that she remarked on it every time she saw us over the next couple of weeks. “I’ve never seen him like that!” Yeah, well, come to my house sometime; you’ve got pretty good odds of catching the storm.

Thing is, he’s really sharp and has the potential to excel in the classroom, if he decides he wants to. It’s getting him to want to that’s the sticky point. Starting next week, in fact, he’ll be old enough to do Bible Blast with Sam – and, in fact, he’s really too old to be in the nursery that would have to otherwise hold him while Eric and I do choir practice. Everybody is very accommodating, and if we said he needed to stay in the nursery, they’d allow it; likewise, if we put him in Bible Blast, they’d take him and try to work with him and his quirks. He’s smart enough to handle the program…but will he stay in his seat long enough to do it, without bounding up and declaring that, darn it all, supervillians don’t memorize scripture?

I bet Lex Luther’s mom had some tales to tell.

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Is it just me, or does he look a smidge teenager-ish these days?

Wait, no, there’s the teenager within. (Actually, he was just complaining that the backpack was too heavy, which it was, and that he wanted to get to the bus stop to take it off.)

Third grade, then. We met his teacher last night at an open house, and she seems nice. No visible fangs, but no fairy godmother wand hanging out of an apron pocket, either. Eric and I firmly encouraged Sam to place his name tag on a desk near the front of the room, and Sam seemed relieved that the teacher didn’t, I don’t know, lunge for his throat when he said hi to her. An auspicious beginning, I hope.

Gabe has his open house tomorrow and starts school next week. Somehow, it’s a little less tear-inducing than with Sam. Not that I don’t treasure his baby years just as much, but perhaps it’s that he doesn’t. The bus was late getting Sam this morning, and I remarked that maybe some kindergartners were crying and refusing to get on. “Are you going to be scared when you ride the bus, or excited?” I asked Gabe.

He looked at me like I was touched in the head. “Neither.” Just another day to him, I guess. Any emotions expressed that day will be purely my own issues to handle, it seems. Silly old Mom.

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If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll do the same thing, on your own site or Facebook or wherever! Many of us have gone to a sort of “radio silence” over the past couple of years, observing a new level of privacy with regards to our offspring, which is totally understandable. Still, I miss reading those old stories. These kids just don’t stop growing, and it’d be good to catch back up, even a little.

(...)
Read the rest of State of the Kids (342 words)

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It’s a little different when Gabe draws these days.

Bob Ross doesn’t live here…

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He’s in a huge villainy stage right now, especially since I made the offhand comment to him that his super-villian goggles reminded me of Dr. Horrible. Now he runs around singing about Bad Horse and how “the sun is shining ’cause you’re gonna die!” (Mind you, he’s only seen a censored-by-tickle-and-kiss-attacks version of the show), in addition to his usual efforts to construct freeze guns and killer robots out of blocks and Scotch tape. Some kids play Superman, but not my baby.

Sam has a dangly tooth that refuses to let go; he spends a lot of time with his fingers in his mouth, wiggling away at it. Last night, it looked like a stiff breeze would take it, and he asked me to help him get it out, but I had little more success than he did. I offered him a dried fig to bite, and he tried; he bit twice, the tooth went sideways, there was blood, and Sam freaked and threw in the towel. This morning, Eric offered to give it a try, but Sam panicked and decided to give it some more wiggling time instead. The tooth fairy is prepared and waiting!

Going out tonight with Sarah to a wine shop. Can’t tell you how much I need this, really.

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I did try to wake him, since I know he’s going to be irate at having missed playground, but all I got was a fluttering of eyelashes and a muttered “Sleeeeep…” Hopefully, he’ll feel a little more friendly upon awakening; I’m getting really sick of the fraternal brawling taking place every time I turn my back for a moment (and sometimes in plain sight, all care about consequences tossed aside).

Sam might be overtired, too, but he’s far more stubborn about any efforts to assist in those lines. If he doesn’t want to sleep, he won’t, no matter what I try. I think, too, he’s got some hormonal stuff going on, because he’s going back to the whole “I’m so stupid, and I hate myself” pendulum swings that we had a while ago. Man, I hoped we were done with that! Nothing seemed to help last time; he just stopped the refrain one day. Hate when history repeats itself like this.

And here’s me, the “fixer” with no good solutions. Makes for a cranky Carrie, it does.

Oh, crap; Gabe just woke up, and, well…

Good times.

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(But if you did ask, he’d tell you that he’s now “SleepyMan,” the supervillain whose powers involve making people sleepy and turning them into ice.)

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Got home, showered, forced Sam to do the same and endured the dra-aaaaaaaa-ma surrounding that (we made a deal that he could shower this morning instead of last night, in exchange for no whining, but he’s a dirty deal-breaker). Was just beginning to recover my stride after that when he tearfully informed us that a friend of his is taking summer school class with the teacher whose class Sam’s just left, and the woman is criticizing Sam to all those kids in the summer class.

No.

Got us all dressed, dropped Eric off at work, and drove to the school. Ushered Sam off to his art class, then found the principal and laid it all out for him. We went through “progress reports” for wiggling and finger biting; severe and frequent punishments for ordinary silliness; and even an incidence where she reported that another teacher had had to scold Sam “repeatedly” for misbehavior, and when I talked to that teacher, she said it never happened at all – turned out that his teacher had asked other kids about Sam’s behavior, and they made up that part. This was the final straw. She’s not even his teacher anymore, and she’s still giving us grief. The worst of it is that Sam really likes her – or he did before this blow. He’s hurt and bewildered now.

Anyway, the principal seemed shocked, and he wrote down many notes and said he’d talk to her. I assured him that we didn’t want to cause trouble, because Sam had liked her and because we had another child who would be coming up through the grade eventually, and he promised he’d take care of that. We’ll see, I guess. I just don’t know that I could have met my own eyes in the mirror if I let this happen to my child without saying anything. I tried calling her after the whole “she [didn't] say, they said” experience, but she didn’t return my calls.

So! Then! I picked up Sam and took both kids to the dentist! Because I’m a masochist like that! Sam does fine, but Gabe…this was to be his first “official” cleaning, and it went as well as I expected it to – meaning that they had to actually remove us to a separate room, close the door, have me bear-hug him on my lap, and muscle our way through the trauma. Mind you, until a year or so ago, it took three adults to hold him down so the barber could cut his hair, and he’s only gotten stronger and more stubborn since then. It was BAD. By the time we finished (skipping the flossing and intro x-rays entirely), we were both sweaty, he was missing both shoes, and I was bruised from neck to waist from his kicks and thumps. The dentist did a quick check, and then Gabe went FERAL, running to the corner, hiding under a counter, and – inexplicably – doing HANDSTANDS OF RAGE while the dentist tried to make nice. I stood there, sort of laugh-crying with my hands over my face, while the hygienist tried to console me and reassure me that he wouldn’t be the last child to do this. Well, no, of course not: we’ll be back in six months!

And then we went back to Sam, and the dentist informed me that his laterals might be coming in crooked and might require straightening. Shave and a haircut…

I fully expected we’d be hit by a semi leaving the parking lot, just for good measure. We weren’t, but it would have felt appropriate.

Too hot for Calgon, too early for merlot. What’s a girl to do?

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Gabe relished telling everybody in the office (at the top of his lungs), “I’m acting like myself!” I guess in his head, that means that he’s not sick at all, so he has license to flee anybody who approaches with medicine.

Well, I got the primary answer I wanted, which was to know whether he needed to be kept home and away from activities. Verdict: he’s fine to participate in things, so long as he doesn’t spike a fever over 100 degrees under the arm (getting the thermometer into his mouth is the Funniest Joke Ever). Bible School and Kiddie Korner are a go for today! He was tickled, er, red.

I have my own doctor appointment this afternoon; don’t let me forget to print and fill out all the preregistration paperwork. If she seems amenable, Eric said to go ahead and make arrangements to switch our family back to her. We really liked seeing her when she was still in town, and if we have to drive a tiny bit further to see her, it’s probably worth it.

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It doesn’t itch, and it’s not raised. He might have a slight fever, but nothing much over the warmth that all of us are experiencing (I don’t trust our thermometer, but it seems to say he’s slightly warmer than usual), but he does say he feels a little dizzy when he lies down. The rash was actually there on his left cheek a couple of days ago, but it faded with some cortisone cream and only came back yesterday evening (though I attributed it then to the sun, even though we’d all worn sunscreen). He’s a little hoarse, but he claims he feels fine otherwise.

Fifth? Scarlet? Other?

Fun, fun, fun.

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“We have a tornado warning,” Eric said, “and it looks like it’ll be coming by here in another half-hour or so.” (Mind, I’m really, really paraphrasing, and probably wrong; I was coming out of a dead sleep when he was speaking, so complete comprehension wasn’t feasible.) “Want me to stay awake and let you know if we have to run to the basement?”

I said, “That sounds fine,” which probably came out “Glarb, mephea,” and tried to go back to sleep, but I spent the next hour or so fading in and out of a half-asleep state where I was fully aware of the racket happening outside but not able to coherently process it. It was booming thunder, clattering rain, blaring sirens, and howling wind; I’m amazed that Gabe slept through the whole thing. Sam says he woke for some of it, but he didn’t call out or let us know he was awake; I don’t know if I believe that, since those sirens are usually enough to make his eyes go saucer-wide and start him demanding that we flee to the most remote corner of the basement immediately.

No tornadoes ever did approach us, and there wasn’t even any major damage reported in our county, thank God. It was only distantly thundering and sprinkling a little when I went out to run this morning, but it was quite warm (mid-sixties and feeling muggy) for the hour and in comparison to recent days. The forecasts are calling for isolated strong storms throughout the day – no tornadoes, thankfully – and it’s sort of darkly ominous out there right now. We drove to the farmers’ market instead of walking, so as not to get caught in a surprise downpour and so that we could drop Eric off at work to help him escape a similar threat.

But the weather will supposedly be done throwing tantrums by midnight, giving the moisture some chance to dry up before tomorrow’s race. I don’t mind running in the rain, and, honestly, a little sprinkle when the heat creeps up (it’ll be mid-seventies for the run, which isn’t comfortable) is welcome, but I would be seriously bummed if the thing got canceled for thunder and lightning.

Completely unrelated, when we were eating out for Sam’s birthday, Gabe studied the servers running around the dining room and suddenly asked, “Do waiters even like their jobs?” I told him that some did, and then when our server came to the table, he piped up, “Excuse me! Do you like your job?” She gave him a baffled but enthusiastic “yes,” and he seemed satisfied.

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I forgot to take into account the special activities that happen within the overlapping time frames. Today, both boys’ programs have “Parents welcome!” potlucks at 3:30.

I’ll drop off fruit at Sam’s playground at 3:30, leave (I warned him; he was fine with it) and go to Gabe’s potluck with sandwiches (nobody else signed up for them, so I, the last person signing the poster board, got stuck with it) and stay there for a bit, then head back to Sam’s to hang with him. Might take Gabe with me, might not; depends on whether he’d rather stay and play with friends or come to the Big Kid party with me.

And, of course, this virtually ensures that neither son will be remotely convinced to try the butternut squash casserole that I’ve already started prepping for tonight. I mean, they probably wouldn’t have been thrilled to begin with, but being full of greasy potato chips and fruit snacks on top of it all…yay!

Ooh! Next Thursday, they both have field trips! One’s going bowling, and the other’s going skating! They have staggered drop-offs, thankfully, but somebody’s going to need picked up a bit early and somebody a bit late; both outings end at 4:30.

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We have three responses so far, out of eight, for Sam’s birthday; the RSVP date I put on the invites was for today. Again, like I said before, I’m totally not fussed about it. No need to know how much cake to get (ice cream for whoever shows up!) and even if all five of the other boys mysteriously appear on the big day (unlikely), I’m sure we can get the theater to sell us five extra tickets. No big deal at all. Oh, except for figuring out what to get him, as he’s apparently much more focused on that aspect of turning a year older this time than he has been in the past. He keeps asking whether I’ve bought anything yet.

Eric’s taking the day of Sam’s actual birthday off from work, and we’ll do something then too; Sam’s already professed a desire to go to BD’s Mongolian Barbecue, which I find extraordinarily cool. (Gabe likes it there, too, since he can get an enormous bowl of mac and cheese almost as soon as he walks in the door. And they have crazy straws. Gabe heaven!)

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Planning Sam’s birthday party; just finished writing the invitations. We’re taking a bunch of boys (his choice as to the guest list) to see Up, and then going across the parking lot to Marble Slab for ice cream. Very, very low key, which is perfect. I’m not even all that concerned about RSVPs, since although we plan to buy a block of tickets together ahead of time, the movie will have been out long enough that we’d probably be able to get more tickets and sit together with anybody who replied late. Score! (Of course, it’s also probable that at least a couple of kids will have already seen the movie by then, too, but the worst I think that could come from that would be a running narrative throughout the movie: “Oh, watch this! Now he’s going to…” “Shhhhhh!”)

Gabe is wrestling with the concept of “not my party.” I mollified him when the issue first arose by telling him that since his birthday is in October, maybe he could have a Halloween party. Now he talks almost daily about new ideas he’s had for his “Halloween costume birthday party” (for which all guests are required, not requested, to come as either a princess or in something terrifying; apparently; he himself plans to be a “bad ninja,” complete with red eyeballs and swords all over), but I do anticipate a certain amount of jealousy-based mutiny on the day of Sam’s party.

I, personally, am wrestling with the idea of being mom to an eight-year-old. I may have many early memories, scattered here and there, but I most definitely remember the feeling of being eight; I can remember my friends, my teachers, my toys, my first crush that began when I was a third-grader, the whole nine yards. How can I be on the other end of that? How can I mother a boy who’s old enough that some little girl could be experiencing her first crush on him even now?! (Back off, girlfriend. I’m He’s not old enough for kissy-face yet.)

As a side note, which is more frustrating, in your opinion: the boy who is a sweetheart at home and in casual settings, but drives his school teachers crazy; or the boy whose teachers adore him, but who makes it a personal mission to send his mom to the loony bin? Hmmm?

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Doctor appointment yesterday was less than informative. I don’t know; Eric has expressed negative opinions in the past about our doctor and how she seems to miss things (with the whole Magical (Medical) Mystery Tour with the disappearing free air, especially, but that’s not been an isolated case). Yesterday, too, she seemed inclined to just want to give me Provera off the bat and blame the whole thing on exercise. I suggested concerns that it could be something else, and she said that it just seemed a very obvious case. “Well, yes,” I said, “but I’d hate to miss something important just because it ‘seems’ obvious.” Not to mention that I truly don’t believe that running is the cause. I used a very gradual training program, and I didn’t lose significant weight from when I started training for the marathon, and I’ve been focusing quite a bit on making sure to adequately fuel myself with good nutrition and plenty of calories all the while. I was as careful as possible, in other words; no starvation, no overdoing it.

I suggested to the doctor that, based on other issues that I presented to her several months ago (which she also blamed on tiredness and stress), we might want to take a look at my hormone levels, so she agreed to run some blood tests. If they come back normal, we’ll do the Provera and she’ll see me in another two months…and make sure, she says, that I haven’t slipped further down the BMI scale. (I told her I’d be halfway through training for Marine Corps then, so I may have lost one or two pounds, but I anticipate being in very good shape.) You’d think I was living on lettuce leaves and colon cleanses, the way that conversation seemed to be heading, instead of, say, just having had a bowl of this an hour before:

Anyway, I’m off to take Gabe to his last day of Bible school. If you can believe it, after only two days there, spending a little time in our church’s gymnasium each day, he’s already learned to pedal a tricycle! I’ve been trying to get him to do that for a couple of years! I find it funny that this is exactly what happened with Sam: he refused to pedal for me, and then he started attending preschool at the church and learned to pedal in the very same gymnasium. Something in the air up there, or something about those trikes. Interestingly, he was very well-behaved, for Gabe, for the rest of the afternoon; either he wore himself down enough to be more relaxed, or else he was feeling cooperative enough as a rule yesterday to be able to tackle the task of learning to ride. Either way, I’m good!

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…saw a man in antique military uniform setting up a small campsite…in the playground of a private school. Had no idea what that was about.

…went to a Farmers’ Market, Gabe in the stroller and doodling in his book all the way. We picked up beets (quite small still, but bigger than they have been!), spinach, asparagus, fresh eggs, and some local honey.

…stopped at a coffee shop for cone filters and a warm cup. We split a piece of angel food cake, too – “split” being used loosely, as Gabe devoured most of it. Saw a friend there with her kids, though she was on her way out.

…dropped in the health food store, where I grabbed some Maranatha Almond Butter, adzuki beans, and some carob chips.

…had a complete meltdown of epic proportions in the middle of the health food store. Well, one of us did. Guess who? The culprit had to be forcibly buckled into the stroller and quickly removed.

…ran into another friend on our way home, in the playground area of that school. (Turns out that the campsite was somehow related to “last day” activities, though I can’t imagine how.) Chatted with her for a bit through the fence, and we made loose arrangements for her to join us on future walks to the market.

…finished our walk home under cloudy skies that have since opened up and begun to drizzle. Oh, well; I had more fun on the walk than I would have had trying to get the grass cut before the rain!

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Sometimes you make a day better by, um, structuring a bit of unstructured creativity. I saw these books while I was out with Gabe today, and I immediately decided that it could provide the perfect antidote to the stress of 4 o’clock “progress report” time. (Which wasn’t too bad today. He got all “okay” faces, which confuses the heck out of Eric and me. Did he do something wrong? Not bad enough to actually tell us (or, apparently, for him to remember), but not good enough for a smiley? What the heck, yo?) Anyway, both boys are loving the books, but especially Gabe, who seems to have taken to heart the idea of following the “suggestions” for each page. Sam prefers the “free pages,” naturally.

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Then, yesterday, while I was having the insurance exam physical and I had to leave the room to use the bathroom, he seized the opportunity to confide to the paramedic administering the exam that “Mommy is making me gather up all my toys so we can get rid of them.” This, mind you, is his interpretation of the fact that we’ve discussed having a yard sale to weed through things that have been outgrown. Actually, having a toy sale component of the yard sale was his idea! He even suggested making signs for it: “THESE TOYS ARE ALL FOR SALE.” But, of course, that wouldn’t have been as dramatic a tale to give to a stranger, so…

He’s going to get more attention than he planned, one of these days.

Eric’s making ravioli tonight, sauced with some of the leftover red pepper sauce he made for pizza. I’ll probably write about it here.

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Tonight I made a white bean soup. I’d have pictures, but it was so delicious that it was almost entirely gone before I thought of it. It was a pureed soup, so although Sam’s enjoyed bean soups in the past, I wasn’t sure how this one would go over; I mean, it was essentially a pot full of velvety white gravy-like liquid, and gravies have never been his thing. So I brought him in and had him taste it – and he actually danced. Loved it! Then I let him read the ingredient list – a dangerous step, but calculated – and he was stunned that it had onions in it, when he swore he hated them. Many kids might have switched their opinions of the soup, but Sam actually rejoiced all the more at discovering that he didn’t hate onions, after all. Hurray!

(In case you’re curious, the recipe was very simple. White beans, cooked (3/4 cup) and set aside; two onions, 4 celery stalks, and a parsnip sauteed together in a little canola oil; beans added to the veggies, with a quart of stock; mixture simmered until veggies are soft, then pureed and reheated. Season with salt and pepper; garnish with cilantro and paprika.)

But my sweet child has been having behavior “issues” again, and again I find myself confused and unsure. Instinctively, I find myself in his corner, because hey! He’s a seven-year-old kid, and seven-year-olds wiggle in their seats! It’s not like he’s shooting spitballs or putting tacks on chairs! On the other hand, intellectually, I know that I need to work with him on focus and concentration, because this isn’t something that can continue, and I see it in person when I do violin lessons with him. The other kids sit and listen; Sam taps his bow on the floor, plays air guitar, examines his hands…

There’s a time and a place for goofiness, and he’s having difficulty discerning when it’s the wrong time. How does one teach that? Rhetorical question, that; I know that if there were an easy answer, we’d have a darn sight fewer behavior issues in schools. I also know that I was that kid, too, and I outgrew it…though not without several years pretty much an entire elementary school career’s worth of tormenting my mom and teachers. Is that what we’re going to have to endure? Because it didn’t look like fun from my mom’s end of things. Then again, Sam may be me, but I was not my mom, at least then. Should it be easier on me…or harder?

I just need to survive mostly sane, because you can place your bets now on how it’s going to be when mini-Eric hits the school years. Today, he was eating a scone, and I asked him if it was yummy. “Yes, it is. Do you have any more questions?”

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I signed both boys up for the summer playground program yesterday, something Gabe’s been eagerly anticipating for a couple of years. He’s finally big enough to attend! He’ll be in a different program from Sam, but they meet at roughly the same time and at playgrounds that adjoin each other, so I can pretty much drop them off together. That’s four afternoons a week of organized large-motor play! Yay for summertime exhaustion! (And coffee breaks for Mama! )

So now we’ve got this gap, during which Sam’s still in school, but Gabe isn’t, and summer hasn’t officially begun, but both kids think it has. We’re rubbing our hands together over activities to come that aren’t yet here, even while we stare down the ends of schedules that still need to be completed. The urge is heavy to rush through things so as to move on to the New.

And then there’s me, still officially in “recovery” from the race, according to Hal Higdon, and yet his “recovery program” has me doing speedwork – something that the marathon training program didn’t. The idea, I think, is to keep me from losing motivation, and he encourages doing a 5K at the end of recovery, in fact. But I think that in this case, too, I might be rushing things. I obeyed and did mile repeats this morning, doing each of the miles at a quick pace…and my IT band, which had been improving, became quite angry. Too soon. The plan doesn’t know my circumstances; it’s my fault, not Hal’s.

So I’ll follow my common sense here, take a step back, and both acknowledge and try to appreciate where I am instead of rushing into where I’d like to be or what I think might be an exciting next step. You can’t go sky-diving without packing your parachute. If anybody needs me, that’s where I’ll be.

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Sam “confessed” yesterday that he hopes Spring Break ends quickly. I say “confessed” because he immediately edited his statement in the apparent hope that I didn’t hear his first choice of words, that he “couldn’t stand to be away from Ms. P. so long!” He altered it to “be away from school,” which I guess he felt was less embarrassing. He also said he needed to get back to Spanish class quickly, as apparently the teacher there is eagerly awaiting the next installment of the story he’s writing.

Have I talked about this? Sam, and a group of a few other boys, spend their leisure time writing stories at school. He carries around a notebook and scraps of paper, on which he jots the tales…which he then reads in front of the class. I knew about the writing, but I didn’t know about the presentations until I caught his teacher on the phone; she didn’t know that I didn’t know, so nobody had told me! She’s amazed by it, since although she’s had little girls who write and share stories, she’s never had little boys at this age doing it so intently, and never a group of kids doing it together. Sam says he wants to be a story writer when he grows up. I remember wanting to do that, too, although I think that was when I was in fifth grade or so.

Anyway, Spring Break could feel very long for all of us this year if I’m not proactive. Long for Sam, missing his classes and story group; long for Gabe, spending the week with kids bigger than he is, who he can’t so easily boss around. And long for me…just because. So I’m coming up with ideas for ways to break up the week – places to go, projects to do. If it were slightly warmer, I’d take the time to start tooling around with the Sisyphean task of fixing the back yard to grow things, but I’m not sure it’s nice enough yet; the ground is still pretty hard. Already got tomorrow planned, though! The boys and I are heading to a neighboring town for some Hammer gels (a whole jug of Espresso flavor, just for me! Whee!) and a new flask, and then, since it was a bit of a hike to get there, we’ll find something to do in those parts to entertain ourselves.

What are you guys doing, or did you already do, to kill your kids’ Breaks? I’m trying to put off the Chuck E. Cheese option indefinitely, if I can.

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But Eric did get me a few things I needed and am looking forward to using. Heading into warmer weather, I just can’t make my men’s size large shorts go another running season, so we went by a Nike outlet and got this (in blue) and this (in black with pink stripes) and this (discontinued entirely). I realize that those skirts are marked as “tennis” and not as running skirts, but I don’t think that will be a problem; the main difference, as far as I can tell, is that these have longer compression-style shorts underneath instead of little panty things. These were the ones on the clearance rack, though. I’ll still need one or two more bottom pieces and some smaller tops.

Of course, this morning I was running in multiple layers in freezing temperatures, so my pretty new things will wait. I’m starting to do the pee-pee dance, trying to figure out what I’ll wear for the marathon. I wish Wisconsin were more predictable! The race is a month out, and it could be in the mid-50s, or it could be high 30s. Argh! I’m thinking I might need a set of these (click through the pictures to see the patterns!), just to cover my bases, though I’m reluctant to spend the money; would they be worth it? Anybody tried them?

Boy, I’m just a big ball of “testify, please?” this morning, aren’t I? Well, while I’m doing that, might as well go all the way: who has a dishwasher they love or detest? Lower echelon, please; I don’t need it to mow my lawn for me. Just something that does a decent job cleaning dishes, holds a reasonably large load, and doesn’t sound like a Boeing aircraft.

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Anyway, he’s got a fall birthday, which puts him just over the line for not going to kindergarten next year, and that is fine and dandy, really. I was talking to a mom of another four-year-old with a fall birthday this morning, and she told me about how, since her daughter was really bright, she was able to test into kindergarten early, and why didn’t I try that if I wanted Gabe to go to Sam’s school next year? And while I feel that, on a good (read: cooperative) day, Gabe could pass their test with his sturdy little hands bound at the small of his back, it wouldn’t be fair – not to him, not to his future teacher, and not to the other little classmates who would find him rampaging among their folds. He needs another year of preschool to mellow.

But I look at the curricula for four-year-old preschools, and I sigh. He claims to be bored at his current preschool, and I don’t blame him. Count to ten? He’s identifying rhinoceros beetles and telling me that he could escape from his enforced rest time “if the crack in the gate was large enough for my skull.” Another year of stacking cups is likely to drive him batty. Already, we have battles on preschool mornings, as he fights to stay home.

What’s a mom to do? We’re looking into the preschool Sam attended, which is, admittedly, still a preschool, but has somewhat more structure and academic work, as well as a longer day. (This would also have the benefit of bridging the gap of morning to afternoon so that I could more easily attend Sam’s violin classes.) The teacher Sam had at this school, the one with whom we had issues, will be leaving at the end of this year, so Gabe would have a brand-new teacher to destroy break in enjoy. Also, though it wouldn’t necessarily be a factor for many people, I like that this school is through our church, and there is a chapel-time component available (though not mandated).

Our other option was a 4K program through the school district, but you don’t get a choice about which school your child attends, and our home school…I’ve talked about it before, and it remains a non-option for us. We’d homeschool first. (Shaddup, Alysia. )

Got to make a decision quick, probably by Monday at the latest. Reasons for sticking with his current school: he knows and likes his teachers, it’s close to home, more casual approach, and it’s cheaper than the new school. Reasons to change: greater potential for learning and lessened boredom, a good curriculum, a “gym/outdoor” time lacking at his current school, a longer day that might better transition to full-day kindergarten.

Thinking.

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Can I just say that nobody does pitiful like Gabe does. His eyes get all huge, like a little anime character, and red-rimmed and full of woe; his lower lip trembles, and he seems to shrink in on himself. We’ve talked to him about how his body has cells that act like soldiers, fighting the germs that invade, and how he has to rest and eat good foods to give his soldiers weapons to fight. (Oh, the joy of learning to “speak boy.”) My poor little sickie shudders through his nausea, fighting back tears, and whimpers that he “miss[es] not being sick” and that he “hope[s] my soldiers win.”

But he’s a cooperative patient. His initial denial-based reactions (“I’m not sick anymore! All done!”) gave way to my persuasion to keep a bowl close by, under the explanation that it was a Magic Bowl: if you have it, you might not throw up, but if you won’t, you probably will. He wasn’t all that hungry, so he was amenable to my suggestions to refrain from eating much beyond small sips of water and a little banana (later in the evening). He threw up again before that banana, but it (sorry for details) was obviously from a mostly empty stomach, and he used the bowl without complaint.

Putting him to bed, he was feeling better, but I instructed him that should he wake up feeling bad, he should first run to the bathroom and then call for me. I didn’t have much confidence in him retaining that suggestion, but that’s exactly what he did at 5:30 this morning! And he didn’t even puke then; it was just a bit of nausea that quickly passed. He’s been eating dry toast and crackers since then, and he seems much better.

But he’s still missing his preschool field trip to the gymnastics center this morning. Shhh, don’t tell him.

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But here’s something interesting: when I brought up to her that I might want to get my iron checked, as I’d been following my diet closely recently and trying to pay special attention to iron and calcium, she looked over my records and found that when I had a blood draw early this past fall, I had shown up as anemic. Nobody told me! She was surprised at that, and she said that I should have been called, but that it was only a slight anemia then. The physical symptoms I’ve had show me that I probably dipped further in my levels after that, but we can fix this. She’s having my iron checked again, as well as my calcium and vitamin D levels, and my thyroid (as usual).

I was also told that due my aunt’s breast cancer, I get to start having mammograms in two years, not seven. Dreading that, but it’s a necessary thing, and I’m glad we have the technology to do the screening. I’ll make it a birthday gift to myself.

As a bonus, my doc is setting me up with a nutritionist to talk vitamins, minerals, and what exactly a marathoner-in-training could be doing better than what I’m already doing. Now, this, I really am anticipating eagerly.

Apropos of nothing, my very-picky-about-sweets son Gabe is obsessed with my chili cookies. Go figure.

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Also, boo on the book I just finished. I don’t know, guess it wasn’t my cup of tea; it wasn’t poorly written, but I just felt completely unmoved by any of the characters. Instead of feeling pulled along by the tale, it read like, “Oh, hey! This author learned a bunch of Chinese history and designed a little story around that framework! Hurrah, history!” I like history, but in this case, I’d just about rather have picked up a history book than wasted the time wading through the narrative. Meh.

Sam is still dressing up for school. I tried to encourage a sweater this morning, but he came down dressed in a button-down shirt again.

In the car this morning, Gabe cheerfully remarked, “Those buses are peculiar, aren’t they? They’re blue and white.” (I can’t recall using that word in casual conversation in…well, ever, though I’m sure I have.)

If I eat enough iron-rich foods, will I stop feeling like I’m walking through a fogbank and every little thing is catching me by surprise?

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ME: “Gabe, that’s a really awful thing to say. Let’s try ‘I’m mad at you,’ since that’s what you mean.”
GABE: “No! That’s boring! ‘Mad’ is boring! I’m angry.”
ME: “Oh. Okay, ‘angry’ is a better word. Hey, how about ‘I’m furious with you,’ then?”
GABE: “‘Furious’ isn’t boring! I’m furious!”
ME: “Yeah, except now you’re smiling, so you’re not.”

Big words cheer my baby up. Interesting.

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He went to school today in a dress shirt and tie, with new shoes. I asked him if he thought anybody else would be dressed up, and he said, “Are you kidding? Nobody dresses up for a kids’ school party. I’m doing this for B_____.”

Yes, there’s a girl in the picture. Not that she knows, of course, though she might have a clue by later today; the school is selling silk roses for 50 cents each, and he left home with a dollar in his pocket, so as to be able to get a flower for his teacher (kiss-up!) and for his crush. He actually asked me if he ought to write a poem for her, but after I told him it would be fine but to make sure to give it to her privately so as not to embarrass her in front of her friends, he decided against it.

According to him, she’s a very smart girl, but also “a little bad.” (Eric cracked up and started singing Fiona Apple songs.) He wouldn’t elaborate on what that means, but I presume it just means that she’s getting her share of scolding from their teacher. He also says that she’s very, very pretty. “I get nervous when I try to talk to her,” he sighs.

I’m too young for this, aren’t I?

And in the meantime, Gabe made a bracelet out of pipe cleaners and pony beads, then wanted to take it to school to give to his friend, Rachel. I’m not concerned about any puppy love there, though; he’s adamantly against kissing of any kind.

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And he scampered off to find more mischief.

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Okay, I’m pretty sure I’d be in for the Ice Age Relay, provided:

*3-man team, and I can do either leg 2 or 3
*you’re not looking to win or anything.

Heard from a bunch of experienced marathoners yesterday who thought that was doable, so I’m reassured!

If that works, then my plan for the time following the marathon is

• Immediately following the race, stay upright; possibly go sit or squat in Lake Michigan for a bit. Get a real ice bath at home.
• Go for a long bike ride the next day.
• If I feel up to it on day two, go for a short run, or else bike again.
• For the rest of the week, short runs, not fast, as feels good.
• Go run a relay leg and have some fun!

After that, I don’t have anything special on my calendar until mid to late June, when I’ll do the Lighthouse 10-miler, so I have more time to rest and recover more thoroughly. After Lighthouse, I’ll start training again for Marine Corps in October. I like having plans.

We had a lot of fun at Wyatt’s birthday party last night. Sam had some struggles with being the biggest kid there, what with the younger ones acting their ages and not according to logic, but he still enjoyed himself; Gabe, though, had a blast and loudly declared, “Now, this is a PARTY!” He gorged himself silly on pizza, potato chips, cupcakes, and candy, and he spent a lot of time running from activity to activity with the other kids.

This morning, unpacking the goody bag that I insisted wait until today (it being bedtime by the time we got home), he gushed, “What were they thinking? They didn’t have to! Wow!” So, Sarah, I think you can judge your party as a complete success!

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Gabe was standing next to me. “You mean John Quincy?” he said.

“Um…” I stared. “Who’s John Quincy, Gabe?”

“He’s the United States Kingdom! He’s in charge of all the other statues. He makes sure they’re not too old.”

“Oh.”

“But we can’t see him every night…” he sighed, walking off. I have no idea what any of that was about.

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So we’re scrambling this morning to make sure Gabe’s hair is combed and face washed, and Sam has all the parts of his Scouts uniform, and I’m grabbing for more and more layers of clothing for my run this morning – 7 miles, and there’s a Lake Effect Snow Advisory in effect, yay! – and Eric left in what I may have only perceived as a relieved hurry to escape the madness. Now Sam’s gone, too, and it’s that brief lull before I bustle Gabe into his coat to take him to preschool. Breathe, breathe.

Then run again, only literally.

After that, I need to talk to some folks at his school when I pick him up. I’m having a second-thoughts issue right now. We had planned to send him to preschool next year for the second year, but it turns out that my dear friend Sarah is (::sniffle::) moving. Besides that being a personal crisis for me, it also means that she won’t be here to watch Gabe during Sam’s violin lessons next year, which I still have to attend. Given a choice, I’d much rather have him in school or some other convenient option rather than find another sitter, but his preschool doesn’t cover that hour. He’s old enough for 4K, which would be free, but most of them seem to run only Monday through Thursday, even if they cover the time of the day when the lessons are expected to be held. The violin teacher thinks the lessons will be on Fridays next year. Hurray for complications.

So I’m going to talk to his preschool teachers to see if something could be worked out next year via the site’s daycare; apparently, they occasionally help out working parents by letting the kids stay in the daycare for the overlap hours and then walking them to the preschool room. I would need 30 to 45 minutes, one day a week only, so I’m not sure they’d help me with that, but it’s worth asking.

Whatever I decide, it needs to be soon, since the 4K classes start registration very soon (and fill quickly!), and the preschool has already asked for forms about who’ll be there next year. I don’t want to put down a deposit there and lose it if we go the other way, but I don’t want to lose a spot, either. Ack!

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I’m out and about this morning because I had to get an oil change in the van after dropping Gabe at preschool, and then it was late to go back home before picking him up and heading for a MOPS lunch. So here I sit, drinking more coffee than I planned for today. I’ll maybe skip my naptime coffee. Gabe may skip naptime, at that.

Oh, he was ticked when I dropped him at school this morning. They’re doing a unit on Hawaii, and they had planned a “trip” to Hawaii for this morning. They made passports, practiced the limbo, dressed in tropical clothes and packed “luggage” (a towel, sunscreen, and a shovel), and will be “flying” there in an airplane they made in class. The trouble? Gabe was absolutely convinced that they were actually going to Hawaii. His teachers had told them it was all pretend, that they couldn’t really fly without mommies and daddies, but I had a feeling Gabe wasn’t getting it, so I tried to broach it gently in the car.

“NO! I want to see a real tiki!” And he started crying. It was lovely. Good thing I did that, though, or the fireworks in school would have been epic. As it was, when we got there and his teacher came out to get him from the van, he was glaring and indignant. Ought to be a fun “trip” for him. I tried to console him.

“If somebody said they were giving you an apple pie, and then they gave you an apple, would you be sad?”
“Yeah.”
“But you like apples, so would you enjoy the apple, anyway?”
“Yeah, but I wanted to see a real TIKI!”

Have fun, class.

Oh, and I hadn’t noticed in the lima bean video Sam chucking what was apparently a piece of fat from his ham across the room. When I showed him the video, he was mortified to have been caught.

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We went to church last night, and I stood with Gabe for a minute in the nursery before heading to choir. One of the attendants had her baby girl with her, and I was cooing at the baby and chatting with the mom. In the course of the conversation, I vented that I was about to the point of running upstairs into the middle of the teen room and throwing myself to the floor, begging for anyone who was willing to watch my kids to take pity on me. “I could babysit,” said a young girl in the doorway. She’s on the young side, but she seems quite bright, and she’s done the “mother’s helper” thing in the past. I talked with her and her mother for a bit, and we decided that she’ll start by watching the kids at her house, with her mom there. If this works out, man, I’ll be in heaven; she’s young enough that she could be our sitter for years!

I’m mixed in my feelings of anticipation and dread for the party itself. On one hand, I love the people, and I love spending time with all of them. On the other hand, it’s likely to be an evening mixed with acrimony – feelings of anger toward the company, toward those who had to make the tough decisions, toward the economy, perhaps even toward those who some would feel should have been fired instead. Anger is a natural emotion in these circumstances, but it’s tough to navigate a situation where so many people will be feeling it, alongside sadness and despair.

To lighten things up…

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Today feels like I’m flying by the seat of my pants. Sam’s violin teacher called last night to see if we could squeeze in an extra lesson today to make up for the one he missed last week due to the canceled school days. I’ll have to cart Gabe along for that. I’m supposed to go out for dinner with a bunch of gals from the family club tonight, but lots of them have canceled, leaving me with a couple of women I’m not sure that I’ve actually ever met in person. So there’s that, but there’s also a possibility that a work-related emergency will arise, and I’ve already told Eric that if that happens, I’ll step back from my night out with no hard feelings. I truly won’t resent that, but it is rather unsettling to not have any sure idea about whether or not I’m going out tonight.

Oh, well. It’s not as though the days that I feel as though I have everything together and am ready for anything outnumber the opposite.

Taught Gabe “On Top of Spaghetti” today. He had it learned by our third or fourth time through. Then he sang it back to me. “Did I do it right?” he asked. “Did I get the experience right?” Um, sure.

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Really, it should have some sort of strappy heel to go with it, but my feet are somewhat less than delicate in appearance, even after weight loss. They’re large, and they come at the bottom of calves that, while no longer exactly “plump,” are most definitely not slender. They are working calves. Dainty shoes look almost absurdly out of place on me. On the other hand, I had to warn Eric that the dress was going to look different on me than on the mannequin because the mannequin had apparently been neglecting its shoulder presses; my muscles are very obvious in this design, so it’s either love it or hate it with no in betweens. Luckily, Eric’s a fan of my muscles (or at least professes to be; perhaps bulging biceps could tend to “encourage” that sort of reassurance…).

Pictures later. I have yet to be in the same room with the dress and my camera. Soon, though!

School and work restarted today, and Gabe didn’t know what to do with himself, except for a pretty firm idea that it involved not letting me, the remaining member of his entertainment troupe, out of his sight. It was a very long day for both of us; hopefully, when preschool starts tomorrow, he’ll find his ability and desire for independent time once more. Sam says school was “great.” That’s all I ever get from him, unless the news is dire. Why can’t I have one of those kids who wants to tell me every little thing that went on while he was away for the day? I know, I’d complain then, too, but at least I’d know what’s happening in his life. A mama is supposed to know, isn’t she? I swear, it’s not from lack of interest on my part.

At least Gabe tells me, though he isn’t always clear and he hates to have to explain himself. “I played cups, Mom! I already told you that! Can we stop talking about it now?” Leaving me with the mystery of whether he’s playing with cups, cups, or cups.

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Took Gabe to the grocery store with me tonight, and in one of those instances that are much more funny once you’re removed from them via time:
GABE: “Mommy, can I smell one of these apples?”
ME: “Sure, Gabe, but I think you already did.”
GABE: “No, I just licked it.” (Turned out, he explained, he just touched it with his finger and then licked the finger. Still.)

Also, in the car:
GABE: “Do you know how you know where to go?”
ME: “How?”
GABE: “Follow the arrows! You dodo!”
ME: “Gabe! We don’t call people dodos!”
GABE: “Why not? It’s just a bird.”
ME: “It’s also a way of saying somebody isn’t being very smart.”
GABE: “Oh.” (muttering) “Follow the arrow, you parrot. No.” (full voice) “Just follow the arrows, but don’t call me parrot.”

One more weekend, and school and work resumes. Well, Gabe doesn’t go back to school until Tuesday, but he’ll be mournful, anyway, as everybody else resumes their routines. Honestly, he’ll be more upset about that than about school for himself; he’s been asking about preschool and his friend Cameron for a few days. Of course, come Tuesday morning, he’ll be as resistant to being sent off to the coal mines as the other two men in the house.

As for me, I’m looking forward to the return of an established routine, as much as it can be. Vacations are good for the soul on occasion, but so is knowing what one is to do on any given day. “I dunno; want to hit the sales?” doesn’t count toward that. Even having to be pulled out of bed by a sounding alarm every morning can be all right, so long as the body is given a chance to adjust to it. Hurrah for readjustment, and for predictability, and for daily rhythms!

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Enough about that. No point dwelling.

But the fact that he manages to make me snort with laughter at regular intervals makes me inclined to keep him on staff for the time being. The other night in the car, for instance, Sam was getting both irritated and irritating, and he finally declared something along the lines of, “I’m going to watch TV when we get home if it’s the last thing I do!” Without missing a beat, Gabe piped up, “OH, NO, HE DIDN’T!” before Eric and I could react, and it changed the mood of the circumstances almost entirely.

Yesterday, Sam was singing a line from song from a recent church play, over and over again. “Promise U.! Promise U.!” It was a little grating, and finally Gabe had apparently had enough. In exactly the same pitch, he sang back, “Promise me! you’ll stop singing that song! ’cause it’s annoying!”

Sometimes, it’s the deadpan nature of his remarks that make them so tension-shattering. He’s got a great ability to mimic tone and pitch, so his artificially cheerful refusals to cooperate with the artificially cheerful requests from his parents or other adults around him are much more startling than your typical, “No, I won’t” that you get from most kids his age. He comes across like some slightly cynical comedic actor, tolerating the people around him but unwilling to put up with much crap. Of course, we want to encourage, and are, a greater degree of compassion and politeness from him, but sometimes all you really want to do is burst into laughter.

And then, of course, there are the moments of complete young boy surrealism that I cherish. Gabe was playing with my nativity scene a few nights ago, and I heard this dialogue between Mary and the infant Jesus: “‘Okay, Jesus. I love you, but it’s time for you to go back home now.’ ‘Okay, I’ll see you later. Bye-bye.’” And with that, the manger bearing Jesus blasted off, with the rumbling of rocket engines, and “flew” slowly across the living room.

“Gabe?” I said. “What’s Jesus doing?”
“Going home.” (With eyes saying, “Well, duh.”)
“And…where’s that?”
“Under the sea!”

We may need to read the Biblical story a few more times, I think.

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When I first started running, it wasn’t a pleasant sensation. I was puffing, panting, and groaning my way down the path, sweating and feeling as though another step would find me keeling over dead. Music helped; positive comments from people who knew of my progress helped more. What helped the most, though, was finishing that first road race. It was such a thrill, such a heady experience, that I was able to take those feelings and link them to running in general, which carried me through to the eventual time when I was able to enjoy running for running’s sake. I don’t think there’s anybody who goes for their first run and comes back saying, “Wow, that was awesome!” It takes something more to get to that point, and for me, it was racing. I wasn’t a contender for the win; that wasn’t the point. It was running in a crowd of people, with crowd support, and course entertainment, and a good cause, and door prizes, and, and, and…

It’s rather a good thing that I did decide that races would be something fun to try, because if I hadn’t had those feelings to carry me through that first winter of running, I don’t know if I’d have survived the gym and the treadmill. I had to go there again today, since freezing weather and jogging strollers don’t mix; I could have run in the dark, but I couldn’t force it this morning. I do everything in my power to survive the workout, but there just aren’t any positive associations to be drawn from a treadmill run. No wind in your face, no distracting scenery. (In my gym, there is sometimes scenery from which I need to be distracted, truthfully. I wonder whether management keeps any hernia repair specialists on staff.) Eventually, would the bad feelings surrounding the treadmill have extended to encompass the entire sport? I don’t know, but I’m glad I didn’t have to experiment.

Now that I’ve been running long enough, I don’t worry about running losing its attraction. I’ve got enough positive associations to carry me through whatever I have to weather. After my forced rest during the summer’s bout with tendinitis, I’m sure of that. Now, to get through this winter…

My parents’ Christmas gifts arrived today; it took the boys about an hour to notice them under the tree. I think Gabe has now asked me about a dozen times, just making certain, “Are we going to get to open those on Christmas?” “When it’s Christmas, we get to open those presents?” “I’m going to open those, but not until Christmas?” It must be hard to get through the holiday season when you only have vague recollections of previous seasons, and you have the patience of a Mayfly.

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And once again, I got wrapped up in other stuff and managed to backseat Sam’s Bible Blast studying until today, and so we’ll need to read and cover David’s crowning through his affair with Bathsheba this afternoon, between dinner and homework and anything else that crops up. (Tangentially, it’s interesting to see how the younger child is affected by witnessing older sibling’s studies. Gabe listens in on Bible study, homework, and violin practices, and I have a hunch that he’ll either find it much more natural when it’s his turn or else be entirely burnt out prematurely. He especially likes to clap along with the Suzuki rhythms, which burns Sam up in a special way when he’s trying to argue that they’re too hard. )

And do you know, I haven’t bought a single Christmas gift, outside of the computer? I know, it’s only December 3rd, so this isn’t an unusual occurrence, but the television keeps squawking at me about “Last-minute gift sales!” and I begin to feel like I’m running late. Irritating. And I’m trying so hard to limit the kids to non-commercial media outlets (PBS and Noggin don’t show commercials, thank God!), but everywhere we go, it seems like there’s a billboard or a magazine or a television or radio playing, and Gabe starts chanting, “Can we buy that? Can I have that? Please buy me that?” Sam never did this, so I guess it’s natural that I’d get it double with the second child. Good times.

Extra cup of coffee today – my hands are cold.

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It should be noted that we chose to serve ham as our primary protein due to our kids’ usual reluctance to eat roasted bird, and it should be noted also that both boys decided to turn their noses up at the ham yesterday and instead eat from the small Rock Cornish hen we got just to satisfy my inner traditionalist’s need to have at least a little fowl on the table. Hmmph. On the other hand, what they really enjoyed was the green beans (Gabe) and the carrots (Sam). That’s satisfying.

Most popular with Gabe, though, was what he smelled as he woke from his nap before dinner. Eric was preparing the brussels sprouts, which he served with (among other things) finely chopped bacon. Gabe scented that bacon like, well:

It was a thing of beauty, watching him nearly fall down the stairs, trying to get to Eric’s outstretched hand that held the plate of bacon; he grabbed with both fists, trying to stuff it all into his mouth before Eric took the bulk of it away. This morning, as an apology for having to do that, Eric made bacon and eggs for breakfast, and Gabe was satisfied…almost. At the mall, later, a meat and sausage kiosk ran out of bacon samples before Gabe got there, leaving nothing but aroma for him. He confided his misery to a woman in the perfume store, and when I mock-sighed that bacon for breakfast just wasn’t enough, he suddenly yelled, “BACOOOOOOOON!” at the top of his lungs, nearly making her fall down in giggles.

Tomorrow: the tree!

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And just now, before I’ve had my coffee, he came downstairs strutting and waving his arms tightly with a pouty grimace on his face. “Becky, you okay,” he grunted. “Becky, you okay, Becky.” When I asked him what he was singing, he rolled his eyes and said, “It’s a cool song. It’s Michael Jackson!” And he demanded that I download Smooth Criminal.

Y’all, it is too early for this.

EDIT: Now they’re screaming “Beat it! Beat it!” at each other, and I swear I just heard Gabe call Sam “Jack-Sam.” This will get very ugly before the end…

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We went over to Sam’s school with a bag of canned food in hand, ready to join the students on a trek down the street to a local church’s food bank. It was quite an impressive sight: the entire student body of his elementary school, strung out in a line over several blocks, each with a small bag of food in hand to deposit in the cardboard boxes inside the church. I heard some of the kids talking about what they were doing, obviously parroting what they’d been told: “This is so people don’t have to be hungry for Thanksgiving.” Gabe trotted next to me, mittened hands waving in the wind and tiny reddened nose poking out over the fabric covering the lower half of his face. He had no idea what we were doing, despite my efforts to explain.

On the way home, I tried again. “There are people in our town who don’t have any food to eat.”

GABE: “Not in their refrigerators?”
ME: “They might not have refrigerators at all. Maybe not a house.”
GABE: “Oh. They should get one.”
ME: “But they don’t have the money, sweetheart.”
GABE: “…”
ME: “Can you imagine if you didn’t have any food in your fridge?”
GABE: “Did they steal our food?!”

Now, see, even at this age, Sam would have been practically in tears at the thought of people being hungry. Gabe is a more typical four years old, self-centered as a rule. I’m not sure how to explain charity to him effectively, or even if I can do so. I’ll keep modeling it to him, hoping osmosis will work, but words are failing me right now. At least he didn’t try to grab boxes of mac ‘n cheese from the display shelves of the food bank; I saw his eyes light up at the sight of them.

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We spent a good portion of today over at Starfall, where Gabe at first enjoyed the letter identification exercises but quickly found that he liked the matching games best. He then moved on to the higher level matching games, which involved matching short words to their pictures. He can’t really read independently yet, but he was doggedly trying. After a bit, I could see that he was getting tired of it, and he started to insist, “This is the last game! Then I’m done!” I told him that was fine, that nobody would make him play, and he muttered, “The computer will!” He couldn’t give up so long as the computer continued to challenge him. Eventually, I had to step in and declare him the winner over the computer.

This is a blessing of having two children with such very different personalities: even though we’ve gone through all this before, it’s still a new experience to watch this child learn. He’s coming up the hill from the other side from where Sam started, and while Sam wanders in zig-zags, examining bushes and animal tracks along the way, Gabe is clearing a wide and firmly-packed path, aiming for the crest like an arrow to a target. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out the farther both of them get along the way.

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Hey, Mom: I got down in the dumps the other day, so I opened one of the presents in the surprise box. I love the earrings and necklace. Gabe does, too, as he sits in my lap and names the colors with a deep and intense air of seriousness. That’s how he does things like that lately. Sam was in a play in church this week, and apparently Gabe’s Sunday School teacher decided to take the kids in the class up to the balcony to watch (I was in the nursery, but I got to see the play during the dress rehearsal); I later got reports from youth group members who were up there with him, saying that he had been quite, er, stentorian with his reading of the letters on the screen over the actors’ heads. “Peeeeee! Arrrrrrr! Ohhhhh!” etc. It took him time to get to the end of the word “promise,” but the teenagers didn’t get a bit tired of it, rolling on the floor with laughter as they were.

I’m glad others find him amusing. Everybody who knows him keeps coming to me to tell me how much they enjoy him, but he’s definitely a person who’s easier to enjoy in small doses, so to speak. I return to the word “intense,” as it’s probably the most descriptive of who Gabe is these days.

Sam is, too, though in different ways. He’s like me, in that we both tend to flare quickly with strong emotions, and then we swing back the other direction just as fast, forgetting what had us upset as we move onward. Last night, we had an awful violin practice experience, ending with me giving up and sending him to the shower, intending to put him to bed early (he was a bit overtired). His anger turned into tears of angst, and he insisted that he was stupid and that I hated him. But it took about five or ten minutes to reassure him…after which he was loving, cheerful, and full of displays of affection. That’s Sam, never down for long. (Check with me again after tonight’s violin time…)

Tonight: haircuts for the boys, hopefully, and a quick dinner, before heading out for a book exchange with friends. My bookshelves will sigh in relief as I unload them, if only for a while.

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I got myself an electric blanket a few days ago. Twin-sized, since Eric has diabetes and isn’t supposed to use them, so it only covers my half of the bed. From one angle, it was a very good buy, since I’m almost always freezing and the blanket make me feel toasty and warm and (strangely) loved and cuddled. On the other hand, I really don’t want to do anything except stay there under it all the time now. I’m sitting here in front of the computer, wishing like heck for evening and bedtime to get here now. And it’s not even as though I could do any daytime work from my bed, either, since once that heat starts working, I go all beautifully semi-comatose.

I’d have made a good bear. Mmmmm, hibernation.

Took the boys to the cheap theater this weekend to see Wall-E; Sam had already seen it, but Gabe has been afraid of theaters (the darkness and noise, I think) for a while now and could only just be cajoled into going there this time. He spent the first segment of the movie asking, “Is it going to be scary now?” over and over, and the second segment was full of, “Hey! This isn’t scary at all!” The ending confused him a little bit, and he keeps asking the same questions over and over (and over) as he processes it, but I think his theater phobia might be over. Of course, the large popcorn didn’t hurt that at all; he ate most of the tub himself, double-handing it as fast as he could, despite Eric’s efforts to slow him down.

Hmm, popcorn. Might be time to make some popcorn balls again!

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I did 13.14 miles. That’s just over a half-marathon. Still almost a mile shy of my longest run length pre-tendinitis, but respectable nonetheless, and I didn’t do those earlier long runs with a wind-filled stroller holding me back. I made sure to take some Sport Beans at about 5 miles and drink water throughout, and I felt pretty good…until the run was over, at which point I nearly fell over from cramps in the backs of my thighs and my bottom. I guess I was using those muscles to help push the stroller along. Ow.

Ran into many groups of election day volunteers, out canvassing neighborhoods to make sure people were voting. They were in yellow and looked pretty nonpartisan, which cheered me; they also appeared to mostly be older teens and young adults, which is always encouraging. They called out to me to ask if I’d voted, then cheered for me when I hollered back that I had. I did also encounter a group of what looked like young teenagers outside a school where there was voting; they were lounging around, looking lazy, until one of them suddenly yelled the name of a candidate at me. As it happened, it was the candidate for whom I voted, so I punched the air at him and they all hooted happily. Odd day, today, but nice. Well, except for the fact that Gabe has decided that he actually prefers the sound of the other candidate’s name, and every time I say my choice’s name, he starts growling and throwing tantrums.

Got my free coffee, too! You get yours?

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On the other hand, letting Gabe loose might be a good thing today. Witness what he did on Saturday evening at the mall, when a cute shopgirl was flirting with him and giving him doughnuts and little cups of cider:

GABE: “Do you have any pie?”
GIRL (giggling): “No, we don’t have pie. Just doughnuts.”
GABE: “Do you like pie?”
GABE: “Oh, yes! I love pumpkin pie the best.”
GABE: “I’m selling some pies!”

Somehow he remembered what his current preschool fundraiser is. I quickly intervened to say that while his effort was laudable, we weren’t going to drive all the way back down to this mall in Illinois to deliver a frozen pie.

Supposed to be a lovely day today. Hey! Maybe today can be the day I coax my little chicken onto his tricycle and finally persuade him to pedal! I at last have figured out that it’s not so much a confusion about how it works as it is a fear to have his feet off the ground for more than a second. Bribery does scary things to this kid, and not always pleasant ones, but maybe this would be an appropriate venue for it. After all, internal motivation for trike riding can come later; right now, we just need to show him that he won’t face loss of life or limb while riding the thing.

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Well. Sam led us on his bike, rather than follow, and he loved it. Like, really loved it. I planned to take us through the three local cemeteries and back home, which would have been about seven miles, with the option to skip the last cemetery if we needed to. Instead, Sam loved the hills in the second cemetery so much that we did that one twice, and we tacked on a venture out to a woodsy park trail after that. It wound up being a twelve mile run/ride, and he was mad that we didn’t add on a detour to go by his school (“and do a few laps around it!”). I was exhausted and shaking by the time we got home; I hadn’t fueled for that kind of run or brought any kind of gels or sport beans with me. Water alone wasn’t enough, considering I didn’t have much of a breakfast. Note for next time: don’t underestimate a kids’ desire for outdoor fun. Midway through the park, I was wishing I had my credit card with me, so I could pull a Dean Karnazes and have a pizza delivered to us, mid-run.

Gonna be a long day today, notwithstanding Sam’s request from yesterday that we go out again for a run so that we can finally get to his school. Extreme sassiness from him last night resulted in loss of television today, and we’re already having periodic arguments about that. In between, he plays happily and forgets, but when he spies that black screen out of the corner of his eye…I really want an entertainment center that closes and conceals the TV. Out of sight, perhaps out of mind?

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So we ran back home, and I gathered the parts of the almost finished bat costume and crammed him into it as best and as quickly as I could. Of course, I could only find two safety pins in the house, so I wound up sewing the wings onto his coat with a few stitches instead. Gabe expressed his panic by grabbing at and fiddling with everything in sight as I worked.

Then we ran to the school, and he frantically flapped his wings as we dashed through the doors and into the gym, where the kids were lined up and getting ready to start singing. I have to say, he was the most serious and determined-looking little bat I’ve ever seen in my life.

 

After they sang, I went on a run. Came back, just in time to see Gabe happily finishing off his day with a (repeat, apparently) performance of “Spooky Walk,” which is sort of like the echo song “Going on a Bear Hunt,” but with a Halloween theme.

He was loving the song so much that he was threatening to melt down because it was time to go and they couldn’t do it again, so I got the publisher name and promised to try to find it at home. (Foreshadowing!)

Hopped in the car, grabbed lunch, and dashed off to a new-to-me running store for new shoes. They wound up being closed, so I hit a different nearby store instead and came away with these. Drove back to town, grabbed some Halloween-related crap at a store and came home in time to meet Sam. Homework, dinner, Bible studying, and then I searched for and found Gabe’s song!

Boomp3.com

EXCEPT…the moment I started playing it, he scampered up the stairs in terror and refused to come back down. I tried to coax him down, and I stopped the song, but then he got mad and demanded that I play it again. You know, while he sat at the top of the stairs, as far as he could get from the computer and still hear it. Sam, meanwhile, was listening to it and getting paler and paler and more nervous-looking, until I informed him that a class of three and four-year-olds had been enjoying it. At that point, he decided (to at least pretend) that he wasn’t afraid.

Gabe came down after about three repetitions, and then we had to hear it even more. At this point, I have the chant memorized and it won’t leave my head, and it’s still two days to Halloween. Whee!

Today is Sam’s school party, and then our church party. It’s the longest-seeming Halloween season I’ve ever experienced, I think. Somebody rescue me?

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In other news, Gabe enjoys writing his name…

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Oh, it’s not for lack of good intentions that you’re having a disappointing celebration. We all wanted you to have a grand day, and you were certainly determined to live it up from the moment you awoke and demanded your presents…in the hoarsest little voice imaginable. Yes, you’re sick, suffering from the same terrible head cold that’s plaguing both your mom and dad.

The cold kept you from enjoying your birthday banana nut muffins. “Tastes bad!”
The cold kept you from prancing happily into your birthday restaurant, instead needing to be carried with your head on my shoulder. (Not that you could have been kept at home, though!)
The cold kept you from eating most of your food and from even wanting dessert. (It didn’t keep you from enjoying your hug and hand-shaking with the big costumed bird, or the singing waitresses.)
The cold made you throw up all over the carpet what little bit of lunch you managed to eat. Twice.
The cold made you whimper and cough your way through an extended afternoon nap, missing your birthday phone call from Grandma and Grandpa.

But you’ve done all you could to enjoy your day, despite being visibly miserable much of the time. You were thrilled with all your presents; Sam even used most of his own money so he could buy you a stuffed eagle. With careful deliberation, you selected a very solid, hefty purple bouncy ball with swirly liquid inside to purchase with the birthday money given by your great-grandma. You never lost sight of the goal of eventually having “yellow cupcakes, with white frosting and sprinkles!” which we’ll get to savor this evening. You didn’t have your usual silly grin, but you wore at least a half-smile, which is more than most would have mustered, all things considered. You proudly told everybody you saw that it was your birthday, saying you were now “this many!” with four fingers stretched upwards. (No idea why you won’t say the number; before today, you kept asking when you’d be four.)

“Am I almost big?” you ask me. You have no idea. At lunch, you kept close tabs on the “cute little babies!” all over the restaurant, and I kept trying to recall what it was like when you were so small. Certainly, I can remember having a baby on my lap, but you as that baby? The memories fade as quickly as we make them. You force me to live in this moment, even as you strain for the next. Time moves more quickly for me and you than it does for even your big brother, perhaps because of your need to try to catch up to him.

Someday, your birthdays may be complicated affairs with invitations and organized entertainment. Perhaps it’s a blessing that illness forced us to slow down for just one more year, keeping the day simple and relaxed. Your hair is standing on end in the back and your sweatshirt (into which you changed after throwing up the second time) is too small, but it doesn’t matter. There are no guests except the people who were here for your very first birthday, and we won’t miss “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” for one more year. You’re four years old, and you’re building little log cabins on the coffee table, content for the moment to rest between Daddy and Sam, where you belong.

Happy birthday!

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Jealous little Gabe
Can’t choose whether he prefers
Sam or Sammy’s meds.

“Mom! Can I have soup?”
“Mommy, I fink I’m sick, too!”
“Mom!” “Mommy!” “Mom!” ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

Naptime coming soon
Whether they like it or not
Else I turn feral.

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He’s in bed an hour early tonight, ostensibly reading a book, but I’m betting he’ll fall asleep in short order if his cough lets him.

Gabe tried to claim illness, too, just to get the Tylenol.

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Headache isn’t helped by Gabe flipping his own lid over rest time. That child has a set of pipes, boy howdy.

His fourth birthday is Sunday, and he just decided to let me in on the surprise knowledge that he is indeed aware of the tradition of the birthday party. Don’t ask me why I didn’t see it coming; I’m still operating under the perception that he’s a particularly loud young toddler, I guess. Anyway, he wants friends over. Whoops. Also “whoops” to the development that several of the friends he’s naming are preschool friends whose phone numbers or last names I don’t know. Class lists will be available later this week. Methinks this party will be slightly delayed.

I told him we’ll have two parties: a family one, which he’ll share with me, and a friend party with the cupcakes he’s demanding requesting. He was slightly miffed about having to share the spotlight with me, but I think he’ll come around to the idea of two celebrations (and cakes) eventually.

As for me, I haven’t even figured out what to give the child. Sheesh, he already has everything! When I asked him, he said, “A dog toy that is a mouse that you can wind up.” Well, I guess he didn’t have that.

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There’s no doubt at all in my mind that this is a Runner; there’s not even any “Future” to add to that as a prefix. All that needs work is his endurance, since a mile to me is double that to his smaller stride. But does he honestly need to test out his skills against me as often as he does? Specifically, does he need to take off running in efforts to escape from us in potentially dangerous situations, like he seems to want to do?!

The first time, it was from Eric, and he made it several blocks before stopping and allowing Eric to catch him. The second time, it was from me, and the only reason my heel-wearing self caught him when I did, after making it halfway around the block, was because he stopped to try to find a place to hide. Last night, he made a break for it as we were leaving church; it was pitch black outside, and our church is on Main Street with plenty of traffic zipping past.

He started off slowly, and I thought he was going to try his usual trick of ducking behind the row of trees and making me “hunt” for him. When I immediately went after him, though, he picked up his pace and headed down the sidewalk for Main. I started running, then, too, heart pumping hard; Sam called out to ask if he should chase him, as well. At that moment, Gabe reached the corner and rounded it, heading down the block. I dropped everything in my arms, hollered at Sam to wait there, and broke into a sprint. Gabe glanced over his shoulder, saw me approaching, and picked up his speed, too. I yanked off my shoes as I ran (darn heels!), trying to get faster, and it still took me two blocks before I could catch that kid.

He was howling by the time I got back to the church, where friends were waiting with Sam. The father told me that he “shouldn’t get into” what he would have done if Gabe were his. As it was, Gabe was most distraught at being shoved unceremoniously into the car, denied the lollipop we had discussed prior to his flight, and sent to bed the moment we got home. He screeched, “How can you do this to me?!” the whole car trip. But despite the punishment, and even after me iterating the horrors (cars, kidnapping, stray animals) that can happen to little boys who run away from their parents (Sam almost started crying!), I’m not confident we’ve seen the last of the running.

So the plan: for the foreseeable future, when we’re in places where running is a possibility, he will not be granted freedom. Hand-holding, being carried, and the stroller will become de rigeur. He’ll hate that, as he did this morning, when I didn’t let him out of the car at Sam’s bus stop (have to drive on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since preschool drop-off starts immediately after Sam’s pick-up time); on Tuesday, after all, he very nearly tried to run from me while there. We’ll stick to this for as long as it takes. If he does run…we’re developing a solid, enforceable-at-that-moment consequence that’s linked solely to this problem. (Eric: head-to-head on this tonight.)

And continue to give him positive opportunities to stretch his running legs, since that’s what he seems to need. This might be a problem as the weather worsens…but, then, it’ll be easier to catch him when he’s running through drifts up to his little waist.

Apropos of nothing, I have a weird lesion-thing developing on my abdomen. It seems to get worse after each run, and the best guess I can make is that it has something to do with my iPod, which clips to my waistband just below that. I may try making a “cozy” for it out of an old sock to see if it helps. As far as I know, I have no metal sensitivities…or didn’t before now.

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(...)
Read the rest of Flitting (431 words)

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I make myself wait for it all. Christmas stuff isn’t allowed to be displayed in my house until after Thanksgiving (and it must come down at Epiphany, and no later). Thanksgiving is reserved for after Halloween, of course. And Halloween is kept sacrosanct for the month of October.

Then all restraints are removed.

I was never hugely into Halloween until college, when my second freshman roommate (the first was a tragic tale and short-lived, better left untold) was a complete Halloween addict. The day we moved into our dorm room, I found her stringing little flashing pumpkins over her window – in September. They stayed there all year; I grew accustomed to them. When we moved apart after that year, I even sort of missed them.

In my own home, I find myself really enjoying decorating for holidays, and especially for Halloween. It’s just not acceptable, for some reason, to hang shiny purple and gold spiders from your ceiling fans at any other time, and as regrettable a statement as that may make about current societal tastes, it’s refreshing to pry loose the bonds of everyday decorating strictures for one month of the year. I do have to restrain myself a smidge at present, what with my children’s reluctance to allow anything over a PG-level of frightening in the house. (Skeletons are okay, as long as they don’t talk; creepy eyeballs may be acceptable, but blood is over the line.) That’s all right; plenty of years to come for me to go all Hellraiser with the dining room.

Gabe is asleep at present, and I’m hoping to have most of our current stash out of boxes and onto the walls by the time he wakes. He should enjoy the switch in mood, I hope! He’s a little confused about why I’m putting up pumpkins and not birthday cakes, though; he knows that his birthday is in October, so if it’s time for Halloween, why are there no party hats?

Uh-oh, I hear him calling. Time to start the magic!

Postscript:
GABE: “It’s like Christmas…with spiders!”

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Can you guess what the boys are giving him? Handmade gifts are the best, especially when the givers are so very, very proud and excited about what they’ve made.

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If you were told it was all right to bring your preschooler, provided they could sit quietly, would you be able to make that assumption of your child?

I guessed wrong on the first question, thinking the meeting would be tonight, then second-guessing myself and calling to check. Nope, it was this morning. Whoops! The teacher told me I could come in at 12:30 this afternoon instead; I wasn’t about to mess up on the second issue, too, if I could do anything about it at all, so I was very relieved when my friend Sarah was able to take Gabe on such short notice. While Gabe has been able to sit still for the odd half-hour on occasion, I wasn’t going to bank anything on his ability to do so in an unfamiliar room filled with tempting string instruments.

This was the introductory meeting to talk violin for Sam. Sam, naturally, wasn’t involved. For the first few weeks, it’s parents only, learning how to assist the teacher and the kids in learning. It’s a Suzuki Thing. So we learned the parts of the violin, got some basic structure, and clapped and sang some rhythms. The teacher apologized to me and another mom, who were already musically literate, but she didn’t need to do that; I may be able to read music, but I’ve never taught beginning strings. I’m planning to ape her as much as possible so I don’t scare him off with vocabulary.

I have no idea how this is going to work logistically. Gabe would be a nightmare if I brought him, trying to muscle in on every bit of attention that the teacher or I gave Sam. Sarah offered to take Gabe for me for the half-hour lessons, assuming we’ll keep going to this time slot (I offered to give her regular breaks from her kids in exchange), but the class is pretty full and there’s a chance we’ll get bumped to the 7:30 AM class. I’m not dumping Gabe on anybody at that hour, so he’d have to come with us. Yikes!

And the final issue? I heard from another mom that none of the local music shops have any violins left to rent. I may have to go up to Milwaukee to find one. This should be a hoot.

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With Gabe, a tenth of his energy would still be enough for any three adults.

Last night at Sam’s school open house, Gabe could absolutely not stand still. Actually, I don’t know that he “couldn’t.” “Wouldn’t” is probably more appropriate. He didn’t want to wait quietly while we talked to various teachers and toured the rooms; he wanted to PLAY! And RUN! And YELL! It was madness. Eric and I both tried, separately, to hold him and get him to chill, but he just flailed and shouted in anger. Finally, we went outside into the school’s courtyard, which was blessedly cool compared to the sweltering classrooms, and found a small circle outlined on the concrete. “There,” we told him. “It’s a race track. Run!”

And so he ran, around and around and around without stopping. Occasionally, folks would wander across the circle, and after he accidentally charged into one of them, he took to stopping when people would get near, growling at them to hurry and move. Then he’d go back to racing. It was crazy to watch. I told Eric that we needed to paint a similar circle in our yard, giving him somewhere to run out his extra energy every day. Bret’s most recent podcast had a segment in which he was talking about how running helps dog behavior, and I’m ready to see how it affects preschooler behavior. Apparently, ordinary outdoor playtime isn’t enough for my kid; he needs to take it to extremes.

Otherwise, the open house went fine. Good teachers, good programs. Nothing exceptional or new, which suits me fine for now. For some reason, Sam was reluctant to have us talk to the art teacher, but she assured us that he’s doing very well this year, so I have no idea what was up with that.

Off to feed Gabe…again. The child never stops eating!

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Writing five sentences took about thirty minutes.

*Gabe can bring the snark. This weekend, Eric was making us omelets, and Gabe started discussing the meal with me as though I was cooking. I reminded him that Daddy is the egg-maker. “Mom, you remember that weird meat you made, with the ketchup on it?” he said. Um, that would be meatloaf. “You know how to make meatloaf, but you can’t make eggs?” he laughed. Nice.

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Read the rest of Post-exercise crashes (524 words)

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“I’m hurt! My hand! It’s hurt! Ow, ow, ow! Am I ever going to feel better?! What day is it? Help!” Now he’s mincing around with an ice pack clutched in his arm, muttering, “I shouldn’t have jumped like that; I should have be more careful…”

These kids; I just don’t know. At this rate, how are they ever going to get to a point where they run for miles on an undeniably injured foot? (The foot is fine now, thankfully; haven’t had any more pain since I started running again.) At least I don’t have to worry about anything getting infected on them without me knowing; the regular injury updates might get redundant, but they do keep me informed. “Almost better. A long, long time ago, it was hurting a lot, but now it only hurts some.”

(Picture unrelated; they were being done for free downtown by these guys.)

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“It feels too thumpy,” he said, walking away. Confused, I asked whether it was bothering him. “No, I just love it!”

Um, all right.

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Unfortunately, when around Gabe, Sam often tends to absorb and act on the cloud of craziness hovering over his little brother’s head, so perhaps that isn’t the best plan.

But seriously, when I’m out with Gabe, it’s often a far different scene from when it was little Sam toddling along next to me, chirping happily and peacefully at the world around him. Gabe earns his fair share of fond smiles and giggles from people watching him, but he’s also a master at the Jekyll-Hyde routine, causing the smiles to turn into open-mouthed stares of horror and the giggles into mutters of “Look at that kid.”

Today, it was the coffee shop where he went nuts. We had to go to a meeting of parents of kids at Sam’s school, and Gabe actually did really well for most of the time we were there; a mom with a baby sat next to us, so Gabe was absorbed with playing peekaboo and rescuing dropped toys. When the baby got cranky and had to leave (note how I didn’t feel, or notice anybody else indicating, that there was any shoddy parenting behind that child’s crying; babies get cut way more slack than three-year-olds), he started getting more restless, and by the end, when I was trying to talk to a few moms I’d missed over the summer, it was a steep slide downwards into awfulness. He started shouting about wanting candy; he tried to run away from me. When I picked him up, he started yelling, “I wish I had a grill, so I could grill you up!” When he tried to grab for ceramic mugs on the shelf, I took it as our cue to run, and the whole way out the door, he struggled and screamed in my arms.

At home, I put him in his room to finish his tirade, and I nearly sobbed, myself.

I remember Sam’s preschool temper tantrums giving way to sassiness when he was about four, and at this point, I’m sort of looking forward to that. At least sass doesn’t cause heads to turn from every direction, one end of a store to the other. On the other hand, I really feel like I deserve some sort of break at some point. Can’t we have an “easy” stage sometime? If the struggles are going to be so much more difficult with this kid than they were with Sam, can’t there be a break once in a while?

At least he seems to understand when he’s crossed the line. At the ends of the storms, he’ll apologize for the specific things he said in the moment. “I’m sorry I said I wished I could burn you up. Do you forgive me, please?” He’ll ask several times, depending on how awful he thinks his words were, and how badly he needs to be absolved. Of course, he’ll say the same things the next time he’s mad, but maybe he’ll eventually gain some control over himself. (Please, God?)

I wish Rita was still here to help me.

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One year ago, when Sam got on the bus for first grade, Gabe again flipped out. “I big! I go school!” I hugged him more and reminded him (with a scheme in my heart) that one had to know how to use the potty to go to school. In hindsight, I should have made further stipulations, since he took that as a promise, and when he potty-trained midway through the year, he felt betrayed that he couldn’t start school the very next day.

This year, there were no tantrums at the bus stop. He knew quite well that his own time was coming in only a week, and he felt prepared to wait that long.

  

No fussing, no weeping, no reservations at all. He spent every other minute of the morning asking if the teachers were at the school yet and whether it was time to go. When I dropped him off, he marched in without a backward glance; only when the teacher said, “Bye, Mommy!” did he remember to turn around and mutter, “Bye, Mom,” before dismissing me in his mind.

When Sam went to preschool (oh, my gosh, Sam back then!), it was a chance for me to spend time with my baby. Now, with Gabe gone, I feel a bit more out of sorts. These first few weeks are “orientation,” so he’ll only go for about an hour at a time, which isn’t much time to get anything done. Today, I used it to hit the mall with a discount card in hand, having discovered this morning that I only own two pairs of long pants that will stay up. That accomplished, I went back to the school and retrieved a very happy child who was full of stories, songs, and new thoughts.

ME: “What was your favorite part?”
GABE: “The song about the apples. High up in the tree, two little apples were looking at me! I shake the tree as hard as I can, and down they fall. Yum.”
ME: “What else did you do?”
GABE: “We sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle,’ and I played with puzzles. Only one little boy cried for his mommy and grandma. I said, ‘No fussing!’”
ME: “So, you didn’t cry?”
GABE: “No. That’s why they call it ‘happy!’”

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Eric wants to ride his bike to work, but today turned out to be a bad day to try for it; it’s supposed to rain all afternoon. Maybe he’ll eventually turn out to be a diehard who cycles in all weather conditions, but right now it would work against his goal to just enjoy riding. Still, he’s really eager to get back on; yesterday afternoon, he went on his longest recent ride to date, and he wasn’t very sore at all this morning. How cool will it be when we can go on long family rides together? Maybe take a picnic and really enjoy the day?

And in completely unrelated news, Gabe has decided that he wants to be a “white bunny” for Halloween. This is a 180-degree switch from his previously held position, in which he was determined to be something scary, or at least (as in the case of his policeman costume from last year) “scary to the monsters.” He wants “a bunny tail, ears that stick up, real whiskers with string, and pink on my feet bottoms.”

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Suppose it’s our fault, when we have conflict resolution like this:

Sounds of yelling outside; I go out.
SAM: “It’s not fair!”
K. (neighbor girl): “Sam wants to fly the ship in our game, but Gabe’s doing it, and he wants Gabe off.”
GABE: (looks innocent)
K.: “It’s just a game!”
SAM: “IT’S NOT FAIR!”
ME: “I think we can fix this. Remember the last episode of ‘Doctor Who,’ when everybody helped fly the TARDIS?”
SAM: “Oh! Oh, yeah! We can all fly the ship! K., you fly that part!”
Harmony resumes.

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Sam was buzzing with nervousness and excitement about school restarting; when I got up at 5:30 this morning to go bike, he tried to get up with me until I told him to go back to sleep. I hope the day lives up to his expectations.

We had a new bus stop this year. Due to fuel costs and whatnot, the district tried to consolidate stops and move them out to main roads, out of neighborhoods. I wasn’t thrilled about it, since we’ll no longer be able to view Sam’s stop from our front porch. At least one rumor turned out to be false; my friend, whose child will also be at this stop, heard from another parent that there were supposed to be over forty kids at their stop! Thankfully, only three were there today, and I doubt 37 more will show up tomorrow out of nowhere.

Can somebody please tell me how I came to be the parent of a child now too old to have been in any of the regular storytimes I led when I was a librarian? How did I get to be the mom of a kid who, when asked what he’s most excited about this year, responds, “Gym class and Science Club!” Shouldn’t he still be looking forward to snack time and show-and-tell? What happened here?

And to add insult to injury, it seems that Gabe has outgrown his yearly tantrum, in a fit of developing reason. He spent about ten minutes this morning doggedly clarifying that he would not be going to school today (or to the gym, or to church…), and then he was fine. I asked him how he was feeling, and his only real response was, “Worried, because those talking birds at the zoo were asleep and wouldn’t talk to me.” And thus began a long day, with no signs of relief, of him finally, finally, getting to say everything he ever wanted to say, with no fear of being interrupted or shushed by his big brother.

Next week: preschool begins!

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And, of course, they can…sometimes. For limited time periods. And then the tension gets to them, or somebody says something they find humorous, or one of them farts, and all bets are off. It’s very much like living in the “I Love to Laugh” scene from Mary Poppins, all day long. Wherefore art thou, Buzz-Kill Mary?

Sam, I know, will find it within himself to muster a semblance of self-control for school, or at least within a few days of school starting. I really don’t have that sort of confidence for Gabe. I mean, he’s three years old, so of course he’ll have less ability to control himself than Sam at seven, but he’s far more wild than Sam was even at that age. There’s a mild concern in these parts that Eric and I will be getting “those notes” from his teacher, and that other parents will await hearing tales from their children each day about what “that ornery Gabe” did in class. He’s so bright, so quick, so outgoing and friendly, but…every bit of my own impatience is magnified tenfold in his little soul, with no filter for keeping it unexpressed. If anything, his “filter” is currently operating as a megaphone.

Sam starts school on Tuesday, and it may be my last year to photograph the triptych of “Waiting for bus, getting on bus, little brother in hysterics” sequence. Could be the finest, though, because this year, Gabe knows he’s going to school, but I don’t think he’s understanding me when I tell him that he won’t be riding the bus with Sam or that his preschool doesn’t start until the next week. When he sees that bus leave without him, I predict chaos…

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