(For the record, Skylanders is in the basement, wrapped and ready to go after he’s in bed Christmas Eve. )

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Should get my toenails tattooed back on. I’ll bet there’re a lot of nerve endings in nailbeds, though. Hmmmm.

Here, have a picture of the ornaments my children made at the company Christmas party. A snowman and a star. I’ll bet you’ll never guess who made what…

Bonus: their letters to Santa.

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As I’ve said before, what’s the point of having kids, if not to mess with them on a regular basis?

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But that was grace from above for other reasons. Gabe spent all of last night, from about nine o’clock on, in agony from a raging ear infection. I gave him pain killers, which gave him periods of slight relief during which he slept fitfully, but when they’d wear off, he’d wail and gnash his teeth again. We kept him in our bed, so as to avoid disturbing Sam too much, which meant that his every thrash met my body with a solid thump. Eric took him to Urgent Care this morning and got him some antibiotics…along with a set of his own, earned when, while trying to reassure Gabe about the pulse-ox monitor, he and the nurse discovered that he was a few breaths away from a horrid case of walking pneumonia. Now they’re both in bed, languishing. My heart breaks for them (and my head whispers that I might want to wear a mask for a while…); they look miserable.

Related to nothing, I got a pair of Stabilyx tights – a gift from Eric for my birthday – and wore them for the first time today. It was an experience just getting them on the first time. “Put the X around your knee,” the instructions said, and there I was, huffing and puffing to get it to my…ankle. Wow. After much exertion, they seemed to fit all right, and I’m not all that sore post-run, but I don’t know how sore I was expecting to be, anyway; time will tell if they’re truly the magic so many people claim they are!

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Of Sam, since toddlerhood, I’ve often joked that he was just waiting for the perfect militant cause to which he could attach himself. He’d shriek to the heavens when he saw litter on the ground; he’d rail against the system when he heard about bullies or cheaters. Now, apparently, he’s been assigned a class project – the details of which are sort of sketchy to me; maybe a position paper? – and his topic is whaling. Oh, my. He found his current cause.

He and his partner, a young lady with similar passionate feelings, are getting more and more outraged with every bit of information they uncover…and their plans to “fix” the situation don’t appear to follow conventional paths. “So, working through the system isn’t your style?” I lamely said this morning, when he told me that his friend planned to use pepper bombs against the whalers, as “red herrings.”

(“Yeah, our teacher taught us that phrase,” he said, proud of himself.)

No, it’s apparently much more his style to go all rogue here, with stealth ships and weapons. He is morally disgusted by the images he’s seen (sidenote: I think I’d have been a little more wary about letting a bunch of ten-year-olds go searching the internet for images of whale slaughter…), and moderation isn’t something he’s really developed yet. So now I get to walk a fine line between letting him do his own homework and trying, for the love of Mike, to get him to please consider the ramifications of joining the Youth Ecoterrorist Brigade.

Meanwhile, Gabe’s education is following a more ordinary path, though he’s regularly cracking me up with it. He prefers to work extremely independently, with the result that some of his assignments look as though they were penned by Nell:

Click to embiggen.

This is an older paper, and in case you can’t decipher it, he was talking about birds in a tree. Yes, “brs” in a “teyu.” Now he’s getting a little better at the phonics, but he still surprises us. This next was from a “Day of the Dead” assignment, where he chose to write about his late Grandma Richmond:

Well, sure! Who doesn’t love to eat some fresh, juicy Florida “oinchjis”? Or maybe have a glass of “oinch” juice?

The spelling isn’t the only creative thing he does, though. From a math paper. Note: the questions he missed were intended to be related to the one above:

Instead of doing the math, deciding whether the numbers could fit logically into the comparison provided, Gabe went straight for practicality. No, Luz couldn’t paint eleven rocks; it would take too long. I guess Luz had other things to do. On the other hand, two rocks would fit neatly into Luz’s busy schedule, since those would take only a “hoat” (short?) time.

Oh, Gabe. You don’t disappoint.

(I didn’t ask what was hanging from the belly of the…fire beast? My best guess is a saddle or a weapon, not what you’re thinking. For all his craziness, Mr. Gabe has a strong streak of Puritan-like modesty in that arena. )

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November, finally/already. This whole year has been just bizarre, feeling in turns hurried and crammed, and yet creeping and slow. I don’t think I’ll miss it, though you’ll have to forgive me if I revisit that thought after finishing JFK. Could be a redeeming factor (or otherwise, which I choose not to consider right now). I think I just want to get to 2012 and see if it can be a more consistent year – though I’ll also press my luck and hope for consistently good. Don’t I just want everything?

Halloween was the same mix of strange. On the one side, both boys were in miraculous agreement as to when they wanted to finish trick-or-treating, without one howling at the moon to go home while the other begged for “just one more block.” On the other hand, their agreement stemmed from the fact that rain was blowing in our faces and wind was turning our umbrellas inside-out. Then they happily agreed that they wanted to go to a particular restaurant (a rare non-fighting event!), which was supposed to be letting kids eat free in costume. Well, apparently, that offer was good for actual Halloween night only, and our town’s trick-or-treat was happening the night before. I guess the restaurant got off lucky on that bargain; don’t know too many folks who would have been willing to re-costume the kids for the next night. Oh, well.

Gabe, by the way was “The Dread Pirate Roberts” from The Princess Bride – a choice which, while awesome, would have been obscure enough amongst the first-grade circle, but he made it more so by introducing himself all day long as “Wesley.” Sam went as a World War II flying ace, and Eric said people kept asking him if he was “The Aviator.” He just blinked.

(“Wesley” was wearing a laced black shirt beneath his leather jacket, but it was too cold to forgo the coat. Sam’s coat was part of his costume, so he was thrilled to not need adaptations.)

Gotta go get them from the bus stop!

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“So, how does it feel to be seven?”
“I don’t feel different yet. I still feel six.”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“When I’m seven, I’ll feel all excited and hyper. I won’t feel seven until I’ve blown out my candle.”
“Well,” I yawned, “Then you won’t be seven until late tonight, because you’re not having cake for breakfast.”
“Just kidding!” he yelped, bouncing up off my pillow. “I feel seven now!”

And just like seven years ago, I started my day snuggling with my baby in the big bed. Of course, this time he was much more chattery and far less change-me-nownowNOW. But the wispy hair and the sparkly eyes are the same, as well as the complete unwillingness to be anything less than the center of attention.

He’s crazy, this one, but I think it’s simply impossible to get through a day with Gabe without laughing out loud at least once or twice. He’s a whirlwind of the unexpected; he’s a dervish of emotions. Even at the worst, most volatile moments, so long as you don’t “feed the fire” (a lesson we’ve all learned and continue to learn), he’ll change directions within minutes, apologizing sincerely and trying to make up for his outburst of anger. He’s pure life without a filter.

I could write a book, just of his hilarious takes on the world around him. Last night, in his bedtime prayers, he thanked God “…for mankind, and also for ladykind.” He says that when he grows up, he wants to be a dancer (“I’m comfortable with my dancing!” he says, then, when Sam snickers, “I need to get a new brother.”) and a crossing guard. He loves school; when I picked him up for swimming yesterday, he said goodbye by name to darn near every kid we walked past, then said, with emphasized casual swagger, “Those are my peeps.” In the morning, he vacillates between playing with Legos and doing bona fide front planks on the living room floor (because he wants “washboard abs”).

To think, this was the child who came into the world in the middle of the night with a resounding roar. I don’t think he’s stopped roaring yet. Happy birthday, Gabe. You’ll always be my wild one.

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SAM: “I have a very funny teacher who gives us a lot of time to read. I was very nervous at first, because I didn’t know how to act as a fifth grader, but then I got over my nerves and felt better. Two of my friends were in my class – well, three, actually – and I can’t wait to learn more in school.”

GABE: “I was scared and very nervous, because it was my first day, and I might not make any friends. But it was fun – I don’t know why I was scared! And my teacher is very nice. My favorite thing was when we were doing a scavenger hunt in my room. You have to find a friend that’s wearing red, and a friend that’s a boy, and a friend that’s a girl. And we had Spanish. I only cried at lunch, because they told us to sit where we wanted, and I sat down, and my whole class sat really far away, and I was scared, and they wouldn’t let me move. But then it was okay.”

There were some major teardrops shining in Gabe’s eyes as he got onto the bus this morning, but he had two Sharpie hearts drawn onto his wrists as a reminder of how much I love and was missing him (one wasn’t enough; he demanded one for both arms), and that seemed to help a little. Sam, meanwhile, didn’t show a blink of either excitement or nervousness until he looked around and realized that he was going to be the oldest one at the bus stop this year. Somehow, that brought it all home for him, and he was filled with the “importance of his position.”

For my part, I got in my run, and then I settled down and into the inordinate amount of paperwork required to send kids to school these days. Exciting times, I know. (RIP, acres of trees.) The boys were home, climbing off the bus (on the wrong side of the dangerous intersection, which had better not be the way things will be all year, or I won’t be the only disgruntled parent at our stop) before I could blink much, both full of stories and relieved that everything looks optimistic for a pleasant year. Hurray!

This may well be the last year they share a school. That feels momentous to me.

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There were eye drops involved. No coincidentally, there was screeching and red-faced struggling, as well. In his defense, halfway through the appointment, he did stop, unprompted, to say, “I’m sorry I said mean things.” That’s my Gabe: shoot first, apologize later. (And, also in his defense, Sam did corroborate his story that the drops stung.) The eye doctor was very gracious and said that, aside from the drops tantrum, Gabe did very well. He even refrained from saying “I told you so” when she told him he didn’t need glasses (he had insisted quite loudly that this was the case, as she stood over him with the eye drops)…though he did barely restrain the eye roll when she had asked him to tell her when the letters on the screen started to “turn all fuzzy.”

“I know what ‘blurry’ means,” he said, sounding slightly offended.

So, I think that’s all the body parts that need checked, cleaned, or trimmed before school starts next week, which is a good thing for my nerves. I can tell they’re really fraying, because I lost my temper and laid down the freaking law last night at dinner. Among other things on their plates was a tiny slice of grilled zucchini, and you’d have thought it was fresh excrement from their reactions. After one too many rude remarks from Sam, I made a decision: “That’s it! I have one more zucchini in the fridge, and it’s for dinner tomorrow! And I’m hitting the farmer’s market for more zucchini, and there’ll be zucchini at every dinner from now on until it gets eaten without a fuss!”

Anybody got any good zucchini recipes? I’m thinking a gratin, maybe…

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We were watching the construction crew across the street demolish an old driveway. A forklift was loading slabs of concrete onto a pickup truck, where a couple of guys attacked them with sledgehammers to break them into smaller pieces. Gabe looked thoughtful.

“I’ve always wanted a sledgehammer,” he said. I asked him why. He eyed me. “It’s complicated,” he said, waving his hand.

Sam, meanwhile, terrifies me in other ways. Little Mr. Daredevil wasn’t technically breaking any rules as he whipped up and down the street on his bike, but with all the construction equipment (small stuff, but still), he was making me nervous. I told him to get on the sidewalk.

“But, Mom! You told me I wasn’t supposed to ride like that on the sidewalk, since this is a serious bike, not a toy!” Well, true. I told him it was just the equipment, so he obliged…and came blurring down the sidewalk, moments later, barely clearing Gabe and me as we stood there. I told him to slow down for sidewalk riding; he gave up and went inside. (I did suggest, before he did, that he go over to the bike trail, which interested him until I reminded him that, as it was an hour before bedtime, he couldn’t really go on any really long trail rides.)

Is my hair grey yet?

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ME: “…so you guys just go straight to the pool, and I’ll be in after I clean up, since I smell like a dead goat.”
GABE: “I know!”
ME: “Gabe! You’re not supposed to agree so fast. Say, ‘Why, Mother, you smell like nothing but the finest spring flowers.’”

There was a long pause, then…

GABE: “I can’t smell any flowers, just a sweaty goat. But I’m sure that’s not you!”

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Now, this has arisen before, only then, it was “K. can’t play with Gabe unless Sam is out there, too.” I get that. She’s about twelve years old, and her parents find it a little uncomfortable for her to be playing alone with a six-year-old, even one who sees himself more as a teenager trapped in a first-grader’s body. (Maybe even especially that kind of kid.) This was different, though; Gabe insisted that the new rule excluded him without caveat, which…what?

So she came to our house when finished with chores, and I went to learn the truth. As she explained, since she doesn’t play with her own sister, Gabe’s age, she’s not to play with Gabe either. That’s a bit muddled in my mind; if I had to guess, I’d say her parents are aggravated that she’s “too cool” to play with her sister, so they’re making a statement about that. But that leaves Gabe…devastated. “All right, then,” I said to her, “but if you guys are playing in our yard, Gabe will be allowed outside. I’m not keeping him in when you come over.” She agreed quickly. Then she and Sam went over to her house.

Gabe was forlorn. It’s not fair that he should be punished in this situation, and I had a hard time coming up with a way to console him. I suggested that we go see if K.’s little sister could play, but he didn’t want to play with her; he wants to play Big Kid games with Big Kids – his friends, as far as he’s concerned. I took him on a bike ride up and down the street, trying to distract him with the novelty of it, but he kept sighing. “What if they’re happy that I’m not with them?” he said. “What if they’re laughing and happier that I’m not there?”

Then they came back to our garage, entranced by the lure of shade, and Gabe decided to lurk on the sidelines. He took out bubbles, trying to attract their attention, but when it didn’t work, he whispered, “Don’t they miss me?”

I want to punch somebody for him.

Cleared to run yesterday by the podiatrist, who said my toes were healing “phenomenally.” I celebrated with a short run, using 2:1 run/walk intervals, and felt great. Then today, trying to come back cautiously, I went swimming instead. Yay, adrenaline.

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After we left, we had another, longer talk. He was utterly appalled, thankfully, and I was very relieved that he hadn’t taken the time to help Gabe sound out the words on the locker. Thankfully, Gabe was uninterested in the actual vocabulary used; he was far more freaked by what had caught Sam’s eye first: the rest of the sentence, which made reference to hanging. (Can I just say, once more, that these are the milestones you really, really don’t want?!) I told them both that the sort of people who write those things on lockers are usually cowards, the sort of people who would probably drop the pen and run if anybody caught them at it.

I didn’t say that they wouldn’t have had much to worry about, anyway, being the “right” color of skin for this racist vandal. That lesson, the one about privilege, can wait.

I hope the graffiti is gone when the kids enter the locker room next time. Honestly, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little less comfortable sending them in there next time than I was today. The time they go in, the locker room is full of young kids, not grownups, but I don’t like it. Sadly, Sam’s just undeniably too old for me to take him in the women’s or the family locker room, even if Gabe wasn’t hitting the borders of that stage, himself. I felt fine about Sam being in there with Gabe before today. Now we’ve hit yet another of those bumps that make me want to whisk my family away to some safe, clean place…that doesn’t really exist, I know, but I can’t help wishing, and mourning yet another loss of innocence.

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Gabe’s kindergarten class staged their “graduation” ceremony yesterday. It was an in-class thing, with no parents, so I have no idea what he did besides get a graduation cap and a diploma…and pick up a brand-new set of anxieties.

“I’m scared,” he mumbled this morning, curled into a corner of the rocking chair. “I’m scared of first grade.” Of course, he still has two days left of kindergarten before this should even be an issue, but never mind that; the cap was placed on his head, so in his mind, he’s on to the next step. “What if I get a mean teacher?”

I had Sam try to tell him about his own first-grade experience, for which he had a perfectly lovely teacher, but it didn’t help much. Gabe is a fretter, not the optimist Sam tends to be, and change – specifically, change that he hasn’t weighed in his own mind and made with deliberation and autonomy – isn’t anything he seeks, as a rule. It took him a fairly long time to adjust to kindergarten, and it seems like that might a recurring theme, not a one-off. Doesn’t help that, having the big brother that Sam didn’t, he’s learned about the concept of “mean teacher” as a reality, not a television show anomaly. Mean teachers exist at his school, and it doesn’t matter that he’s unlikely to get one next year; their confirmed presence is enough to inject uncertainty into his mind.

I sort of wish this could have waited until at least midway through the summer. The last few days of school are supposed to be about celebrating the end of one year, not dreading the next one already. Besides, first grade at this particular school is fun especially for a little ham like Gabe is. Remember this? They work on that musical for a huge chunk of the year, and if I know my second-born, he’ll love it. But he’s building terrors already, which means they’ll be huge and hulking by summer’s end. Wish I could know now which teacher he’ll have; if it’s the sweet one Sam had, we could really console him all vacation long.

Oh, well. We’ll just have to keep him too busy to worry much – although, with that child, that’s a tall order. In any case, both kids are signed up for summer classes (Gabe is taking a pottery class, which his friend Nathan is also taking, and Sam is in a science one where they’ll do crazy experiments to solve problems), and then they’ll be in the playground programs as well. (Sam wasn’t wild about how he’s aged into the program devoted solely to sports, instead of the mix of sports and crafts the younger kids do, but there’s nothing I can do about that part.) We changed our gym membership from the barebones gym we’ve been using over to the YMCA, and the kids will continue their swimming lessons and be able to do other activities there, as well. It’ll be a fun summer…if Gabe can get his mind off his troubles.

Oh, and if I can get back on the road running. Okay, four days of no running, and the novelty has officially worn off. Maybe it has to do with how this week’s oppressive heat broke last night, and now it’s perfect running weather out there, and I’m still benched, but…ugh. My toes are healing nicely, with very little pain, but I’d almost welcome a little (a very little, mind) discomfort if it helped to console me about not lacing up just yet. I feel fine! Waaah!

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GABE: “What? What’s funny?”
ME: “My book made me laugh.”
GABE: “Tell me!”
ME: “It’s complicated and long. I’d have to go back to the beginning.”
GABE: “So? Go back!”
ME: “It’s a grown-up’s book!”
GABE: “Tell me now!”
ME: “Well, okay…there’s a king who had a baby, and he invited everybody to see her, and he accidentally invited vampires, and they -”
GABE: “I’m going to laugh now. Ha, ha. See? It was funny, and I got it.” (He stomps off.)

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The kids brought home their new school pictures.

  

And I insta-aged about ten years, just looking at them. Seriously, between Sam’s “too cool to giggle out loud” facial expression and Gabe’s Casanova-ish swagger, I just…where did my babies go? I think I’ll just make myself feel a little better:

Ah, yes. There they are.

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Also, apparently Gabe works better if the bath toys used for the babies’ “splash class” are incorporated. Yes, my six-year-old will doggedly swim across the pool to reach a green rubber ducky. I don’t know what that says. Nor do I care.

Sam, meanwhile, is doing splendidly, outside than his reluctance to put his face in the water and risk getting water up his nose. I keep trying to tell him that if he puts his face in flat, instead of up and down, and if he breathes out of his nose, it’s not likely to be a problem, but so far, he hasn’t gotten the knack, so he keeps getting his sinuses soaked. It’s not dampening his enthusiasm, though; despite being the oldest one in the group, he also seems to be the least reserved about things, so I could hear him gleefully hollering from across the room, “CHICKEN…AIRPLANE…SOLDIER!!!”, swimming his arms in the accompanying pattern as the teacher towed him along on his back. (Part of the shouting was due to his ears being submersed; when he reached the end of the pool and stood, he asked, “Was I yelling?”)

Three more lessons. I don’t know if either kid will “graduate,” but at least there’s increased comfort in the water. Gabe was most impressed with his progress last night, asking me if I was proud of him, over and over. I tried to tell him that I’m always proud, but he knows well enough to be able to compare the previous weeks’ efforts with last night’s. He knows there was a difference, and I think we’re turning a corner.

(So long as next week doesn’t involve face-dunking, anyway.)

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Gabe scribbled and drew during choir practice, stopping frequently to ask me questions about what was going on and what we were singing. He tried to sing along with a couple of the songs, but that seemed like too much work before long. Sam didn’t appear, but I figured he had found a friend or a class full of toys, so no big deal; there were enough people we knew around the church that he wasn’t going to get into much trouble. Besides, I was a little distracted by “Why do the boy singers sit in the back?” and “Why isn’t she using a stick to conduct? Is she dancing?” and “Why are the microphones hanging so high? Do we need to yell?”

After rehearsal ended and we began getting ready for service, Sam wandered in. He…didn’t look so good. His face was a little red, he looked tired, and he said his head hurt. He sat on the pew next to Eric, giving off waves of miserable. Eric questioned me with his eyes, but I said that Sam had been fine over dinner, so he could probably make it through church. By partway through the first hymn, I leaned over to him and suggested that he go get one of the “Quiet Bags” fro the back of the church, since drawing usually cheers him up. He wandered out toward them, and he never returned. (He found a couch in the narthex instead, curling up and dozing.)

Meanwhile, Gabe was anything but unobtrusive. There were moments where it was okay; the pastor asked us to call out things for which we were grateful, and Gabe piped up, “My mom!” He also said the Lord’s Prayer with us, loudly and slightly out of sync, so everybody around us could hear. When the choir got up to sing, though, he began to panic and wanted to come with me. Plenty of chuckles around us; one man said, “Aw, let him come up!” I knew that wasn’t the answer, so I tried to get him to just sit in the front pew instead, where he could see us (and we could see him). Seemed okay…until the piano started, and Gabe got up to dance. For the record, I don’t think “The Monkey” can be legitimately construed as liturgical dance. I heard more laughter, and I tried to motion for him to sit down and knock it off.

Our director, in the middle of conducting, whispered for him to sit. He didn’t. He started to get agitated and unhappy. I envisioned myself having to jump down from the stairs and take him out of the church, midway through the song. The director eventually grabbed him and took him to stand in front of her for the second part of the song, where he was happier but more curious; I saw him try to pepper her with questions as she tried desperately to just get us to the double bar. (By the way, he was marched up to apologize to her after the service finally ended.)

So the sermon started, and he listened with half an ear while he scribbled more. I actually didn’t think he was listening at all, but I was wrong; when the word “ashes” was spoken, he was on his feet like a shot, ready to RUN to the front and get ashed. Had to hold him back until his turn came, at which point he cooperated nicely. When we got back to the pews, though, he started to cry. “This is making me SAD!” he whispered. “Jesus DIED!”

Service ended; the pastor invited Gabe up to blow out the candles on the altar. Went and retrieved Sam; bundled up and fled. Gabe may not be ready for primetime, but he does keep us on our toes.

(Sam’s home from school today; the fever’s getting hotter and hotter. Poor kid!)

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Ash Wednesday today. We’ll be at the church service tonight. Last year, Gabe was highly resistant to me talking about any of it, but this year, he’s a little more receptive. He even went so far as to very generously suggest that he give up his swimming lessons for Lent. Yeah, sure, little man. (I overheard the man I presume is in charge of the swimming lessons talking to Gabe’s teacher yesterday after lessons, telling her that she needed to “get tough” with Gabe. I actually agree; Gabe spent about 85%+ of the lesson standing next to the pool, wringing his hands and weeping loudly, while the teacher made a couple of attempts to encourage him to jump in and participate on his own. That was not going to happen in any universe; he needed somebody to take a firm hand and make the decision for him. It’s one of those things that he’s built up in his head as a horrible, terrible thing, and he’s not going to be able to wrap his mind around the possibility of being wrong until somebody presses it and shows him so. I eventually went and stood beside him next to the pool, doing everything I could to encourage him, but I wasn’t in the water to catch him, so he wasn’t buying it.

Sam, of course, had tremendous fun again. His only issue came when the teacher had to tell him to stop getting away from the wall when she wasn’t helping him dog paddle up and down the lane. This could have been a serious issue…was he not about a foot taller than most of the other kids in the class, well able to stand flat-footed on the bottom of the pool and in no danger. But he needs to listen, so that’s that. (Second verse, same as the first…)

Hmmm, I think Sam’s head might be feeling better; he’s perking up enough to play with Gabe – and giving me resistance about combing his hair and finishing getting ready for school. Better go deal with that now!

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More swimming lessons today. Cross your fingers we have more success with Gabe than we did last week.

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Sam samples a tiny taste before it hits the table. “It’s okay!” he says with a polite smile. I give him a small portion on his plate, which he picks at and picks at and shoves around with his fork, before he finally gives up. “I didn’t really like it,” he says. “I guess I was just saying that.”

Gabe clamps both hands over his mouth, refusing to even look at the new food. Attempts to get him to take a teeny taste are met with gagging (before the fork enters his mouth) and tears. He nibbles on the few items on the table that he recognizes (last night, it was dry taco shells and some bits of grated cheese). Just as I’ve given up, he suddenly folds. “I want you to be PROUD of me!” he says. “I’ll try to taste something new so you’ll be HAPPY!” And he unflinchingly pops a small bite of the offending food into his mouth, which he doesn’t enjoy, but which he chews and swallows. “There! I did it!”

Two sides of the same coin. At our parent-teacher conferences last week, most of the shared teachers (music, art, etc.) said that they wouldn’t have even known they were brothers if I hadn’t brought them in together. I can tell, though.

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And that’s pretty much how the whole thing went.

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The scene: this morning, on the phone with our doctor’s office, trying to fix the situation.
The complication: the referral specialist can’t even find Gabe in the computer system, despite him being a regular patient. She’s obviously frustrated, and she takes out her frustration on me by becoming increasingly snappy and rude, hanging up on me before I can even thank her or say goodbye.
FUN LEVEL RATING: 3/10

The scene: driving to the gastro.
The complication: an ice storm hit last night, and everything is coated in a moderately thick layer of ice. The van’s side door wouldn’t even open, so Gabe had to climb in the driver’s door. Roads are awful, Gabe is making funny noises that might be related to motion sickness, and the van begins to make a strange, jack-hammery noise whenever I get to a certain speed. (In hindsight, I think it was from the corner of the bumper, which got torn away from repeated impacts with snow boulders after the last blizzard.) Couldn’t find the office; called on my cell and was told they were not in the building I thought they were. Circled around again and again; called back, got another receptionist, and learned that they were in that building. Drifted into the parking lot on gas fumes.
FUN LEVEL RATING: 7/10

The scene: the exam.
The complication: my son is a monkey on crack, refusing to cooperate or be quiet so I can hear the doctor talk. She’s suggesting procedure after procedure, and he’s hopping on the colored tiles on the floor, yelling, “IT’S LAVA, AND I CAN’T STEP ON LAVA!”
FUN LEVEL RATING: 3/10

The scene: gas station, on our way to radiologist and lab for tests
The complication: everything is covered in ice, including the pump and the card reader. It’s a pre-pay pump, too, so then I have to go inside, taking Gabe along so he can beg for every form of candy or beef jerky at eye level.
FUN LEVEL: 2/10

The scene: the lab.
The complication: Gabe realizes where we are and what’s about to happen. The lab tech sits in front of an impressively scary array of syringes and vials while doing the paperwork, allowing Gabe enough time to FREAK THE HECK OUT, run away down a corridor, and shout dire threats back at us should he be forced to comply with a blood draw. “I’m not even sick! I feel just fine! Sam should be here – make HIM get a blood test! I’m not doing it, and you can’t make me! I’ll beat you up!” In the end, it takes me (legs wrapped around his, one arm around his chest and unused arm, the other arm holding his head immobile) and two lab techs to get the blood, while he writhes, foams at the mouth, and screams loudly enough to thoroughly terrify the three children waiting their turns in the next room. He also manages to give me two bloody gouges in the back of my hand and some impressive bruises on my shins (before his boots went flying). We only manage one and a half vials before the lab tech completely freaks out and gives up, and then Gabe scrambles, Gollum-style, to a far corner, where he hunches in a ball and shrieks about how much he hates me. The techs wring their hands, looking close to tears (both very young women, probably second-guessing any plans they had for motherhood any time soon), and suggest sedation for future draws.
FUN LEVEL: 10/10

The scene: the radiologist.
The complication: Gabe’s still holding a grudge over the blood draw. Instead of sitting in the waiting room, he chooses to hide in the curtained prep room, muttering things I’m actually glad I can’t hear. A cheerful radiologist sees him and is startled, but luckily he finds it funny rather than alarming.
FUN LEVEL: 1/10

The scene: back home.
The complication: I’ve dropped Gabe off back at school, where I signed him in and walked him to class. Went to the gym, ran on a treadmill (sweat stinging my bloody gouges), then came home…to an answering machine message from the school, asking where Gabe is. Luckily, she had just missed my signing him in; when they checked, he was safely accounted for.
FUN LEVEL: 2/10

SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT: Eric’s in Mexico again. Twooooo biiiiiiiiiits!

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But after they stayed the night, enjoyed a lazy Saturday morning and then left, things deteriorated. I mean, they always deteriorate when loved ones have to leave, but…her baby didn’t want to go, and when Gabe tried to encourage him (and I do mean encourage! He wasn’t explosive then), the baby got mad and screamed at Gabe. As they were pulling out of the driveway, we turned and found Gabe sobbing his heart out, thinking he’d hurt the baby. Sam, meanwhile, had fled the emotional scene to nurse his sadness in private.

I had to throw Gabe into the car for a birthday party, around which neighborhood I planned to go for a run until pick-up time. And all was going well; my foot seems fine. (Interestingly, when I went to the multi-sport expo, a physical therapist pointed out that my foot looked fine, but my tibialis anterior muscle (the one along the outside of the shin bone) was very tight and a little swollen. He rubbed it, and bingo, pain in my foot. So…I’d been icing the wrong spot. ) Unfortunately, about 7 miles into the run, my groin, which had been a little achy, suddenly began to hurt. I stopped immediately, and now I’m really, really freaked and angry and agitated and sad. Things I’ve read have said that running on slippery surfaces can encourage you to tighten those muscles and lead to a groin pull, which would make perfect sense, but I just don’t want to deal with this.

Super Bowl today. There’s a party to which we were invited, but the kids weren’t, and…a sitter for Super Bowl Sunday? In Wisconsin? When the Packers are in the game? Yeah, sure. About as likely, it seems, as me getting a worry-free run in.

(Oh, and bonus misery: last night, just before bed, Gabe plummeted off the computer chair, whacking his face into the floor. Cue massive blood and hysteria. He seems fine now, but his teeth are a little sore. I, meanwhile, demonstrated my parental skills by almost fainting. Mom of the Year, that’s me.)

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Ugh. So today, in what was not a shining example of parenting finesse, I taught Gabe the old “I am rubber and you are glue” technique. NOT as a rebuttal, mind you; I said it was just something he could, you know, keep in his head, so when Sam called him a name, he could just giggle and imagine in bouncing back. I guess some things are universal, though, because he immediately ran to tell Sam, and soon enough, they were all, “No, I’M rubber! YOU’RE glue!” back and forth and back again. Good times.

But then there came the lunchtime post-game.

“Mom,” said Sam, “not everything bounces off rubber. Swords wouldn’t.”
“Okay, but this is just for name-calling, Sam.”
“And metal spikes.”
“And cheese,” said Gabe.
“Yeah! Shredded cheese doesn’t bounce off rubber!”
“Maybe little blocks of cheese!”
“If they were big enough! But not slices!”
“We were calling each other names, not throwing cheese!” I said, and then noticed the folks at the table next to us giving me funny looks.

School resumes tomorrow. Good thing, too; another snow day, and maybe the cheese-throwing wouldn’t have been so far-fetched…

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Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. Actually, the downward spiral started last night, when a nasty stomach thing hit – naturally – Gabe, who spent the night head down in the toilet, weeping for Eric.  I hit coffee with the running club only briefly after my run, heading home to fill my role as chosen puke-catcher while Eric went with Sam to his Scouts Pinewood Derby.

Only I misread the email. Derby is next week. Whoops. Eric was rightfully unamused.

So I spent the day babying Gabe, who is “that kind” of illness sufferer.  I myself prefer to be left alone to suffer, as usually does Sam, but not Gabe.  On the flip side, he is very appreciative. “Thank you for caring so much about me,” he actually said between sprints to the bathroom.

Tomorrow I sing in church, both services, and then I’m going to try to cram in a cross-training session before the Packers play the Bears and all hell breaks loose in this town. :rolleyes:  Actually, I plan to swim; I’ve been using a free trial at the “posh” gym in town, just to add variety, and I am sort of beginning to not grit my teeth to get through it…

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MICKEY: “Will you help me find some gooey fish?”
GABE: “Well, I’m not sure I want to. I mean, sticky, gooey fish…why would I want to do that?”

Sam, meanwhile, is upstairs; having gotten ready for school, he’s now confined to his room to finish the homework he didn’t complete last night, which was only a small part of what he should have been doing in the first place. He forgot to put the rest of it in his backpack – even after the teacher wrote it for him in his planner. And there was a lot of it, because he apparently had trouble getting anything at all completed during classes yesterday, when he was supposed to do it. This stopped being okay a long time ago.

You know it’s bad when Gabe stands at your shoulder, muttering that maybe you need to call Sylvan Learning Center for his big brother. Of course, he’s only doing what he’s done since discovering the joys of the commercial advertisement; I can “fondly” recall him stroking my hair a year or so ago and informing me that “[your] hair is so blah…you need Bumpits! Then you’ll look fabulous!” But now he is convinced that Sam is the one in serious need of help from the tiny people inside the television.

We’re looking into more possible solutions, really. I don’t think it’s that the work is too hard, but that he gets overwhelmed and bored very easily and simply checks out mentally. Not acceptable, but a different sort of issue than if he was really unable to understand what’s being taught. And, again, it’s all so familiar to me. Been there, I have.

Anyway. The day beckons. Onward and upward, right? Nowhere to go but forward.

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Biggest thing on my mind right now: on Saturday evening, I did my regular long run, and in the last mile, I felt a pain on the top of my foot. I stopped and loosened my shoelaces, which made the pain disappear, but it came back very slightly at the end. I was too scared to run yesterday, though I could walk without pain and even squeeze my foot without feeling anything, and I’m a little nervous to go today. It’s above my big toe, and, as I said, I can flex and squeeze the metatarsals with no problem, so I’m fairly positive it’s not a stress fracture. Can’t stop worrying, though. Of course, it sends me into my usual tailspin of evaluating every aspect of my life and training – cutting back on coffee/caffeine, studying my calcium intake, etc. It’s not even as though I recently changed anything in a drastic way; one week of marathon training, with fewer miles than I’ve been doing, and only one “hard” workout (the pace did for the flawed pace run wasn’t challenging in itself, just wrong for what I was supposed to be doing), shouldn’t have been enough to cause overuse injury. Probably, my shoes were laced wrong. Doesn’t make me stop freaking, though…

But we played Kinect Sports as a family last night, which took my mind off it for a bit. I don’t understand how Gabe, when pitted head-to-head against me, can consistently wipe the floor with me on nearly every event. What’s that about?

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I thought it was March that was supposed to come in like a lion, not January.  I just hope it’s a month mix-up, not a portent for 2011 as a whole…

Literally, the day began quite leonine, with the traditional running club “run in the year” being done in suddenly below-freezing temps and WIND LIKE WHOA.  Rough stuff! But that’s all good and worth it.  After all, friends make things like gusting weather way more bearable.

What’s not so much fun is figurative lion stuff, or, to cut to the chase, fleeing a football-watching party with a shrieking, struggling, flailing kid in your arms who’s trying to rip off your face.  I hate being “those people” SO MUCH.  So then Gabe got tossed in bed immediately, amid alternating howls of anger and wails of contrition (he was honestly sorry, but he still couldn’t stem the tide), and we all slumped our shoulders in exhausted surrender.  You win, 2011, but only the first battle…

I feel challenged, somehow, to up my game.  Marathon training begins tomorrow.  My primary resolution for the year is to get back to the strength and core training routine I desperately need, but I also want to focus my running a little more clearly.  Hills, speed work…I’m coming for you.  It begins. 

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But when he told them a bit ago that it was about time to leave, Gabe began to panic. Suddenly, he decided that the movie seemed scary, and he didn’t want to go. Moreover, he didn’t think Sam ought to go, either. I comforted him and told him it was okay, but that I thought he might regret not going. We looked at some trailers online, but he still thought he would be too scared, so off went Eric and Sam without him.

The minute the door closed, Gabe freaked and changed his mind; he ran for the door and yelled, “Daddy! I’m coming!” So I bundled him into his coat and sent him off with them, fingers crossed. It didn’t last. A couple of minutes later, Eric called and said Gabe was crying, so he was bringing him back by the house. The poor thing sobbed as I let him back in, saying he was “scared that the movie things were going to come through the screen.”

I set him up with Henson’s The Christmas Toy and a promise that it wouldn’t be remotely frightening at all. He has popcorn and an unfurrowed brow. Sometimes, when you’re six, that’s what you need, especially when so much of the rest of your life involves trying to keep up with and be as old as your older brother. Six is not nine.

A lot of parenting multiple kids comes down to crowd control, and it’s simpler to deal with them as a unit instead of as individuals. I look at videos and movies of Sam at this age, and he seems so much younger than Gabe does. He had more choices to be so, and he didn’t have the same motivation to be older. Today reminded me of that. We’ve had this movie sitting around for a while, too “babyish” for Sam, so Gabe wasn’t about to watch it. But he got his break, his chance to be six, and he’s happier for it.

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Gabe is less willing, as it turns out. In his kindergarten classroom, kids are encouraged to “write notes” to each other, which can be put into cubbies to take home later. Last week, one of his friends gave him her phone number, scrawled in crayon, which we found precious, if a little precocious; he didn’t see any sort of implications in the note, so we kept quiet. Today, he brought home a couple more notes from this girl; he only had glanced at one side of them, which featured her traced hand, along with a signature. I flipped them over…and found hearts a-plenty. Gabe, to put it lightly, was appalled.

(I will note: no actual farting happened during the filming, despite any attempts at character slander from my costar.)

I’m relieved that Sam, meanwhile, remains innocent of any further attempts at flirtation with him. He comes home with playground tales that involve both girls and boys, but unless the young lasses see romantic subplots in the recess adventures of “Spy Force Five” (which they’ve dubbed themselves, racing around and solving crimes), it’s all quite platonic. Very relieved to have boys, at moments like this. (Even when they’re fighting, as at present, over what – or whom – to blow up next on Roblox.)

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Had to go get a screaming-in-pain belly-aching Gabe from school, where his deafening cries had everyone in a tizzy.  (And stopped at the drugstore for a just-in-case antinausea prescription for him, where he terrified those folks, as well.) Got home…and he was fine to the point of giddy.

Went for my chocolate stash and found the boxes nibbled open and shredded by tiny little teeth.  Squick!

Banker friend called to talk to Eric; wouldn’t talk to me. I called Eric (in Mexico), who freaked and desperately tried to call the bank back, thinking something was wrong with our account.  Turns out it was a sales call; he wasn’t so much “evasive” with me as “didn’t recognize my name.”

Kids were naughty at bedtime. 

I didn’t sleep well in my big empty bed.

Here’s to a brand new day! (Hopefully with 100% fewer rodents and rodent-related discoveries.)

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Sam is doing better behaviorally this year – no distracting or bugging the kids sitting around him – but his grades are suffering because he’s finally hit the level where late or missing homework gets counted against the grade. And has it ever… So his teacher and I chatted, and I told her that he has a planner that he’s reluctant to use, and we’re planning to have him get it signed by both of us regularly now. He’s not failing (yet), but he could be a letter grade higher than he is in just about every subject, which is maddening. When he does do poorly on a completed assignment, the majority of the time it happens because he didn’t read the directions well. That, too, is frustrating for us.

Basically, I have two smart, well-intentioned, very human sons. Could be worse.

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Then we went over to Ulta, which was a huge mistake and blow to my ego. All I needed was a blush, since the last one I masterfully picked out (Walgreens, as usual) is somehow the exact shade of my normal skin, so you can’t see anything at all when I put it on. I figured a big cosmetic store would be better, but my brain completely freaked out at all the products all over the place – stuff I’ve never even heard of – that I spazzed and left empty-handed and feeling like I need to turn in my Girl Card.

ERIC: “Didn’t you read ‘Cosmo’ or those other magazines? Didn’t they tell you what to do?”
ME: “When I was a young teen, until Mom made me stop.”
ERIC: “The sex articles?”
ME: “No, the fact that I couldn’t really process any of the beauty stuff very well, and it was becoming…mortifying.”

Oh, I’m such a little lady, with my un-primed (seriously? Primer? Like what you put under wall paint?) face and nailless toes. Why do I even try?

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But then he wouldn’t respond to me when I tried to talk to him, and I couldn’t really tell whether it was because he was tired or if it was something else. After talking with Eric on the phone, I dragged poor Sam out of bed and hauled us all off to the ER. (Let me tell you how pleased Sam was about this development… ) It took a very long time to get back to a room, where Gabe fell asleep on the bed and Sam sacked out across both chairs. I hunkered down on the floor and waited…waited…waited. The doctor came and felt Gabe’s belly, which felt…normal. He ordered a belly x-ray – normal. By the time he came back with that news and some juice for Gabe to drink, Gabe woke up from his nap and was positively perky. (In fact, he was extremely sassy, tossing barbs at me right and left. I told him his cheeks looked puffy, and he said, “Maybe it’s adrenaline? Duh?” Also, a toddler was crying in an adjoining room, and Gabe growled, “There are a thousand noises right now, and most of them are that baby!”) The doctor was laughing and shrugging, saying Gabe looked perfectly healthy, while acknowledging how frustrated this must make me. Gabe asked whether he could go to school in the morning, which made him laugh harder and say, “No reason not to, if you’re not too sleepy from staying awake here!”

Well, he has an appointment with his regular doctor this afternoon, and I’m trying to stay optimistic that she’ll have some sort of insight into what’s happening, but how much can you tell from examining a kid who seems completely fine? It’s maddening! But I suppose I did manage to sleep through the rest of my worries last night – you know, after I finally got to bed. Four hours of ordinary sleep: better or worse than eight hours of fitful?

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Thank God I had to go down into the basement with a whining second child who needed me to check the dryer for his “skinny jeans” that weren’t in his drawer. Who knows how long that little trick would have kept going? Also, that robe wasn’t exactly organic cotton; it was going to melt long before anything else happened, so even if we got it before a fire, the smoke and stench would have been extraordinary.

(And yes, Mom, I know exactly where he gets it (says the mom who, when she was a girl, used to warm up her pajamas by briefly draping them across the top of the kerosene heater. Turns out you really shouldn’t do that, especially when the front of the PJs has plasticky pictures that melt quickly. Oops.)

Today is trying to kill me.

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On the other hand, a father of another boy from Sam’s old den was also there, and he and I briefly chatted about it. He, too, is crazy busy, but we did some figuring: with five boys who, according to the pack leader, still want to do Scouts, and with meetings every other week, that’s only one meeting every ten weeks that each of us would have to commit to running. I can manage to find a sitter for that, if Eric happens to be out of the country. So we’re going to dig up the email list and see what we can manage; the other father suggested that we phrase it, “If you want your kid in the den, you have to do a meeting,” and that sounds fine.

Meanwhile, I was doing my best to keep Gabe occupied. When he started going nuts, I frantically scanned the Android app market on my phone for a game that he could play that wouldn’t be too noisy and that wouldn’t eat up every bit of my memory. Found a very, very basic jigsaw puzzle game that he immediately latched onto, even though it was obviously geared for the preschool set. The bizarre thing? Some of the bigger boys spied him playing it, grabbed him…and the next thing I knew, Gabe was absorbed into a small herd of kids, each eager to try a turn at this game. Um, okay…

It’s been a long week already. I want my husband back home!

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Gabe, meanwhile, continues to keep me gobsmacked. Dentist appointment for both boys today, and I went in with a clenched stomach. Last time, the dentist – who is really amazingly good – spoke to the necessity of getting through one solid appointment with Gabe. Gabe was absolutely terrified, but the dentist felt that if we could just get through a cleaning with no major trauma, Gabe would see that it was all right. He mentioned the possibility of a mild sedative – not to knock him out, but to keep him calm through the worst of it. Neither of us wanted to jump to that, but when Gabe burst into tears at the sight of the light over the chair, I felt hopeless. He had tried so hard to psych himself up, but it looked like it wasn’t going to happen.

The hygienist went to get the dentist, and in the meantime while we waited, she grabbed a picture book and started reading to Gabe. About halfway through the book, I felt him tense and draw himself up. “Wait,” he said. “Are you just going to brush my teeth and that’s it?” She said yes, and after he clarified a couple more times, he said, “Okay, let’s just do that.” It took a few extra false starts beyond that, but by the time the dentist came in, she’d managed to clean Gabe’s bottom teeth. The dentist did the top, flossed, and even just barely managed to get Gabe to cooperate with a minor polish. It was very helpful that Gabe leaped to embrace the idea of the water sprayer, asking for it every few seconds and demanding to hold it, push the button himself, and generally hog the whole office’s water supply until we had to cut him off.

“I can’t wait for the next time I come to the dentist,” he said at the end. And if that doesn’t beat all, I don’t know what could.

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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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