Mother's Day! I sleep til 8:30 while the boys play. When they come in to see if I am up, Sailor is dressed head to toe in dark clothing and his face is covered in a ski mask, a hat and dark glasses. “Who is that?!” I am almost as surprised as I sound. “It’s ME!” he rips everything off so I can see his beautiful face.
Mac bounds in with gifts ‘hound his back. He gives me 2 poems he wrote in school (one in which I am beautiful, the other in which I am described as not liking to cook and having stinky feet). He also gives me a heart with a little French saying comparing me to a cotton ball; and a darling pen drawing of a house, and a library card to the library he and Sailor spent all day setting up in his room yesterday. Sailor planted a seed in his preschool class on Friday: "If I tell you today will you forget?!" I assured him I would. "It's a FLOWER!" He was so proud! So far it is just a cup of dirt with MOME written on the bottom. "Is that the way you spell Mommy?"
"It's one way that makes sense, sure."
"Well then that can be our family's way of spelling it!" He also gives me some of his treasures from his room: his 2 Judo medals, his Starbucks snow globe and a lip gloss.
I make – and for a rare treat actually eat – breakfast. We clean the playroom to make room for the idea of a guinea pig (Mac is actually getting one for his birthday on the 21st, but he is unaware and thinks that the guinea pig discussion remains just that, a discussion), I bake a key lime pie for tonight’s dessert, sweep the kitchen, bathe the kids … Mac takes me out to lunch at Potbelly where we find great entertainment watching a cabbie change a tire (Sailor is there but asleep in the stroller). We exchange some books at Borders and Mac pleases me by not really fussing when I won’t let him choose either the $6.99 StarWars sticker book or the $13 one. I get a Starbucks and Mac asks if he can get something too. I remind him that he has had a sandwich AND ice cream and he relents, grabbing for his water bottle. We meet his new freckle faced French girlfriend, Lena, and her single mom at the playground, which is nice.
My dad is not up to going out for brunch this morning so for dinner we order in Thai food. After the Thai and the pie I am downright FAT with a food baby!
My mom gets a lot of well-deserved gifts and my sister gives me a book and I give her one too ("Weren't you just reading this last week?" she asks me. Indeed I was but see no difference in giving her a used book that someone else had read over giving her a used book that I have read!). My mom says, "Should I have given you something?" I don't reply, of course, but my sister says yes, she should have. I don't think there is much value in "holidays" such as Mother's Day.
And after reading them some Shakespeare for Kids (Much Ado About Nothing) my boys go right to bed at 8:30, allowing me to get some writing work done that I have promised a friend I would be able to complete by tomorrow morning.
“It just feels like a reg-lee-er day,” Sailor told me on the way back from the playground this evening. Indeed. At least no one kicked sand in my face this year…
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 – Is That What Makes a Good Mom?
Mac’s French girl friend, Lena, is coming for dinner and so Mac suggests I make a French meal: French cheese omelet, ratatouille, and French bread. I look up recipes. Sailor and I shop at two different stores. We scrape, chop, sautee, mix. Only our little guest and I like the ratatouille salad, an uncooked version of the original, the remains of which I will sautee and throw over pasta for diner tomorrow night. Over the phone I relay this meal plan to the little girl’s mother. “You are such a good mom!” she exclaims. Is that what makes a good mom? Ratatouille? Making a special meal for my son’s friend at his creative request? Letting my kids try new foods? Is that it?
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Mac will turn 8 in a week and a day. I have been driving around for the past month or so with a rabbit cage in the trunk of my car. Mac will be getting a guinea pig for his birthday. There has been lengthy discussion over names for the guinea pig, which Mac wants but does know when or if he is getting. Sailor and I have dropped off Mac and we are walking to Starbucks. He steps in a puddle. “Mommy, my foot is wet.” I will check when we reach our destination and find that there is a crack in the little green froggy boot. He is the 3rd to wear these boots, they are quite worn out, but I will call the company to find out their policy anyway.
As we walk I talk to him about this guinea pig. Or try to anyway. I can’t seem to get a word in edgewise! Until finally my exuberant little chatterbox (“I can’t believe we are getting a pet! I’ve never had a pet in my whole life!”) stops talking, turns to me and says, “You were saying?”
We discuss names again and he hits on the funniest combo for 2 guinea pigs ever: named for what Sailor thinks he hears at the opening sequence of the 1970s Laverne & Shirley reruns… Shemille and Shemanzel. You know, “Shlemiel, Shlemazel…” I am laughing so hard at his cuteness. “We have to get Mac to think it’s funny too,” he says.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sailor is scootering through the house. The leash on a stuffed Snoopy is tied to the handle bar of the scooter and Snoopy is dragiging along behind the scooter. “I see you're taking your pup for a walk,” I say.
“Yes, but he’s a little lazy!”
Indeed the white Snoopy is cleaning my floors.
“He’s boneless,” Sailor continues.
Friday, May 15, 2009
It’s been two weeks since my dad’s semi-emergency surgery. Life has been not quite the same while he recovers. But I did leave Sailor with him on Wednesday afternoon for a couple of hours. A mutually beneficial situation – Sailor was too tired to carry on with me the rest of the afternoon and GrandDad needed a little visit to help him thru a bad day. We are all tired tho. The weather has been nice tho it’s raining heavily now. We have been up by 6:30a.m. consistently for several weeks. It is nice not to be rushed in the morning. We have spent some of our extra time doing workbook pages, from which I am finding out that Mac’s math skills are lacking. I am worried about what they are teaching him in school – or not teaching him as the case may be. His teacher has given over to a student teacher who seems to be sweet but also seems to be a total dingbat.
2:00pm Sailor wants to make cookies. I think we have time. He strips down to his underwear and stars gathering ingredients. Cookies are ready by the time we have to leave to get Mac. I offer Sailor one but hes tummy is overwhelmed from licking the beater and two spoons.
He scooters to school in all his glorious cuteness: Ripped jeans, a pirate raincoat and his beautiful face.
At school he scooters around the playground, which is quickly becoming a swamp. Proof that you can have fun in the rain!
Mac has a gift for me, from his classmate Chleo’s birthday. It a beaded necklace, which he claims is strung on deer hide. “Chleo is an Indian,” he tells me, “that’s why she is tall.” Chleo is a blonde whose father is from England. I love how generous and thoughtful Mac is toward me. He is a peach. A really good boy.
Back at home Sailor strips again and dons my jean jacket, a pair of my pants and a belt, “I’m you, Mom!”
It’s Friday night movie time and I am tired. I could or even should go to bed, but I want to be with my boys on the couch. In a week Mac will be 8 years old. They are not so little anymore, my little boys. But they are sweet and cute and smart and funny and all mine.
As I work on posting the last 4 months of blog here I am laughing myself double. "What's so funny?" Mac asks. I have already read them a few of hteir best quotes. "Did we say something else historical?"
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
6pm. We have just walked in the house. Home from Mac’s piano lessons. Sailor has slept thru his violin lesson. He will not be returning to his lessons next week. It was not working out. It was supposed to be fun. He was not having fun and I was not enjoying being yelled at for not practicing.
We walked home in a rain storm. A bad one. We are all drenched. Sailor, standing in his underwear in the bathroom, tells me, “That was cold and scary! All that survived was my underpants!”
We walked home in a rain storm. A bad one. We are all drenched. Sailor, standing in his underwear in the bathroom, tells me, “That was cold and scary! All that survived was my underpants!”
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Sailor on Friday morning during a PTA meeting, referring to removing one of the hair bands from the braids I was wearing in my hair: “I let go of one of your bows and your hair is still tangled.”
Monday April 20, 2009
We are just getting VERY impatient waiting for spring! It was warm and sunny on Saturday morning... and this evening we had a hail storm! So 2 days ago I wore sandals and today I wore my winter coat again! I am so sick of living in Chicago!
Today Sailor had a painting project going on that evolved into some of his little toy guys getting covered with paint and then bathing, only to get painted again. He is such a child! There is so much joy in him and he is so delightful to be around (most of the time!). By the way, Mac will be in his school science fair on Friday. The project, he chose all on his own, from one of the ChickaDEE magazines! He really does read each issue cover to cover (which is more than I ever did with any magazine as a kid!).
Well, I have been up since 6am becuz Mac now has basketball at school at 7:50 on Mondays. And Sailor made me do a Jane Fonda workout at 9:30am. And we ended the evening with a meeting at 6pm, after which we had to eat waffles and fruit and I had to fold laundry and clean up the house and set breakfast dishes and get tomorrow's wardrobe ready. And now it is 10pm and I think I ought to get to bed.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sailor has strep again. For the 3rd time in 2 months. After school the boys spend the ride to Target discussing the possibility of Sailor needing to have his tonsils out. Mac tells him everything he would need to know; more than I want him to know at this point. Or at any point, really, if he does need to have the surgery. Mac is comforting tho, buoying Sailor when he seems nervous. I stay out of the convo except when summoned.
After school the first thing Mac asks me is, “Did you get me a coconut?”
After dinner I am flossing when Sailor peers into my mouth. “What’s in there?” he asks. More to himself than to me. “Chicken?” He continues, “The vegetarian kind?” I grunt yes becuz I can’t talk while I am flossing.
Friday, April 24, 2009
7:50pm. I should be more tired than I am. I should be aching to go to bed, but I’m not. Sailor says he does not want to read any more about Albert Einstein tonight because he had scary Albert Einstein dreams last night and when he woke up he saw Albert Einstein in the pillows. I reassure him that it was his fever causing the dreams. He reassures me that it was the book. Poor thing. At 5am he woke me for more orange juice. “I can’t see,” he wailed. I left the room for the oj and returned to find him standing beside the bed. “I can’t see!” he cried again. I tell him he does not need to see but he is afraid he will spill. I get him back into bed and help him drink with a straw. The next hour and a half he wiggles and cries and moans and cries and talks to me about how afraid he is and how he wishes I would turn on the light. “Is it morning yet!?” When the alarm rings at 6:30 he falls back to sleep. I slip my arm out from under him and leave the room to prepare for our early morning. Mac has to be at school at 8:30 to set up his junior science fair project. Sailor lies uncomfortably in the stroller while I help Mac with his set-up. He just wants to go home. But by the time I get him outside, after taking several photos and some probably inaudible video footage of my toothless, bespectacled little scientist, Sailor is asleep. By the time I arrive home with him, my father is heading to school to see Mac. I run in for a book and some snacks and walk back with him. It is finally gloriously warm out! Mac’s pea coat will be in his backpack by the day’s end. I will be in sandals and have a dab of SPF 30 on my nose. It’s beautiful out and I keep Sailor out as long as he can stand it. I am sure it is good for him, despite or even because of, his 101.9 degree fever. He drinks well, eats nothing but a bite of Starbucks coffee cake, and I never see him pee.
After school we walk til he can’t stand it anymore. We are home by 5 and he has a miraculous recovery when I serve popcorn as an appetizer to pizza and load up a Mork&Mindy DVD. He still looks glassy eyed but he is adorable in his white t-shirt and undies.
Tomorrow we will visit his pediatrician and find out why she thinks he has had strep three times in less than 2 months. Meanwhile I am proud of him for answering almost every offer of food and drink with, “No thank you, but thank you for asking,” and for finally sharing the crumbs of his coffee cake, momentarily destined for the trash can, with his begging older brother.
I’ll leave open the windows tonight and wish for another day like today with our biggest hurdle Mac’s lack of shorts!
Today Sailor had a painting project going on that evolved into some of his little toy guys getting covered with paint and then bathing, only to get painted again. He is such a child! There is so much joy in him and he is so delightful to be around (most of the time!). By the way, Mac will be in his school science fair on Friday. The project, he chose all on his own, from one of the ChickaDEE magazines! He really does read each issue cover to cover (which is more than I ever did with any magazine as a kid!).
Well, I have been up since 6am becuz Mac now has basketball at school at 7:50 on Mondays. And Sailor made me do a Jane Fonda workout at 9:30am. And we ended the evening with a meeting at 6pm, after which we had to eat waffles and fruit and I had to fold laundry and clean up the house and set breakfast dishes and get tomorrow's wardrobe ready. And now it is 10pm and I think I ought to get to bed.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sailor has strep again. For the 3rd time in 2 months. After school the boys spend the ride to Target discussing the possibility of Sailor needing to have his tonsils out. Mac tells him everything he would need to know; more than I want him to know at this point. Or at any point, really, if he does need to have the surgery. Mac is comforting tho, buoying Sailor when he seems nervous. I stay out of the convo except when summoned.
After school the first thing Mac asks me is, “Did you get me a coconut?”
After dinner I am flossing when Sailor peers into my mouth. “What’s in there?” he asks. More to himself than to me. “Chicken?” He continues, “The vegetarian kind?” I grunt yes becuz I can’t talk while I am flossing.
Friday, April 24, 2009
7:50pm. I should be more tired than I am. I should be aching to go to bed, but I’m not. Sailor says he does not want to read any more about Albert Einstein tonight because he had scary Albert Einstein dreams last night and when he woke up he saw Albert Einstein in the pillows. I reassure him that it was his fever causing the dreams. He reassures me that it was the book. Poor thing. At 5am he woke me for more orange juice. “I can’t see,” he wailed. I left the room for the oj and returned to find him standing beside the bed. “I can’t see!” he cried again. I tell him he does not need to see but he is afraid he will spill. I get him back into bed and help him drink with a straw. The next hour and a half he wiggles and cries and moans and cries and talks to me about how afraid he is and how he wishes I would turn on the light. “Is it morning yet!?” When the alarm rings at 6:30 he falls back to sleep. I slip my arm out from under him and leave the room to prepare for our early morning. Mac has to be at school at 8:30 to set up his junior science fair project. Sailor lies uncomfortably in the stroller while I help Mac with his set-up. He just wants to go home. But by the time I get him outside, after taking several photos and some probably inaudible video footage of my toothless, bespectacled little scientist, Sailor is asleep. By the time I arrive home with him, my father is heading to school to see Mac. I run in for a book and some snacks and walk back with him. It is finally gloriously warm out! Mac’s pea coat will be in his backpack by the day’s end. I will be in sandals and have a dab of SPF 30 on my nose. It’s beautiful out and I keep Sailor out as long as he can stand it. I am sure it is good for him, despite or even because of, his 101.9 degree fever. He drinks well, eats nothing but a bite of Starbucks coffee cake, and I never see him pee.
After school we walk til he can’t stand it anymore. We are home by 5 and he has a miraculous recovery when I serve popcorn as an appetizer to pizza and load up a Mork&Mindy DVD. He still looks glassy eyed but he is adorable in his white t-shirt and undies.
Tomorrow we will visit his pediatrician and find out why she thinks he has had strep three times in less than 2 months. Meanwhile I am proud of him for answering almost every offer of food and drink with, “No thank you, but thank you for asking,” and for finally sharing the crumbs of his coffee cake, momentarily destined for the trash can, with his begging older brother.
I’ll leave open the windows tonight and wish for another day like today with our biggest hurdle Mac’s lack of shorts!
Friday, April 17, 2009
“I’m excited that Lena’s coming over today. She looks exactly like me, only girl style.” Mac says this morning about his friend coming over after school. “You like her,” Sailor figured out last night, “Because she is a freckle face like you.” Mac agreed completely. At dinner we were discussing this girl’s upcoming visit. And the worms Mac’s class is using for a science discovery. “I named mine after my brother,” Mac tells us. “Slimy?” I ask. “No, Sailor. Michael named his Bob.” He goes on to tell me that he is afraid to touch his black night crawler. “Is Michael?” I ask. “Yes,” he says. “Are the girls afraid to touch their worms?” His answer is a solid, “No.” Go, girls!
Monday, April 6, 2009
We are either 4 days onto spring break or it is the first day of spring break, depending on whether one considers Friday and the weekend or not. If one considers only the weather then we are somewhere at the beginning of our late winter break. Last night we experienced a slushy snow storm that gave way to bone chilling cold and wind this morning. Welcome to spring break in Chicago! We should be so used to it by now.
Had I begun writing earlier today I would have reported this break as already a dismal disappointment . However, after the afternoon that we ended up with I think I have settled on the true meaning of it all, which is of course, spending time together.
I have a schedule written out, including playdates, lunches, museums, dinners, lessons… day by day to ensure a meaningful, memorable spring break. Friday went well… A trip to the burbs, a day spent with our best friends, which included a veritable feeding frenzy of macker cheese lunch, pop corn snack, pizza dinner and the obligatory stomach ache (mine) after which Mac and Sailor returned home and declared themselves hungry. "That was a short visit," Mac said, after 7 hours of play time. A good visit. And Saturday went well, too… work in the morning followed by take-out lunch ordered by my dad (on the way out to get this, Sailor came down the stairs, “My vest does not fit over my sweater, so I got my ear muffs instead!”), scootering to spend a couple of hours at the nature museum with my sister followed by a nice sushi dinner, scootering home and watching a DVD at home before bedtime (the boys on the tv and I on my laptop so we can all be on the couch together).
It was all going so well. Until I stayed up too late on Saturday and then could not sleep. Sunday morning we frenzied around getting dressed and making lunches. We were out the door a few minutes after 9:00 and headed for the aquarium. We drove in the rain and arrived to find every single parking meter covered with a bag marked “Police! Tow Zone.” The adjacent lot not only demands $16 but wants it in cash only. I have several pounds of quarters in my bag, but I doubt I have $16 in actual cash. “What's cash?” Mac asks. With the mayor’s new raising of the cost neighborhood parking meters, I am loathe to give up my precious quarters for any reason. We drive off. Sailor falls asleep, disappointed as we all are. The parking lot of the IHOP several neighborhoods north of our own is packed as is the IHOP itself. A parking spot a block away has a meter demanding $2 for 2 hours. It is Sunday. But suddenly with our beloved mayor’s new plan, Sunday is no longer a sacred parking meter day.
We arrive home less than an hour after our early morning departure. “I hope you enjoyed the Sunday morning drive!” I say sarcastically to the boys as I wake Sailor to go into the house. The dishwasher inside is just finishing up the cycle we started before we left.
The rain has stopped but it is windy and cold. We stay in the house for a few hours then venture out again later with my sister in tow. We hit the aisles of Target with gusto. Fill our carts with sale items, indulge in Starbucks, ignore cries for Legos, play with obnoxious Elmo toys, pick out dinner foods, hide Easter bunny’s stash from the boys. Lose my bracelette with my boys’ names on it...
My boys have three new DVDs to watch thanks to Target’s big sale and my bad mood and need to indulge them a little. They watch while I cook pasta and my sister mixes drinks. “What are you drinking?” one of my boys asks. “Grown up fruit juice,” she tells them. They go to bed late, having watched Madagascar II in its entirety. This should not happen, I say aloud to my sister. I have to get them to bed on time all the time. It’s best for them, no matter what I am doing at the moment (in tonight’s case ridding my sister’s scalp of gray hairs while she reads the instructions on the hair clippers I picked up earlier – haircut in a box, we called it.) She is going to follow the directions and cut Sailor’s hair. Until we realize that the longest blade size is only ½ and inch. We box up the clippers and I put the boys to bed and hop into a hot bath. It’s snowing like crazy outside and freezing inside.
Monday morning we have no plans so I stay in bed, luxuriating until a little after 8:00. My boys have remembered my requests of the night before: please no running or screaming, do not wake me to ask if you can watch tv, if you are hungry eat bananas, yogurt or cereal, not cookies. I do not want a repeat of Sunday morning! I do not want to wake up in a bad mood again.
My dad calls to see if we are still on for the tentative lunch we have planned for today. At 11:30 we head to the neighborhood pancake house, the one that boasts sky high neighborhood prices. Mac orders silver dollar pancakes and sausage patties. He is served 6 of the former, 2 of the latter. I order French toast, no powder sugar, and hash browns, no onions. Sailor requests French toast and pancakes and bacon. I order him bacon and a plate. He can share. When our food comes, Sailor takes two pieces of my French toast, two of Mac’s pancakes and one of his sausages. I dole out my hash browns from the smallest plate this place has ever served them on. I am left with very little to eat. For all of this my father pays more than $37. Next time we will drive up to the IHOP, I tell him.
The phone rings just after we return home. Our friends with whom we have late afternoon plans are canceling. Sailor sets up his massage parlor on the living room sofa and invites me to a free massage. Mac sets up his telescope and pretends to film. He interviews Sailor, “Why are you so famous?” “Because I am very cute!” is Sailor’s answer.
Mac has requested a long overdue haircut. We’ve had the appointment for a few weeks. Over the weekend my mother has offered Mac a bribe to keep his hair long. But they cannot agree on terms when Mac starts describing some big, expensive StarWars thing he wants. We are off to the haircut at 2pm. Our European hottie gets going on Mac’s hair, but not before asking one last time if Mac is really ready. So much thick, red hair falls to the floor I could make a wig for another boy! When Mac is fully shorn, he looks cute, neat, young, and oddly a bit chubby!
Sailor gets his bangs trimmed and the European hottie agrees with me that he prefers the boys’ hair short and neat and that he would love to cut Sailor’s hair but has another customer waiting. We will come back soon, I promise.
It is sunny and a little tiny bit warmer when we head back outside. I want to take the boys somewhere but no one wants to go anywhere. The library sounds like a great idea to me, but "it’s too dirty and the books rip and we can’t keep them," Mac laments. “No bookstore!” Sailor cries, “I want to go home and wash my hands.” The lolipos I reluctantly let them have at the hair salon have somehow migrated to their hands and faces. How, I have no idea, considering these are 5- and 7-year-old boys, not babies!
I am feeling dejected when we arrive home. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. And it is too cold out to just be out. Within a short time, Mac is hard at work at the kitchen table. He is creating a book from a kit I was given some 7 or 8 years ago. Or he was given. I don’t recall. Sailor glues little eyes to fuzz balls and tops them with hats from a kit we have stashed in a cabinet. Then he moves on to paint, then play-do, a foam fire truck kit, and several other things, all of which are soon strewn about the kitchen. I sit at the table with them and write a letter, make a few birthday cards, and tape 4 years worth of the boys’ Valentines into a scrapbook. I am tired of seeing the Valentine boxes cluttering atop the fridge. It is 6:00 before I sweep up the debris left on the floor and wash marker of the table. Mac is in his room still writing his book and Sailor has figured out how to get from my room to Mac’s thru my closet. I don’t get angry that he is doing this. I take the role of good mom and just let it be. I look around my kitchen and see how heavy it is with kid stuff. Every wall, the fridge, the doors and door frames even. Everything is covered with something by the boys or for the boys. It is cheerful and happy.
I pour a glass of wine and serve the boys tofu, broccoli, strawberries, carrots and oranges. They clean their plates.
Sailor is crazy with exhaustion and is asleep by 8:30 after crying to make me stay with him in bed. By 8:45 I have popcorn and a DVD.
We have 6 more days of Spring Break. Whatever we end up doing or not doing no longer matters. What matters is this time with my boys. Together. Even if it means doing as Sailor thinks we should do, “Spring Break means doing whatever we want!”
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
“Is Mac asleep or-- ?” I ask Sailor while he is pretending to be Bob the Hair Guy and brushing my hair.“He’s reading,” Sailor says, “he is a bookworm. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“It’s a good thing to be a bookworm, Mommy and Mac are bookworms.”
“Well I am a playworm!”
Thursday, April 10, 2009
With absolutely no intention of embarrassing Mac, I have to tell this little anecdote. Today at soccer, in the bathroom, he asked if he could change his underwear when we get home. I told him he could, of course, and also that he was going to take a shower before Passover dinner when we get home. He then says, “I got some poop in my underwear.” Concerned that we might have to head straight home and wishing I still carried extra clothes as I did when they were babies, I asked, “Actual poop or poop skids from before?”
“Poop skins from before,” comes the little voice from inside the toilet stall.
I almost die laughing, at which point Sailor asks me if I am laughing at him as he stands mugging for the bathroom mirror.
Friday, April 10, 2009
At breakfast the boys are playing a game of truth or dare that just involves posing questions to one another that neither knows the answer to, such as, “Did our 2nd president wear underwear in the shower?” or “What year was our first president born?” (to which Mac answers “1925,” after which we have a discussion about dates and estimations). Sailor’s next question requires a repeat to hear if he really said what I think he did. In fact he has asked his brother, “Did he live thru the Silver War?”
At 9:30 we leave for a day of fun! It’s our last official day of spring break and the last day of time to do as we please. I take my kids to this Free Play thing at Chitown Futball and it is far south and in a bad 'hood and the place smells like wet shoes and is cold with no place to sit. They play for 45 minutes and are ready to leave
We head to the aquarium again, after our botched attempt on Sunday. Park at a broken meter and saved a couple of bucks -- $16 actually! The lines for the parking lots were preposterous! But the a is PAquariumCKED!! It’s AWFUL!! The line to get in for non-members is probably 3 hours long, I kid you not. We last about an hour and leave. Walking over to the Field Museum is cold but pleasant. We bypass the main line, which is out the front door, but even the Members line is too ling. Walking back to the car is like being in some horrid winter storm... SOOO windy! Sailor declares a stomach ache, a headache and a fast-beating heart. He falls asleep as I take the long way home. I carry him in, huffing and taking one stair at a time. He rolls over on the couch and sleeps a few minutes while Mac settles in with a library book and I pour the day’s mail all over the living room floor. It’s just after 1:30pm. The children think it’s near bedtime. Sailor wakes, lies in my lap, retreats to his room for his pajamas and returns inquiring as to whether or not he and his brother may watch one of the DVDs we borrowed from the library yesterday. By 2:30 they are engrossed in the DVD and I have read a magazine, eaten 4 donut holes, made tea, wiped off the stove, set an egg to boil, and wondered at the way this spring break has turned out.
Had I begun writing earlier today I would have reported this break as already a dismal disappointment . However, after the afternoon that we ended up with I think I have settled on the true meaning of it all, which is of course, spending time together.
I have a schedule written out, including playdates, lunches, museums, dinners, lessons… day by day to ensure a meaningful, memorable spring break. Friday went well… A trip to the burbs, a day spent with our best friends, which included a veritable feeding frenzy of macker cheese lunch, pop corn snack, pizza dinner and the obligatory stomach ache (mine) after which Mac and Sailor returned home and declared themselves hungry. "That was a short visit," Mac said, after 7 hours of play time. A good visit. And Saturday went well, too… work in the morning followed by take-out lunch ordered by my dad (on the way out to get this, Sailor came down the stairs, “My vest does not fit over my sweater, so I got my ear muffs instead!”), scootering to spend a couple of hours at the nature museum with my sister followed by a nice sushi dinner, scootering home and watching a DVD at home before bedtime (the boys on the tv and I on my laptop so we can all be on the couch together).
It was all going so well. Until I stayed up too late on Saturday and then could not sleep. Sunday morning we frenzied around getting dressed and making lunches. We were out the door a few minutes after 9:00 and headed for the aquarium. We drove in the rain and arrived to find every single parking meter covered with a bag marked “Police! Tow Zone.” The adjacent lot not only demands $16 but wants it in cash only. I have several pounds of quarters in my bag, but I doubt I have $16 in actual cash. “What's cash?” Mac asks. With the mayor’s new raising of the cost neighborhood parking meters, I am loathe to give up my precious quarters for any reason. We drive off. Sailor falls asleep, disappointed as we all are. The parking lot of the IHOP several neighborhoods north of our own is packed as is the IHOP itself. A parking spot a block away has a meter demanding $2 for 2 hours. It is Sunday. But suddenly with our beloved mayor’s new plan, Sunday is no longer a sacred parking meter day.
We arrive home less than an hour after our early morning departure. “I hope you enjoyed the Sunday morning drive!” I say sarcastically to the boys as I wake Sailor to go into the house. The dishwasher inside is just finishing up the cycle we started before we left.
The rain has stopped but it is windy and cold. We stay in the house for a few hours then venture out again later with my sister in tow. We hit the aisles of Target with gusto. Fill our carts with sale items, indulge in Starbucks, ignore cries for Legos, play with obnoxious Elmo toys, pick out dinner foods, hide Easter bunny’s stash from the boys. Lose my bracelette with my boys’ names on it...
My boys have three new DVDs to watch thanks to Target’s big sale and my bad mood and need to indulge them a little. They watch while I cook pasta and my sister mixes drinks. “What are you drinking?” one of my boys asks. “Grown up fruit juice,” she tells them. They go to bed late, having watched Madagascar II in its entirety. This should not happen, I say aloud to my sister. I have to get them to bed on time all the time. It’s best for them, no matter what I am doing at the moment (in tonight’s case ridding my sister’s scalp of gray hairs while she reads the instructions on the hair clippers I picked up earlier – haircut in a box, we called it.) She is going to follow the directions and cut Sailor’s hair. Until we realize that the longest blade size is only ½ and inch. We box up the clippers and I put the boys to bed and hop into a hot bath. It’s snowing like crazy outside and freezing inside.
Monday morning we have no plans so I stay in bed, luxuriating until a little after 8:00. My boys have remembered my requests of the night before: please no running or screaming, do not wake me to ask if you can watch tv, if you are hungry eat bananas, yogurt or cereal, not cookies. I do not want a repeat of Sunday morning! I do not want to wake up in a bad mood again.
My dad calls to see if we are still on for the tentative lunch we have planned for today. At 11:30 we head to the neighborhood pancake house, the one that boasts sky high neighborhood prices. Mac orders silver dollar pancakes and sausage patties. He is served 6 of the former, 2 of the latter. I order French toast, no powder sugar, and hash browns, no onions. Sailor requests French toast and pancakes and bacon. I order him bacon and a plate. He can share. When our food comes, Sailor takes two pieces of my French toast, two of Mac’s pancakes and one of his sausages. I dole out my hash browns from the smallest plate this place has ever served them on. I am left with very little to eat. For all of this my father pays more than $37. Next time we will drive up to the IHOP, I tell him.
The phone rings just after we return home. Our friends with whom we have late afternoon plans are canceling. Sailor sets up his massage parlor on the living room sofa and invites me to a free massage. Mac sets up his telescope and pretends to film. He interviews Sailor, “Why are you so famous?” “Because I am very cute!” is Sailor’s answer.
Mac has requested a long overdue haircut. We’ve had the appointment for a few weeks. Over the weekend my mother has offered Mac a bribe to keep his hair long. But they cannot agree on terms when Mac starts describing some big, expensive StarWars thing he wants. We are off to the haircut at 2pm. Our European hottie gets going on Mac’s hair, but not before asking one last time if Mac is really ready. So much thick, red hair falls to the floor I could make a wig for another boy! When Mac is fully shorn, he looks cute, neat, young, and oddly a bit chubby!
Sailor gets his bangs trimmed and the European hottie agrees with me that he prefers the boys’ hair short and neat and that he would love to cut Sailor’s hair but has another customer waiting. We will come back soon, I promise.
It is sunny and a little tiny bit warmer when we head back outside. I want to take the boys somewhere but no one wants to go anywhere. The library sounds like a great idea to me, but "it’s too dirty and the books rip and we can’t keep them," Mac laments. “No bookstore!” Sailor cries, “I want to go home and wash my hands.” The lolipos I reluctantly let them have at the hair salon have somehow migrated to their hands and faces. How, I have no idea, considering these are 5- and 7-year-old boys, not babies!
I am feeling dejected when we arrive home. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. And it is too cold out to just be out. Within a short time, Mac is hard at work at the kitchen table. He is creating a book from a kit I was given some 7 or 8 years ago. Or he was given. I don’t recall. Sailor glues little eyes to fuzz balls and tops them with hats from a kit we have stashed in a cabinet. Then he moves on to paint, then play-do, a foam fire truck kit, and several other things, all of which are soon strewn about the kitchen. I sit at the table with them and write a letter, make a few birthday cards, and tape 4 years worth of the boys’ Valentines into a scrapbook. I am tired of seeing the Valentine boxes cluttering atop the fridge. It is 6:00 before I sweep up the debris left on the floor and wash marker of the table. Mac is in his room still writing his book and Sailor has figured out how to get from my room to Mac’s thru my closet. I don’t get angry that he is doing this. I take the role of good mom and just let it be. I look around my kitchen and see how heavy it is with kid stuff. Every wall, the fridge, the doors and door frames even. Everything is covered with something by the boys or for the boys. It is cheerful and happy.
I pour a glass of wine and serve the boys tofu, broccoli, strawberries, carrots and oranges. They clean their plates.
Sailor is crazy with exhaustion and is asleep by 8:30 after crying to make me stay with him in bed. By 8:45 I have popcorn and a DVD.
We have 6 more days of Spring Break. Whatever we end up doing or not doing no longer matters. What matters is this time with my boys. Together. Even if it means doing as Sailor thinks we should do, “Spring Break means doing whatever we want!”
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
“Is Mac asleep or-- ?” I ask Sailor while he is pretending to be Bob the Hair Guy and brushing my hair.“He’s reading,” Sailor says, “he is a bookworm. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“It’s a good thing to be a bookworm, Mommy and Mac are bookworms.”
“Well I am a playworm!”
Thursday, April 10, 2009
With absolutely no intention of embarrassing Mac, I have to tell this little anecdote. Today at soccer, in the bathroom, he asked if he could change his underwear when we get home. I told him he could, of course, and also that he was going to take a shower before Passover dinner when we get home. He then says, “I got some poop in my underwear.” Concerned that we might have to head straight home and wishing I still carried extra clothes as I did when they were babies, I asked, “Actual poop or poop skids from before?”
“Poop skins from before,” comes the little voice from inside the toilet stall.
I almost die laughing, at which point Sailor asks me if I am laughing at him as he stands mugging for the bathroom mirror.
Friday, April 10, 2009
At breakfast the boys are playing a game of truth or dare that just involves posing questions to one another that neither knows the answer to, such as, “Did our 2nd president wear underwear in the shower?” or “What year was our first president born?” (to which Mac answers “1925,” after which we have a discussion about dates and estimations). Sailor’s next question requires a repeat to hear if he really said what I think he did. In fact he has asked his brother, “Did he live thru the Silver War?”
At 9:30 we leave for a day of fun! It’s our last official day of spring break and the last day of time to do as we please. I take my kids to this Free Play thing at Chitown Futball and it is far south and in a bad 'hood and the place smells like wet shoes and is cold with no place to sit. They play for 45 minutes and are ready to leave
We head to the aquarium again, after our botched attempt on Sunday. Park at a broken meter and saved a couple of bucks -- $16 actually! The lines for the parking lots were preposterous! But the a is PAquariumCKED!! It’s AWFUL!! The line to get in for non-members is probably 3 hours long, I kid you not. We last about an hour and leave. Walking over to the Field Museum is cold but pleasant. We bypass the main line, which is out the front door, but even the Members line is too ling. Walking back to the car is like being in some horrid winter storm... SOOO windy! Sailor declares a stomach ache, a headache and a fast-beating heart. He falls asleep as I take the long way home. I carry him in, huffing and taking one stair at a time. He rolls over on the couch and sleeps a few minutes while Mac settles in with a library book and I pour the day’s mail all over the living room floor. It’s just after 1:30pm. The children think it’s near bedtime. Sailor wakes, lies in my lap, retreats to his room for his pajamas and returns inquiring as to whether or not he and his brother may watch one of the DVDs we borrowed from the library yesterday. By 2:30 they are engrossed in the DVD and I have read a magazine, eaten 4 donut holes, made tea, wiped off the stove, set an egg to boil, and wondered at the way this spring break has turned out.
Quitcher-bitchin’-- Wednesday, April 1, 2009
“Remember the doctor who was brown who died?” Sailor asks me at bedtime, completely out of the blue, referring to the season premier of ER back in September. “When you cried. And after I cried. The kind of cry you do when you are angry.”
“Yes, I remember,” I say and pull him close for a snuggle.
This morning Sailor and I register him for kindergarten. He is happy to be going. Excited, even. I am melancholy but I put on a brave face for him.
“What are you going to do when he’s in school?” the friendly security guard asks me. “I need to have another baby,” I say, not terribly flirtatiously.
Outside Sailor tells me that a baby would not be that fun. “You can’t bake cookies with a baby, or go shopping places.” He is so right. I am going to miss the hell out of him when he goes to kindergarten in the fall.
Sailor somehow manages, thru a bit of bribery, to convince me to take him to Chuck E. Cheese for a bit this afternoon. He has 5 tokens from some previous trip. I allow another dollar’s worth. He plays for nearly 45 minutes. His last game is a rollercoaster that takes 2 tokens and is for 2 players. I suggest he wait til Mac is here with him next time. Be he is adamant that this is how he wants to spend his last 2 tokens. We sit side-by-side, sometimes holding hands. I make funny, frightened noises while we “ride” and he explodes in peals of laughter and I know without a doubt that he has made the best use of his tokens and I have made the best use of my time.
Lately I have been seeing my age in the lines in my face and I have been battling hard to reverse or at the very least stop the process and return to the face of my youth. The more I obsess the more my boys come to me to tell me how young I look. Tonight I was 19 in their eyes. Haggard the other morning before my shower, I asked Mac if I still looked pretty to him. “Of course!” he tells me. “You are beautiful. It doesn’t matter your hair or your face. It’s you!” He knows how to make it all worth while.
Today after school he gets in the car and bursts into tears. “I didn’t get a Good Citizen award,” he sobs. Apparently it is report card day. I am able to explain to him why he did not get a perfect attendance award, having been absent 7 out of 29 days this quarter (hey, it was cold out in February, he had the flu and a stomach bug, and there was a crappy field trip!) ad tardy twice (only twice?!). And while I could also explain why he did not get the “No more than 2 B’s and no C’s or D’s” award (you have 4 B’s but all the rest are A’s) I would be hard pressed to explain how the teacher feels justified in giving a child who reads a 250-page book in 2 days a B in reading. Conference requested? You betcha!
I know it’s been awhile but have I mentioned how much I HATE SCHOOL!?!?!? I know, I know, I need to quit bitching and just learn to deal with it. But I can’t. I just can’t. Sigh.
Only one more day til spring break! We have ten whole days including weekends and we are going to have a blast doing all sorts of coupon-ed, discounted things! And. We are going to do Mac’s mandatory science fair project. Which is due 3 days after break is over. And which will be voted on in class and MAY NOT EVEN MAKE IT TO THE G-D DAMN MANDATORY SCIENCE FAIR!
And after spring break, only 9 more weeks of school. Which sounds like very little. Except when you compare it to the number of weeks of summer break. Which this year happens to be 12. May I stab myself in the head now?
Talking to Sailor about recitals. Everyone plays the violin one at a time, I explain. “Whose violin?” he asks.
“Yes, I remember,” I say and pull him close for a snuggle.
This morning Sailor and I register him for kindergarten. He is happy to be going. Excited, even. I am melancholy but I put on a brave face for him.
“What are you going to do when he’s in school?” the friendly security guard asks me. “I need to have another baby,” I say, not terribly flirtatiously.
Outside Sailor tells me that a baby would not be that fun. “You can’t bake cookies with a baby, or go shopping places.” He is so right. I am going to miss the hell out of him when he goes to kindergarten in the fall.
Sailor somehow manages, thru a bit of bribery, to convince me to take him to Chuck E. Cheese for a bit this afternoon. He has 5 tokens from some previous trip. I allow another dollar’s worth. He plays for nearly 45 minutes. His last game is a rollercoaster that takes 2 tokens and is for 2 players. I suggest he wait til Mac is here with him next time. Be he is adamant that this is how he wants to spend his last 2 tokens. We sit side-by-side, sometimes holding hands. I make funny, frightened noises while we “ride” and he explodes in peals of laughter and I know without a doubt that he has made the best use of his tokens and I have made the best use of my time.
Lately I have been seeing my age in the lines in my face and I have been battling hard to reverse or at the very least stop the process and return to the face of my youth. The more I obsess the more my boys come to me to tell me how young I look. Tonight I was 19 in their eyes. Haggard the other morning before my shower, I asked Mac if I still looked pretty to him. “Of course!” he tells me. “You are beautiful. It doesn’t matter your hair or your face. It’s you!” He knows how to make it all worth while.
Today after school he gets in the car and bursts into tears. “I didn’t get a Good Citizen award,” he sobs. Apparently it is report card day. I am able to explain to him why he did not get a perfect attendance award, having been absent 7 out of 29 days this quarter (hey, it was cold out in February, he had the flu and a stomach bug, and there was a crappy field trip!) ad tardy twice (only twice?!). And while I could also explain why he did not get the “No more than 2 B’s and no C’s or D’s” award (you have 4 B’s but all the rest are A’s) I would be hard pressed to explain how the teacher feels justified in giving a child who reads a 250-page book in 2 days a B in reading. Conference requested? You betcha!
I know it’s been awhile but have I mentioned how much I HATE SCHOOL!?!?!? I know, I know, I need to quit bitching and just learn to deal with it. But I can’t. I just can’t. Sigh.
Only one more day til spring break! We have ten whole days including weekends and we are going to have a blast doing all sorts of coupon-ed, discounted things! And. We are going to do Mac’s mandatory science fair project. Which is due 3 days after break is over. And which will be voted on in class and MAY NOT EVEN MAKE IT TO THE G-D DAMN MANDATORY SCIENCE FAIR!
And after spring break, only 9 more weeks of school. Which sounds like very little. Except when you compare it to the number of weeks of summer break. Which this year happens to be 12. May I stab myself in the head now?
Talking to Sailor about recitals. Everyone plays the violin one at a time, I explain. “Whose violin?” he asks.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
11:56a.m.
I am on the sofa with a DVD and Sailor. I feel like I did a major workout yesterday! I don't know why I am so tired AND sore! I have done almost everything on my list today plus vacuuming and catching up on some emails and I forgot all about the school newsletter, which is due next Wed. I need a nap!! After school we have a Judo tournament and we are going to a reception at the Contemporary Art workshop, if I can motivate myself out of this outfit that Mac thought was my pajamas this morning! I don't know if I can do it all today! Plus Sailor has soccer at 1:30!
I am on the sofa with a DVD and Sailor. I feel like I did a major workout yesterday! I don't know why I am so tired AND sore! I have done almost everything on my list today plus vacuuming and catching up on some emails and I forgot all about the school newsletter, which is due next Wed. I need a nap!! After school we have a Judo tournament and we are going to a reception at the Contemporary Art workshop, if I can motivate myself out of this outfit that Mac thought was my pajamas this morning! I don't know if I can do it all today! Plus Sailor has soccer at 1:30!
Friday, 3/13/09
Based on a conversation we had on the way home from school about a comment my father accidentally made once about having all my baby teeth in a drawer, Mac just asked me if I could phone in a request to the tooth fairy to “have all Mac’s baby teeth returned when he is older.” Of course I said I could. With a smile. His crazy baby snaggle tooth, the top left, fell out while he slept last night. This morning in bed we all made our wish for Mac to receive a $2 bill from the tooth fairy. I bet his gets his wish! On the way to Judo he told me, “I can’t wait til tonight!” I thought he meant becuz it’s Friday night, aka movie night. But no, he is excited about the tooth fairy coming for her 4th trip in 17 months.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Found this quote on a piece of paper. Not sure which boy to attribute it to, tho I think it is Sailor:
“Einstein is the guy who created Frankenstein.”
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Found this quote on a piece of paper. Not sure which boy to attribute it to, tho I think it is Sailor:
“Einstein is the guy who created Frankenstein.”
3.11.09
As far as today goes it was a real hum dinger.
I wake up with difficulty, still adjusting to the time change of spring. I feel sick in the morning. Sailor sleeps in and I share the morning routine with just Mac. It's nice. Sailor is not nice when he wakes. Mac is very late to school.
Sailor continues to demand that I stay at his enrichment class because sometimes I was late picking him up at preschool. When he is older and understands the concept of time perhaps he will understand and believe me when I tell him I was not late. I showed up at 4:00, the time school ended. It was the other moms who showed up early that made me look bad in his eyes.
It’s all too much for me to write. The day. The effort of it.
After school I have to run to get Mac. Leave Sailor with Dad. He is screaming. “I want to be with you!” I know he can’t walk fast enough and I have just 10 minutes to get to school. Which I can do. But Sailor can’t. I get Mac. He is angry with me. “You sent me to school in these shoes! You knew I would step in mud!” He actually says this. And I say,, “WHAT did you just say to me?!” These are his new shoes. I don’t care about the mud. It’s the accusation that stings. And then he goes on about how the teacher was angry that he had left his boots at home and had to play outside in his SHOES and then he got mud on her floor and she had to SWEEP it up and she asked him to clean the mud out of his shoes but he had nothing to clean them with. And this is MY fault. Because it was neither raining nor snowing this morning and I saw no reason to make Mac wear his winter boots to school. My G-D!
I am so done with school! So. Done!
I email the teacher when we got home. My brand new DustBuster, which Sailor gave me for Christmas, is in a bag ready to go to school with Mac tomorrow. Yet I am torn between the statement this makes and wanting to just keep Mac home for the rest of the week. If only he hadn’t missed two days of last week with the flu…
I wake up with difficulty, still adjusting to the time change of spring. I feel sick in the morning. Sailor sleeps in and I share the morning routine with just Mac. It's nice. Sailor is not nice when he wakes. Mac is very late to school.
Sailor continues to demand that I stay at his enrichment class because sometimes I was late picking him up at preschool. When he is older and understands the concept of time perhaps he will understand and believe me when I tell him I was not late. I showed up at 4:00, the time school ended. It was the other moms who showed up early that made me look bad in his eyes.
It’s all too much for me to write. The day. The effort of it.
After school I have to run to get Mac. Leave Sailor with Dad. He is screaming. “I want to be with you!” I know he can’t walk fast enough and I have just 10 minutes to get to school. Which I can do. But Sailor can’t. I get Mac. He is angry with me. “You sent me to school in these shoes! You knew I would step in mud!” He actually says this. And I say,, “WHAT did you just say to me?!” These are his new shoes. I don’t care about the mud. It’s the accusation that stings. And then he goes on about how the teacher was angry that he had left his boots at home and had to play outside in his SHOES and then he got mud on her floor and she had to SWEEP it up and she asked him to clean the mud out of his shoes but he had nothing to clean them with. And this is MY fault. Because it was neither raining nor snowing this morning and I saw no reason to make Mac wear his winter boots to school. My G-D!
I am so done with school! So. Done!
I email the teacher when we got home. My brand new DustBuster, which Sailor gave me for Christmas, is in a bag ready to go to school with Mac tomorrow. Yet I am torn between the statement this makes and wanting to just keep Mac home for the rest of the week. If only he hadn’t missed two days of last week with the flu…
Saturday, March 7, 2009
“I can’t eat anything because I said this a hundred times: There nothing there I want!” – Sailor, on being served a pbj with strawberries and bananas and milk for breakfast. 3/6/09
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Some other funny notes I found while cleaning out stuff this weekend…
At dinner tonight Sailor choked on the “celery hairs” then wanted to know what the “pimples” in the tapioca pudding were. 04/08/08
Mommy: Are you done with dinner?
Sailor: Apparently.
Sailor: Now I’m sexy [after taking off his wet pants].
“Get your nose ready to smell my mouth.” 04/09/08
And an old, undated one from one of the kids:
Mom, something is so silly about you.
What?
You said shrimp.
And some 2- or 3-year-old Sailor-isms:
-No one here with us. That pretty sad.
-Put the cookies 'hound my back.
-‘Cep’ itchy guys can go dere?
-On a walk down the street: I smell shayo [cereal]. Shayo and soap. Mmm.
Sailor: Mom, Rudolph is cute.
Mom: Not as cute as you.
Sailor: Beez I have the Yoda hat on. That why I’m cute.
A conversation in the car a few years ago.
Mac: I still want to buy you more jewelry.
Mom: We’ll ask Aunt to take you. But not sure when cuz she is sick.
Sailor: How ‘bout when she is better?!
Mac: What’s wrong with her?
Mom: She has a bug in her lungs.
Mac: REALLY? How did it get in?
Mom: [Gives explanation]
Sailor: He a bad guy?
Conversation with Sailor on 6/4/07
Sailor: How come you didn’t make peanut butter salad?
Mom: Peanut butter salad?
Sailor: When you put peanut butter on.
Mom: On celery?
Sailor: Yeah.
8/23/07
Sailor: Don’t fear, Underwear is here!
Sailor: Nana’s going to make me a smooth blue cape and a red sweater with an F for Underdog on it.
Mac: You mean a U for Underdog!
Mac’s impressions of his 1st day of 1st grade. His teacher: Great! Funny! And very reasonable.
12/31/07
Sailor: I don’t want to go to Bubble Gum Shrimp.
Mac: Did he [Sailor] do that [pumpkin face]?
Mommy: Mhmm.
Mac: I’m impressed!
Sailor asking about the previous year when he didn’t want to go to the beach:
“Was I a little kid?” Summer 2008
4/7/08
Sailor: What game of sports do you wrestle in?
4/7/08
Mommy: What do you want to do for lunch?
Sailor: Go to Starbucks maybe, where you could get a decaf coffee.
4/11/08
Sailor: Guess what I’m taking [as in, taking a class]? I’m taking the talking doctor. But I didn’t get to play in the ball pit.
Mac to Mommy and Aunt while watching a PG (parental guidance suggested) movie, “Guys, you have to be guiding us!”
Sailor 03/01/09
Do you know how to make yourself be funny like me?
07/19/07
Mac: (With an Italian accent) Oh, my little noodles. How long have you been in the microwave? You are very hot!
In summer 2007 I made Mac the following offer: “I’ll pay you $1 every week to take Sailor to French class. That’s; a lot of money for a little kid. And at the end of summer you can buy something really cool.” To which my darling boy replied, “Like a patch of flowers for you!”
When Sailor missed his friend Jack in 2007 he asked, “Can we go to his Michigan?”
Sailor: I am not from your planet. I am a slug bug.
Sailor: You know I’m a real caveman who sings? A lot? I’m from a different planet (strumming his air guitar). 4/11/07
Mommy: You’re a little twisty (meaning Sailor’s pants are twisted).
Sailor: You’re a little twisty!
Mac: Maybe when we get back we can play a little ball.
Sailor: No, we can’t play with the little ball.
Mac: Not the little ball, a little ball (by way of explanation).
That same day we saw a sign at the zoo that read: Beaver play table is temporarily out of order due to repairs that need to be made.
6/04.08
Sailor: I’m gonna put some tildies on my belt. Cuz it’s my tildy belt.
6/5/08
She still sick? I think it’s ammonia. --Sailor about Aunt
7/28/08
Sailor: Lemonade 15 cents!
Aunt: 50 cents
Sailor: Fif-tee cents. Whatever. We have lemonade.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Some other funny notes I found while cleaning out stuff this weekend…
At dinner tonight Sailor choked on the “celery hairs” then wanted to know what the “pimples” in the tapioca pudding were. 04/08/08
Mommy: Are you done with dinner?
Sailor: Apparently.
Sailor: Now I’m sexy [after taking off his wet pants].
“Get your nose ready to smell my mouth.” 04/09/08
And an old, undated one from one of the kids:
Mom, something is so silly about you.
What?
You said shrimp.
And some 2- or 3-year-old Sailor-isms:
-No one here with us. That pretty sad.
-Put the cookies 'hound my back.
-‘Cep’ itchy guys can go dere?
-On a walk down the street: I smell shayo [cereal]. Shayo and soap. Mmm.
Sailor: Mom, Rudolph is cute.
Mom: Not as cute as you.
Sailor: Beez I have the Yoda hat on. That why I’m cute.
A conversation in the car a few years ago.
Mac: I still want to buy you more jewelry.
Mom: We’ll ask Aunt to take you. But not sure when cuz she is sick.
Sailor: How ‘bout when she is better?!
Mac: What’s wrong with her?
Mom: She has a bug in her lungs.
Mac: REALLY? How did it get in?
Mom: [Gives explanation]
Sailor: He a bad guy?
Conversation with Sailor on 6/4/07
Sailor: How come you didn’t make peanut butter salad?
Mom: Peanut butter salad?
Sailor: When you put peanut butter on.
Mom: On celery?
Sailor: Yeah.
8/23/07
Sailor: Don’t fear, Underwear is here!
Sailor: Nana’s going to make me a smooth blue cape and a red sweater with an F for Underdog on it.
Mac: You mean a U for Underdog!
Mac’s impressions of his 1st day of 1st grade. His teacher: Great! Funny! And very reasonable.
12/31/07
Sailor: I don’t want to go to Bubble Gum Shrimp.
Mac: Did he [Sailor] do that [pumpkin face]?
Mommy: Mhmm.
Mac: I’m impressed!
Sailor asking about the previous year when he didn’t want to go to the beach:
“Was I a little kid?” Summer 2008
4/7/08
Sailor: What game of sports do you wrestle in?
4/7/08
Mommy: What do you want to do for lunch?
Sailor: Go to Starbucks maybe, where you could get a decaf coffee.
4/11/08
Sailor: Guess what I’m taking [as in, taking a class]? I’m taking the talking doctor. But I didn’t get to play in the ball pit.
Mac to Mommy and Aunt while watching a PG (parental guidance suggested) movie, “Guys, you have to be guiding us!”
Sailor 03/01/09
Do you know how to make yourself be funny like me?
07/19/07
Mac: (With an Italian accent) Oh, my little noodles. How long have you been in the microwave? You are very hot!
In summer 2007 I made Mac the following offer: “I’ll pay you $1 every week to take Sailor to French class. That’s; a lot of money for a little kid. And at the end of summer you can buy something really cool.” To which my darling boy replied, “Like a patch of flowers for you!”
When Sailor missed his friend Jack in 2007 he asked, “Can we go to his Michigan?”
Sailor: I am not from your planet. I am a slug bug.
Sailor: You know I’m a real caveman who sings? A lot? I’m from a different planet (strumming his air guitar). 4/11/07
Mommy: You’re a little twisty (meaning Sailor’s pants are twisted).
Sailor: You’re a little twisty!
Mac: Maybe when we get back we can play a little ball.
Sailor: No, we can’t play with the little ball.
Mac: Not the little ball, a little ball (by way of explanation).
That same day we saw a sign at the zoo that read: Beaver play table is temporarily out of order due to repairs that need to be made.
6/04.08
Sailor: I’m gonna put some tildies on my belt. Cuz it’s my tildy belt.
6/5/08
She still sick? I think it’s ammonia. --Sailor about Aunt
7/28/08
Sailor: Lemonade 15 cents!
Aunt: 50 cents
Sailor: Fif-tee cents. Whatever. We have lemonade.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Today Sailor is telling me something about being hungry and he used this word, "Salarva."
I cannot help but laugh out loud. "Salarva?" I ask.
"Mom," he says, and rather indignantly, "It's another word for spit!?
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Somehow we end up spending the day “spring cleaning” despite the snow that has been falling since before I woke up. In Sailor’s room I find a box containing debris from my desk. It has been sitting there for over a year. Since I have already cleared through his 1st grade folder I feel I should get my own things removed. I find a slip of paper with a conversation that would have taken place around the time that Sailor was almost 2 and Mac was just 4:
Sailor: Mama, I like that baby Sofie has.
Mommy: Delaina?
Sailor: I like him.
Mac: Is it going to be a him or a her?
Mommy: Delaina’s a her.
I also find this one in the kitchen. A conversation between my sister and Sailor, who is trying to write something.
Aunt: Can I spell it for you?
Sailor: No! (pause) I can write it if you say the numbers.
Today Sailor is telling me something about being hungry and he used this word, "Salarva."
I cannot help but laugh out loud. "Salarva?" I ask.
"Mom," he says, and rather indignantly, "It's another word for spit!?
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Somehow we end up spending the day “spring cleaning” despite the snow that has been falling since before I woke up. In Sailor’s room I find a box containing debris from my desk. It has been sitting there for over a year. Since I have already cleared through his 1st grade folder I feel I should get my own things removed. I find a slip of paper with a conversation that would have taken place around the time that Sailor was almost 2 and Mac was just 4:
Sailor: Mama, I like that baby Sofie has.
Mommy: Delaina?
Sailor: I like him.
Mac: Is it going to be a him or a her?
Mommy: Delaina’s a her.
I also find this one in the kitchen. A conversation between my sister and Sailor, who is trying to write something.
Aunt: Can I spell it for you?
Sailor: No! (pause) I can write it if you say the numbers.
Tuesday, 2.24.09
I am feeling overwhelmed with the demands of my children. They have no consideration for me. This morning I am explaining to Mac that I need him to finish breakfast so that I can leave the kitchen. My face is ugly and my air is wet and I have to go to the bathroom, I explain to him. “I have to go pee really bad!” he says all the sudden. “No, I have to go to the bathroom,” I remind him. Ugh! I don’t get him. I don’t get either of them. It’s always a battle for everything. Who gets to put their feet in which part of the bed, who is going to pick up which toys, whose turn it is to get out of the bathtub first, listening to me when I ask them to put on their shoes, clean up their breakfast dishes, put their things away… it goes on and on and I remain calm for so much of it and I don’t make any headway. I break. I yell. They do as I ask. I feel terrible. They are upset. It’s a lose, lose situation whereby I get them to do what I want but at the price of us all being upset. And every morning Mac asks me if the dishwasher is clean or dirty, despite watching me load dirty dishes into it after putting away all the clean dishes morning after morning. Figure it out, I told him yesterday. I am all-consumed by my children – their health, their welfare, their happiness, protecting them, driving them. Today on our schedule everything from playtime at the indoor inflatable place with a friend to picking up a new violin to a hair cut is all revolving around Sailor. Preparing my taxes, converting and submitting the PTA newsletter, cleaning up, working on my own business, calling again about my health benefits…. There is no time built in to today’s schedule for these things. It’s all about the children. I of course love this but I do wish they could try to understand just a little bit the sacrifices we as parents make for them.
And don’t even get me started on the homework. Mac has so much of it that it is not possible to get it all done in a reasonable we amount of time every evening. Between the daily work – who expects a 2nd-grader to be able to use a dictionary!? To the long term project that requires him to use MY computer… it’s too much for the parents, not to mention the kids!
And don’t even get me started on the homework. Mac has so much of it that it is not possible to get it all done in a reasonable we amount of time every evening. Between the daily work – who expects a 2nd-grader to be able to use a dictionary!? To the long term project that requires him to use MY computer… it’s too much for the parents, not to mention the kids!
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Mac has complained lately of not being able to see out of his glasses. I made him an appointment to see the ophthalmologist for 9:30 this morning. Saturday morning. Before which, we all shower, we shovel the snow, I debate making lunches and decide I just can’t do it today. We are a few minutes early. The doc, an old family friend, is in rare form this morning, as is Mac and I have a hard time not laughing along with the antics of my young son. I bury my mouth in Sailor’s hair.
Mac's eyes have deteriorated to -3.50. Which is why he rarely wears his glasses. I don’t understand this at first. He often doesn’t wear them so I assume he doesn’t really need them. So I have not made the appointment before now. Turns out the exact opposite is true. His glasses are for -1.25 and really don't help him. Things are blurry or slightly less blurry. Oops! Guess I was supposed to have taken him to the eye doc before this! I had no idea! Really. He didn’t complain. How would I know? And no one said I have to take him every year or I would have! I actually feel bad. Not that I didn’t take him but that I have passed down my terrible eyes. It makes me sad that I can’t change this for him.
Sailor and Mac are growing their hair out to look like Jedi Knights. But Sailor couldn’t see. So I cut his bangs. Quite badly. “I can see!” Well, at least I accomplished one of my goals. I can see his beautiful eyes but he looks, well, silly. We have an appointment to get his hair cut for real on Tuesday. If we can wait that long!
Mac's eyes have deteriorated to -3.50. Which is why he rarely wears his glasses. I don’t understand this at first. He often doesn’t wear them so I assume he doesn’t really need them. So I have not made the appointment before now. Turns out the exact opposite is true. His glasses are for -1.25 and really don't help him. Things are blurry or slightly less blurry. Oops! Guess I was supposed to have taken him to the eye doc before this! I had no idea! Really. He didn’t complain. How would I know? And no one said I have to take him every year or I would have! I actually feel bad. Not that I didn’t take him but that I have passed down my terrible eyes. It makes me sad that I can’t change this for him.
Sailor and Mac are growing their hair out to look like Jedi Knights. But Sailor couldn’t see. So I cut his bangs. Quite badly. “I can see!” Well, at least I accomplished one of my goals. I can see his beautiful eyes but he looks, well, silly. We have an appointment to get his hair cut for real on Tuesday. If we can wait that long!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
It’s springtime in Chicago. At least for the week. There has been a great thaw and when Mac and I step out this morning Mac declares, “It’s spring!” Indeed today’s high is set to reach 63 degrees Fahrenheit. I send Mac to school in his puffy vest over a sweatshirt and turtleneck, with hat and mittens. He walks with his friend S.J. and her mom. At 8:10a.m. I phoned her mom to confirm that she would pick up Mac. “Yep, I’m about to wake up S.J. now.” I want to learn her secret for getting her daughter out the door in less than ½ an hour. It takes us no less than 90 minutes to get to the front door in the morning. Mac is walking with S.J. today because Sailor threw up yesterday. “I feel shaky,” were his last words before he spewed breakfast all over the living room rocking chair. I couldn’t move him. I let him puke. When the wave seemed to subside I ran him to the bathroom. He threw up some more. And I realized we were both covered in scrambled eggs, oatmeal and bananas. “What do you think caused this?” he asked me.
Mac catches a ride home with Isabella’s mom. We spend the evening on the couch. Sailor is whining, crying. I feel worse and worse with every hour. At 8pm Mac says he is hungry. I ask him to clean up the living room. I heat up fried rice. He gets into bed without having cleaned up the living room, the kitchen table, the playroom (that we spent Sunday morning cleaning out – and now have a wall of bags and boxes to be donated). He gets a walk around the house. I am displeased. “I don’t want you to grow up to be the kind of husband who leaves his towel on the bathroom floor and his socks on the living room floor,” I tell him. “Cuz you know what will happen then?” “What?” he asks. “Your wife will divorce you!” It is easy for me to be hard on him. I am not sure why, tho. I have always had such high expectations for him and I don’t tolerate him not meeting them. He is still not an easy child. A good boy, yes. But never easy. Yet in some ways so much easier than Sailor. Sailor, it turns out, is rather easy, if I give him what he wants, and thoroughly delightful. Most of the time anyway.
Sailor and I bake cookies today. The batter is yummy. We make three batches. The first is fine. The second is slightly toasty and the third is so toasty the cookies look like chocolate. What a waste of my good ingredients. But that’s what happens when Sailor asks me to come see the big scary spider in the bathroom and I get distracted and head into his room, where I left my computer yesterday so he could watch DVDs in bed after he puked. I check my email and see one from a basketball camp being offered later this week, when the kids are off for Lincoln’s birthday. I decide to do a last-minute email blast to try to get enuf students to run camp at the studio on Thursday. I send that out then build my email list. All the while Sailor is pilfering a large basket that has sat untouched for years on his radiator. “I remember this,” he says to item after item. Baby hair brushes, art work, baby toys, things meant for his room as an infant. “It’s fun to look at things you haven’t seen in a long time, isn’t it?” I ask him in the exact same inflection used for years by Mr. Rogers. I am so good at this home schooling thing! The cookies! It’s just like that book … If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The cookies are indeed done. Toasted. Just the way my dad likes them!
Mac catches a ride home with Isabella’s mom. We spend the evening on the couch. Sailor is whining, crying. I feel worse and worse with every hour. At 8pm Mac says he is hungry. I ask him to clean up the living room. I heat up fried rice. He gets into bed without having cleaned up the living room, the kitchen table, the playroom (that we spent Sunday morning cleaning out – and now have a wall of bags and boxes to be donated). He gets a walk around the house. I am displeased. “I don’t want you to grow up to be the kind of husband who leaves his towel on the bathroom floor and his socks on the living room floor,” I tell him. “Cuz you know what will happen then?” “What?” he asks. “Your wife will divorce you!” It is easy for me to be hard on him. I am not sure why, tho. I have always had such high expectations for him and I don’t tolerate him not meeting them. He is still not an easy child. A good boy, yes. But never easy. Yet in some ways so much easier than Sailor. Sailor, it turns out, is rather easy, if I give him what he wants, and thoroughly delightful. Most of the time anyway.
Sailor and I bake cookies today. The batter is yummy. We make three batches. The first is fine. The second is slightly toasty and the third is so toasty the cookies look like chocolate. What a waste of my good ingredients. But that’s what happens when Sailor asks me to come see the big scary spider in the bathroom and I get distracted and head into his room, where I left my computer yesterday so he could watch DVDs in bed after he puked. I check my email and see one from a basketball camp being offered later this week, when the kids are off for Lincoln’s birthday. I decide to do a last-minute email blast to try to get enuf students to run camp at the studio on Thursday. I send that out then build my email list. All the while Sailor is pilfering a large basket that has sat untouched for years on his radiator. “I remember this,” he says to item after item. Baby hair brushes, art work, baby toys, things meant for his room as an infant. “It’s fun to look at things you haven’t seen in a long time, isn’t it?” I ask him in the exact same inflection used for years by Mr. Rogers. I am so good at this home schooling thing! The cookies! It’s just like that book … If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The cookies are indeed done. Toasted. Just the way my dad likes them!
Monday, February 02, 2009
Perhaps I have said his before, but it bears repeating: I believe the sole purpose of school is to create a chasm between children and their parents thereby making it easier for the children to leave for independent lives when they are grown.
After school Sailor and I walk to pick up Mac. “We’ll walk home and get the car and drive to Judo,” I tell him when we have him walking with us. “Aw, Mom! Why can’t we walk to Judo?!” It’s freezing out and Judo is twice as far as home. Two sets of gi (judo clothes) with belts are excessively heavy as is the hardcover book I am reading today. I have already made the decision to walk home and drive to Judo. I am not asking for an opinion. It’s a done deal. Not for discussion. I am simply telling him our plans.
Both boys change into their gi at Judo. “Sensei is not feeling well,” I hear the mom next to me tell her boys, “behave nicely on the mat today.” I overhear Sensei tell another mom that all he needs is for this class to be over. “I shouldn’t be here today,” he tells the 13 children – 12 boys and 1 girl – “but I am because you have a tournament in 3 weeks…” Blah blah blah… these kids are too young to understand. Just do your work, Mister, I want to tell Sensei. He sits on a chair and calls out instructions that no one listens to. “20 sit ups,” he instructs, as punishment. No one is listening to him then, either. My boys take to wrestling, throwing each other and karate kicking. I beckon them over with a single finger after Sensei has told them to keep their hands off each other. I hand Mac the bag with their clothes. “Go get dressed, we’re leaving.”
I am unimpressed with class today. Sick teacher or not there are too many small children to be disciplined so soon after school by one man. I will have a chat with Sensei and either switch my boys to a class with a lower census or withdraw them altogether. We are now just wasting our time.
At home I am unhappy with my boys and with their class. I make dinner and talk to my good friend on the phone, reading off this week’s spelling words – which range from feet and green to chameleon and wakeful – to her because her daughter is sick this week. Mac spends 15 minutes looking for “adobe” in the dictionary. Sailor has his violin out and is demanding that I pay attention to him because “I can’t do this!” when in fact he can. It’s too much. I have to hang up. And pour myself a glass of wine.
I serve my boys salad. They eat it. They finish their dinner but Sailor can’t seem to do his workbook pages correctly and Mac can‘t seem to write a sentence in which the words are separated by appropriate spaces. I need a break. I leave the room for a few minutes. “Mommy! I need your help!” Sailor calls to me. Sigh.
45 minutes after we re-start his homework after dinner, Mac has 7 definitions on his page, written sloppily, erased sloppily and making only marginal sense. He reads the definitions to me. The last word is “wakeful,” which he has defined as “vigilant.” Do you know what that means? I ask him. “No.” sigh (again). “You can’t define a word with another word if you don’t know what that word means. Find the definition that makes sense.” I can tell I am going to love this 2nd half of 2nd grade so much.
My goal this week is to get my boys into bed on time every night this week. No exceptions, no excuses. It is 6:32pm. Mac has been working on homework long past his allotted 30 minutes. He still has several pages of math and we have to get started on his time capsule. There is no way he will be in bed by 7:30 at this point. But dammit we have to get this to work more than one night (they were in bed by 8 and asleep a few minutes past 8:30 last night). I have been calm all day but I am exceedingly frustrated at this point.
After school Sailor and I walk to pick up Mac. “We’ll walk home and get the car and drive to Judo,” I tell him when we have him walking with us. “Aw, Mom! Why can’t we walk to Judo?!” It’s freezing out and Judo is twice as far as home. Two sets of gi (judo clothes) with belts are excessively heavy as is the hardcover book I am reading today. I have already made the decision to walk home and drive to Judo. I am not asking for an opinion. It’s a done deal. Not for discussion. I am simply telling him our plans.
Both boys change into their gi at Judo. “Sensei is not feeling well,” I hear the mom next to me tell her boys, “behave nicely on the mat today.” I overhear Sensei tell another mom that all he needs is for this class to be over. “I shouldn’t be here today,” he tells the 13 children – 12 boys and 1 girl – “but I am because you have a tournament in 3 weeks…” Blah blah blah… these kids are too young to understand. Just do your work, Mister, I want to tell Sensei. He sits on a chair and calls out instructions that no one listens to. “20 sit ups,” he instructs, as punishment. No one is listening to him then, either. My boys take to wrestling, throwing each other and karate kicking. I beckon them over with a single finger after Sensei has told them to keep their hands off each other. I hand Mac the bag with their clothes. “Go get dressed, we’re leaving.”
I am unimpressed with class today. Sick teacher or not there are too many small children to be disciplined so soon after school by one man. I will have a chat with Sensei and either switch my boys to a class with a lower census or withdraw them altogether. We are now just wasting our time.
At home I am unhappy with my boys and with their class. I make dinner and talk to my good friend on the phone, reading off this week’s spelling words – which range from feet and green to chameleon and wakeful – to her because her daughter is sick this week. Mac spends 15 minutes looking for “adobe” in the dictionary. Sailor has his violin out and is demanding that I pay attention to him because “I can’t do this!” when in fact he can. It’s too much. I have to hang up. And pour myself a glass of wine.
I serve my boys salad. They eat it. They finish their dinner but Sailor can’t seem to do his workbook pages correctly and Mac can‘t seem to write a sentence in which the words are separated by appropriate spaces. I need a break. I leave the room for a few minutes. “Mommy! I need your help!” Sailor calls to me. Sigh.
45 minutes after we re-start his homework after dinner, Mac has 7 definitions on his page, written sloppily, erased sloppily and making only marginal sense. He reads the definitions to me. The last word is “wakeful,” which he has defined as “vigilant.” Do you know what that means? I ask him. “No.” sigh (again). “You can’t define a word with another word if you don’t know what that word means. Find the definition that makes sense.” I can tell I am going to love this 2nd half of 2nd grade so much.
My goal this week is to get my boys into bed on time every night this week. No exceptions, no excuses. It is 6:32pm. Mac has been working on homework long past his allotted 30 minutes. He still has several pages of math and we have to get started on his time capsule. There is no way he will be in bed by 7:30 at this point. But dammit we have to get this to work more than one night (they were in bed by 8 and asleep a few minutes past 8:30 last night). I have been calm all day but I am exceedingly frustrated at this point.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Both boys are looking rather sloppy these days as they do not want their hair cut for reasons I have not fully come to understand.
Sailor comes out after his little preschool class. He has a present. “It’s Ox Day!”
“Ox Day?”
“Happy Chinese New Year!” calls his friend, Clayton.
“Ah, it’s the year of the Ox, isn’t it?”
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Mac is carrying around a book about Tchaikovsky. “What’s the name of this book?” I ask him, sure that he has not correctly read the composer’s name. “Chachavowsky,” he replies.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
We are all sick. Sailor and I are, at least, Mac has a stuffy nose and claims he is sick but also that he wants to stay home and take care of us. "I’ll bring you food, I’ll bring you drinks. I’ll even clean up a little," he tells me. I let him stay home more because I want everyone to feel well for my birthday weekend than because I believe he is truly in the full grips of this beastly cold. He leaves the bedroom with us, where I can no longer rest because the headboard is shaking every time Sailor moves and because my head hurts terribly when I am lying down. Mac and his book retreat to the sofa and he does not do anything to “take care of” us.
Sailor, on the other hand, tells me that he wishes he weren’t sick so he could go out and get me flowers! Sweet thing. I tell him he can draw me a picture of flowers. He is on the living room floor creating with some sort of sticker/marker combo.
Sailor draws me a tall color-appropriate flower with a small me and a small Sailor next to it. The stickers are an arch of hearts. I tape it up near my computer. “Whenever you want to you can get another scotch of tape and take it down and put it up in your room,” he tells me.
Hayden makes breakfast. Cereal with a literal splash of milk. And nukes lots of yummy hash browns. And leaves everything out in the kitchen. He is a darling.
Sailor comes out after his little preschool class. He has a present. “It’s Ox Day!”
“Ox Day?”
“Happy Chinese New Year!” calls his friend, Clayton.
“Ah, it’s the year of the Ox, isn’t it?”
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Mac is carrying around a book about Tchaikovsky. “What’s the name of this book?” I ask him, sure that he has not correctly read the composer’s name. “Chachavowsky,” he replies.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
We are all sick. Sailor and I are, at least, Mac has a stuffy nose and claims he is sick but also that he wants to stay home and take care of us. "I’ll bring you food, I’ll bring you drinks. I’ll even clean up a little," he tells me. I let him stay home more because I want everyone to feel well for my birthday weekend than because I believe he is truly in the full grips of this beastly cold. He leaves the bedroom with us, where I can no longer rest because the headboard is shaking every time Sailor moves and because my head hurts terribly when I am lying down. Mac and his book retreat to the sofa and he does not do anything to “take care of” us.
Sailor, on the other hand, tells me that he wishes he weren’t sick so he could go out and get me flowers! Sweet thing. I tell him he can draw me a picture of flowers. He is on the living room floor creating with some sort of sticker/marker combo.
Sailor draws me a tall color-appropriate flower with a small me and a small Sailor next to it. The stickers are an arch of hearts. I tape it up near my computer. “Whenever you want to you can get another scotch of tape and take it down and put it up in your room,” he tells me.
Hayden makes breakfast. Cereal with a literal splash of milk. And nukes lots of yummy hash browns. And leaves everything out in the kitchen. He is a darling.
Barack Obama
“On this day, we have chosen hope over fear. “
-Barack Obama
January 23, 2009
I watched the inauguration for the first time in my life, accompanied by Sailor, age 5. I cried with hope and with relief that we finally have a real person running our country. A person who really “gets it,” a person not even a decade older than I. What he said above, this strikes the core of my soul, as I have felt nothing but fear since the birth of my first child 7 ½ years ago … since the World Trade Center exploded and collapsed in front of our eyes. Since I first heard about North Korea’s desperate hatred for America and the range of its missiles. Since a lawyer spelled out the details of standard custody and visitation arrangements. I have felt nothing but fear. Barack Obama’s pledge to help our country out of every last one of its messes makes me feel hope. Real hope. For the first time in many years. No. for the first time ever. Because before all “that” happened I had no reason not to assume all was well and my future was secure. I had no need for hope.
Mac’s wiggly top tooth twists around during our television viewing of the Inaugural Ball. For days I have been asking him, “Give me your tooth.” This time I reach in and pluck it like a rose from his mouth. For the 2nd time in 7 years he is left with just one tooth up top. But while he looked weird, funny, like Oliver Dragon from Kukla Fran and Ollie then, he looks like an adorable, freckled, bespectackled, floppy-haired 2nd grader this time. It’s cuteness at its peak.
In bed that night he snuggles up close and tight. “I’ll see if you are the tooth fairy or not, Mom.” Sailor squeezes in on me from the other side. When they are asleep I do my work. In the morning Mac feels beneath his pillow and retrieves the tiny blue felt pouch I have made for him. (“What if the tooth fairy takes the pouch?!” he asked last night.) I have to unfasten the gold safety pin. Mac correctly identifies two ½ dollars.
Obama is working hard and we are back to life as usual, but with a sense of purpose. Or rather, with a sense that we need to seek a purpose.
Mac does not have school today. Last night I explained to my boys that they will not complain about their activities today. Sailor goes willingly to gymnastics, Mac right behind him. He also doesn’t blink about having to go down to his preschool class. I spirit Mac across the street for lunch while Sailor is in class. He never knows we have left the building. It is our little secret.
Neither of my boys understands why I walk to the east to go to Judo class. We walk for nearly a block. “Why are we going this way?” “Where are we going?” “I don’t recognize this way.” “I never walked over here before.” “How do we get to Judo from here?” Oh thee of little faith in their mama.
Tonight I am looking at Mac’s new smile. So much of his face, his unique look, has been about his smile. His overbite and the two little teeth popping out over his lower lip, separated by the gap that all baby teeth have. And yet I see his new smile and accept it so easily. A gap-toothed smile. He closes is teeth together now to show it. It is so different. So cute. It is a new look and just as lovable as before.
Sailor is in a very complimenting mood tonight and lately, for that matter. “I like your voice, Mommy.” He tells me, “You smell good. You are warm and soft. I like your face and even when you are a little bit old I like your body because you look young.”
“You look 32,” Mac chimes in. Sailor has been clingy of late, but then so have I. There is something wonderfully loving between us. Mac is jealous. He is away all day and when he comes back … he is just not small and soft and sweet-smelling any more. And Sailor still is.
Mac is wearing a green fuzzy pajama top and brown corduroy pants. I ask him about it. He tells me that a StarWars character dresses in these colors. When he says this I wonder when children go from thinking they can change their clothes to become a character they admire to feeling deep emotional pain from the knowledge that no matter what they wear or how they style their hair they are who they are and will never be their idol. I wonder when reality becomes reality for children.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
I find a slip of paper with a note from my sister. She had asked Mac: Do eyebrows serve a purpose or are they left over from our evolution from apes? To which Mac replied: [They are left over from] Our revolutionary apes.
-Barack Obama
January 23, 2009
I watched the inauguration for the first time in my life, accompanied by Sailor, age 5. I cried with hope and with relief that we finally have a real person running our country. A person who really “gets it,” a person not even a decade older than I. What he said above, this strikes the core of my soul, as I have felt nothing but fear since the birth of my first child 7 ½ years ago … since the World Trade Center exploded and collapsed in front of our eyes. Since I first heard about North Korea’s desperate hatred for America and the range of its missiles. Since a lawyer spelled out the details of standard custody and visitation arrangements. I have felt nothing but fear. Barack Obama’s pledge to help our country out of every last one of its messes makes me feel hope. Real hope. For the first time in many years. No. for the first time ever. Because before all “that” happened I had no reason not to assume all was well and my future was secure. I had no need for hope.
Mac’s wiggly top tooth twists around during our television viewing of the Inaugural Ball. For days I have been asking him, “Give me your tooth.” This time I reach in and pluck it like a rose from his mouth. For the 2nd time in 7 years he is left with just one tooth up top. But while he looked weird, funny, like Oliver Dragon from Kukla Fran and Ollie then, he looks like an adorable, freckled, bespectackled, floppy-haired 2nd grader this time. It’s cuteness at its peak.
In bed that night he snuggles up close and tight. “I’ll see if you are the tooth fairy or not, Mom.” Sailor squeezes in on me from the other side. When they are asleep I do my work. In the morning Mac feels beneath his pillow and retrieves the tiny blue felt pouch I have made for him. (“What if the tooth fairy takes the pouch?!” he asked last night.) I have to unfasten the gold safety pin. Mac correctly identifies two ½ dollars.
Obama is working hard and we are back to life as usual, but with a sense of purpose. Or rather, with a sense that we need to seek a purpose.
Mac does not have school today. Last night I explained to my boys that they will not complain about their activities today. Sailor goes willingly to gymnastics, Mac right behind him. He also doesn’t blink about having to go down to his preschool class. I spirit Mac across the street for lunch while Sailor is in class. He never knows we have left the building. It is our little secret.
Neither of my boys understands why I walk to the east to go to Judo class. We walk for nearly a block. “Why are we going this way?” “Where are we going?” “I don’t recognize this way.” “I never walked over here before.” “How do we get to Judo from here?” Oh thee of little faith in their mama.
Tonight I am looking at Mac’s new smile. So much of his face, his unique look, has been about his smile. His overbite and the two little teeth popping out over his lower lip, separated by the gap that all baby teeth have. And yet I see his new smile and accept it so easily. A gap-toothed smile. He closes is teeth together now to show it. It is so different. So cute. It is a new look and just as lovable as before.
Sailor is in a very complimenting mood tonight and lately, for that matter. “I like your voice, Mommy.” He tells me, “You smell good. You are warm and soft. I like your face and even when you are a little bit old I like your body because you look young.”
“You look 32,” Mac chimes in. Sailor has been clingy of late, but then so have I. There is something wonderfully loving between us. Mac is jealous. He is away all day and when he comes back … he is just not small and soft and sweet-smelling any more. And Sailor still is.
Mac is wearing a green fuzzy pajama top and brown corduroy pants. I ask him about it. He tells me that a StarWars character dresses in these colors. When he says this I wonder when children go from thinking they can change their clothes to become a character they admire to feeling deep emotional pain from the knowledge that no matter what they wear or how they style their hair they are who they are and will never be their idol. I wonder when reality becomes reality for children.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
I find a slip of paper with a note from my sister. She had asked Mac: Do eyebrows serve a purpose or are they left over from our evolution from apes? To which Mac replied: [They are left over from] Our revolutionary apes.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Early this week I had a dream that after just a week and a half back to school they were letting the kids out for another winter break. We have not been out of the house since Wednesday. There is no school on Monday. It is somewhat unsettling when your dreams come to fruition. Even the good ones.
It has been so cold these past two days that I simply did not see the value of dragging Mac to school only to have to return for him, painfully, at the end of the day. So we stayed home. Where it is so warm I am sweating.
Yesterday we tried a day of home schooling. Both boys did countless workbook pages, Mac studied his spelling words, completed a word search of the same, engaged in imaginative play using playfoam with Sailor… Sailor practiced his teeny tiny violin. Mac read a Magic Treehouse book in its entirety in 90 minutes Wednesday night and both boys listened while I read them a book from the school library, also in its entirety. It was a successful day for them. And for me. I put all the summer photos in albums, updated our website, sent a slew of emails, and pasted Sailor’s birthday photos into an album.
This morning I am up a few minutes late and making breakfast when my mother calls to tell me it’s 10 below zero outside. We have another day of home schooling. This one includes more violin, more workbook, a states game that bores us all, planting of seeds, and story reading. I consult a friend, a real home schooler, and she praises my efforts. It’s not all about the kitchen table, she assures me.
Monday, January 19, 2009
“Mac, did you put your snowpants on?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I didn’t, too.”
“I didn’t ‘either’.”
“I said I dindn’t”
Late in the day Mac falls off a dining room chair for no apparent reason; meanwhile Sailor is at the bottom of the stairwell shouting thru the mail slot. I don’t know who is out there, if anyone. It is unlikely that there are any people walking the streets in this cold weather. We are waiting for friends to arrive. Sailor is in dire need of a nap that I was hoping sleep would overtake him while I was reading one of the latest Ramona books. I think the big bowl of popcorn was a distraction, however. That and his inability to locate Jango Fett.
Meanwhile, I receive an email survey that asks me to describe my life is a series of single words. A difficult task for a writer, but an interesting challenge.
My boys await the arrival of the tiny girl twins with fun, old fashioned names. They went to school today. At dinner time Sailor’s tiny 3 ½-year-old friend will come for pizza with his mom. I am ready for her arrival, as it will be accompanied by wine.
After my boys sulked gravely after asking to watch a movie at 9:00 on Tuesday night, their television privileges were revoked until February. Which has made these past two days not only extremely productive for us all, but also very long. At 5 minutes after noon, Mac inquired: Is it still morning? Finally it is no longer morning. Afternoon goes faster than afternoon, tho the boys ask regularly if school is over yet. It’s a long day. But the house is picked up and the floors are vacuumed and the bathroom is wiped down as is the kitchen. The garbage is out, Mac’s clothes are put away, my bed is made.
The phone rings. Mac heads for it. But then just stands there watching it ring. “Answer it. Or give it to me!” He hands me the phone and shrugs. “It’s some medical thing.” The twins’ mom is a doctor.
Mac hovers near. He smells sweaty. I am about to send him in for a quick shower before the girls’ arrival, but then I remember he has already showered today. It is hard having a smelly 7-year-old. It’s going to be a long road through adolescence.
The twins arrive. They are tiny, like 7-year-olds are meant to be. Not like my smelly 7-year-old who is coming closer and closer to reaching my full height and will surely overtake me in a matter of a few short years.
They tell me all about the way their mom woke them early and then forgot to make them a lunch and then threw together some snacks and then one twin had to go with her friend (also our friend) who has CF to get her enzymes and so she only had 5 minutes to eat… all in response to my inquiry as to whether or not they were hungry for a snack. I prepare apples, oranges, carrots, organic bunny crackers, and 100% juice boxes.
In the dining room I set to a project of cutting out puzzle pieces printed on cardstock. From the playroom I hear a conversation that leads around to my children’s father.
He doesn’t live here, Mac tells his friends.
Why not? They want to know.
“Because he’s gay!” Sailor is overtired and overwired.
“What’s gay?” one of the girls ask. I wait to hear what my boys answer will be this time.
“It means you’re not part of the family anymore,” Sailor says.
Mac adds, “It means you’re not supposed to marry a girl. He was born with it. He grew up with it.” As an afterthought Mac adds, “He’s also Jewish.”
“When Mac was little,” Sailor tells the girls, “and he comed home every day, he used to yell at him.”
“He was a harassing dad,” Mac explains.
A moment or two later one of the girls asks Mac what he is eating.
“Carrots.”
“Do you like carrots?”
“Yeah,” Mac answers.
“Cool.”
When the girls get bored they find me in the dining room and learn all about scholarships. And our ancestors, the dead ones, Mac says. All the while Mac is bored and looking at the floor closely. “When are these floor boards going to fit together?!” he asks in an exasperated, attention-getting voice.
“You have a Barbie in there,” one girl tells me.
“A Barbie?”She points to my collectors item Sandy from Grease Barbie, still in its original packaging.
“You got her in Greece?”
“No, it’s a movie.”
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Sailor comes in with a Chinese hat on his head. Attached to the hat is a long braid. “Mommy, is this real hair?”
“No.”
“Goose hair?”
“No.”
“Sheep hair?”
“No, synthetic hair.”
“See Mac,” he calls to his brother as he exits the room, “It’s not real hair.”
It has been so cold these past two days that I simply did not see the value of dragging Mac to school only to have to return for him, painfully, at the end of the day. So we stayed home. Where it is so warm I am sweating.
Yesterday we tried a day of home schooling. Both boys did countless workbook pages, Mac studied his spelling words, completed a word search of the same, engaged in imaginative play using playfoam with Sailor… Sailor practiced his teeny tiny violin. Mac read a Magic Treehouse book in its entirety in 90 minutes Wednesday night and both boys listened while I read them a book from the school library, also in its entirety. It was a successful day for them. And for me. I put all the summer photos in albums, updated our website, sent a slew of emails, and pasted Sailor’s birthday photos into an album.
This morning I am up a few minutes late and making breakfast when my mother calls to tell me it’s 10 below zero outside. We have another day of home schooling. This one includes more violin, more workbook, a states game that bores us all, planting of seeds, and story reading. I consult a friend, a real home schooler, and she praises my efforts. It’s not all about the kitchen table, she assures me.
Monday, January 19, 2009
“Mac, did you put your snowpants on?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I didn’t, too.”
“I didn’t ‘either’.”
“I said I dindn’t”
Late in the day Mac falls off a dining room chair for no apparent reason; meanwhile Sailor is at the bottom of the stairwell shouting thru the mail slot. I don’t know who is out there, if anyone. It is unlikely that there are any people walking the streets in this cold weather. We are waiting for friends to arrive. Sailor is in dire need of a nap that I was hoping sleep would overtake him while I was reading one of the latest Ramona books. I think the big bowl of popcorn was a distraction, however. That and his inability to locate Jango Fett.
Meanwhile, I receive an email survey that asks me to describe my life is a series of single words. A difficult task for a writer, but an interesting challenge.
My boys await the arrival of the tiny girl twins with fun, old fashioned names. They went to school today. At dinner time Sailor’s tiny 3 ½-year-old friend will come for pizza with his mom. I am ready for her arrival, as it will be accompanied by wine.
After my boys sulked gravely after asking to watch a movie at 9:00 on Tuesday night, their television privileges were revoked until February. Which has made these past two days not only extremely productive for us all, but also very long. At 5 minutes after noon, Mac inquired: Is it still morning? Finally it is no longer morning. Afternoon goes faster than afternoon, tho the boys ask regularly if school is over yet. It’s a long day. But the house is picked up and the floors are vacuumed and the bathroom is wiped down as is the kitchen. The garbage is out, Mac’s clothes are put away, my bed is made.
The phone rings. Mac heads for it. But then just stands there watching it ring. “Answer it. Or give it to me!” He hands me the phone and shrugs. “It’s some medical thing.” The twins’ mom is a doctor.
Mac hovers near. He smells sweaty. I am about to send him in for a quick shower before the girls’ arrival, but then I remember he has already showered today. It is hard having a smelly 7-year-old. It’s going to be a long road through adolescence.
The twins arrive. They are tiny, like 7-year-olds are meant to be. Not like my smelly 7-year-old who is coming closer and closer to reaching my full height and will surely overtake me in a matter of a few short years.
They tell me all about the way their mom woke them early and then forgot to make them a lunch and then threw together some snacks and then one twin had to go with her friend (also our friend) who has CF to get her enzymes and so she only had 5 minutes to eat… all in response to my inquiry as to whether or not they were hungry for a snack. I prepare apples, oranges, carrots, organic bunny crackers, and 100% juice boxes.
In the dining room I set to a project of cutting out puzzle pieces printed on cardstock. From the playroom I hear a conversation that leads around to my children’s father.
He doesn’t live here, Mac tells his friends.
Why not? They want to know.
“Because he’s gay!” Sailor is overtired and overwired.
“What’s gay?” one of the girls ask. I wait to hear what my boys answer will be this time.
“It means you’re not part of the family anymore,” Sailor says.
Mac adds, “It means you’re not supposed to marry a girl. He was born with it. He grew up with it.” As an afterthought Mac adds, “He’s also Jewish.”
“When Mac was little,” Sailor tells the girls, “and he comed home every day, he used to yell at him.”
“He was a harassing dad,” Mac explains.
A moment or two later one of the girls asks Mac what he is eating.
“Carrots.”
“Do you like carrots?”
“Yeah,” Mac answers.
“Cool.”
When the girls get bored they find me in the dining room and learn all about scholarships. And our ancestors, the dead ones, Mac says. All the while Mac is bored and looking at the floor closely. “When are these floor boards going to fit together?!” he asks in an exasperated, attention-getting voice.
“You have a Barbie in there,” one girl tells me.
“A Barbie?”She points to my collectors item Sandy from Grease Barbie, still in its original packaging.
“You got her in Greece?”
“No, it’s a movie.”
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Sailor comes in with a Chinese hat on his head. Attached to the hat is a long braid. “Mommy, is this real hair?”
“No.”
“Goose hair?”
“No.”
“Sheep hair?”
“No, synthetic hair.”
“See Mac,” he calls to his brother as he exits the room, “It’s not real hair.”
Monday, January 5, 2009
Mac did not want to go to school this morning. “I’m not going!” he cried from under his pillow. Both boys wanted me to return to bed and snuggle. I felt so bad making Mac get up and go! Sailor, on the other hand, figured out that his new class at the park district is actually preschool and he told us this and he actually seemed very proud to be going to school! Will wonders never cease? I guess taking a year off school was a good plan for him! He was exhausted tho -- gymnastics, preschool and Judo all today!
I was the only mom who stayed at the park district while the children were in class. 2½ hours of reading time. Enjoyable but physically uncomfortable. I was about halfway thru the duration of the class and beginning to think perhaps I was overreacting and being way too overprotective. It’s a public building, true, but, “We’ve never had a problem,” the director assured me. I am actually considering running home to do some housework when a homeless man wanders in and goes straight to the men’s room in the basement, which is right next to the room Sailor is in. He is down there so long I begin to imagine he must have slipped by me while I was deeply engrossed in this strange novel I am reading, called Saul and Patsy that rings a little too true to my own thought processes. But indeed he finally emerges, having apparently washed up and redressed. And I am reconvicted that I belong right where I sit!
After class Sailor says he had a bad day! All 2 hours of it. Becuz of lunch, which he didn't want to eat all of. I think he had a great time, actually.
January 7, 2009
So I am having a really, really crummy day today. I pick up Mac and we trudge thru snow many long blocks to get to his piano lesson and Sailor's new viloin lesson. We walk into the Old Town school and guess what unfriendly face is there?! A mom I had to kick out of playgroup when Hayden was about 19,months old, and who practically ruined my birthday that year (that day!) by calling me names?! UGH!!! Her little girl is pretty and there is a little brother, about 3. There were so many people there that it was easy to be too distracted to see her. But I try to go in the office and there she is then I am going to go into the bathroom and I could hear them in there! I am sure she will never say a word to me but if she does I will pretend I don't remember her: "So many people came thru our playgroup and I just don't have a great memory from those early mommy days!" Or better yet, a totally dumb, "Your daughter is really pretty. What's her name?" might just suffice!
In the evening I am recapping my day to a friend over IM:
had to shovel snow before school, so was wiped out before we even got moving... had to put air in the tires of Sailor's stroller so had to push that thru the snow (not fun)... Alderman's office would not help me with the parking ticket that they gave me misinformation to contest with back in August, so have to probably take Sailor out of the class I was dropping him off at when I got the ticket, so that I can afford to pay the ticket... came home to an irritating email from Mac and Sailor's father, which really pushed me over... pushed Sailor in the stroler thru the snow to get Mac from school and get to piano (Mac) and violin (Sailor)... long walk but ok... got to music lessons to find 17,000 people in waiting area, no where to sit, take off or hang wet snow gear (and yes, my kids were fully bundled including boots and snow pants)... shall I go on? Are you mortified yet? then I see this woman who I had a HUGE fight with about 6 years ago when I had to kick her and her daughter out of Mac's playgroup and she called me all sorts of terrible names and it was my birthday! She is there in the lobby with her kids... and of course I look like crap from being out in the snow all day... and she is really not someone I want to see AT ALL ...
and then, the coup de grace... Sailor's new violin teacher (he just started the lessons today) totally chewed me out for not having a small enought violin... she went on and on and on...
and she was so LOUD I wanted to tell her we were not deaf! and then she told me I had to stay in the classroom and she suggetsed I might want to take notes and I told her I had left my bag downstairs cuz I hadn't planned on sitting in on the lesson... so I texted my sister and she actually said to me, "SuperMommy, if you are not going to pay attention, you might as well go back downstairs." I told her I was totally paying attention. So the witch had the nerve to ask me to show her what she had just shown Sailor. Which I did! Ha!
Then she told me that if we don't have the right violin in 2 weeks we should not come back...
and that if we indeed were not planning to come back I should let her know asap becuz she doesn't want to waste her time, as she has other students waiting for lessons...
Thursday, January 8, 2009
So far this year sucks.
I made a late-in-the-day decision to pull my boys out of French class. It was a heart wrenching decision but at 7:23 pm we are fed, Mac’s homework is done, his backpack is packed up for tomorrow (I think), they are bathed, they had playtime aplenty and we are ready to have stories. I wish we could drop out of all our activities. I would love to drop the piano/violin fiasco on Wednesdays. And I could do without Judo at the moment too.
Meanwhile as the boys are in the bath I change into pajamas. “I can see your boobies,” Mac says. “They’re pretty,” Sailor says. Nice.
Story time.
I was the only mom who stayed at the park district while the children were in class. 2½ hours of reading time. Enjoyable but physically uncomfortable. I was about halfway thru the duration of the class and beginning to think perhaps I was overreacting and being way too overprotective. It’s a public building, true, but, “We’ve never had a problem,” the director assured me. I am actually considering running home to do some housework when a homeless man wanders in and goes straight to the men’s room in the basement, which is right next to the room Sailor is in. He is down there so long I begin to imagine he must have slipped by me while I was deeply engrossed in this strange novel I am reading, called Saul and Patsy that rings a little too true to my own thought processes. But indeed he finally emerges, having apparently washed up and redressed. And I am reconvicted that I belong right where I sit!
After class Sailor says he had a bad day! All 2 hours of it. Becuz of lunch, which he didn't want to eat all of. I think he had a great time, actually.
January 7, 2009
So I am having a really, really crummy day today. I pick up Mac and we trudge thru snow many long blocks to get to his piano lesson and Sailor's new viloin lesson. We walk into the Old Town school and guess what unfriendly face is there?! A mom I had to kick out of playgroup when Hayden was about 19,months old, and who practically ruined my birthday that year (that day!) by calling me names?! UGH!!! Her little girl is pretty and there is a little brother, about 3. There were so many people there that it was easy to be too distracted to see her. But I try to go in the office and there she is then I am going to go into the bathroom and I could hear them in there! I am sure she will never say a word to me but if she does I will pretend I don't remember her: "So many people came thru our playgroup and I just don't have a great memory from those early mommy days!" Or better yet, a totally dumb, "Your daughter is really pretty. What's her name?" might just suffice!
In the evening I am recapping my day to a friend over IM:
had to shovel snow before school, so was wiped out before we even got moving... had to put air in the tires of Sailor's stroller so had to push that thru the snow (not fun)... Alderman's office would not help me with the parking ticket that they gave me misinformation to contest with back in August, so have to probably take Sailor out of the class I was dropping him off at when I got the ticket, so that I can afford to pay the ticket... came home to an irritating email from Mac and Sailor's father, which really pushed me over... pushed Sailor in the stroler thru the snow to get Mac from school and get to piano (Mac) and violin (Sailor)... long walk but ok... got to music lessons to find 17,000 people in waiting area, no where to sit, take off or hang wet snow gear (and yes, my kids were fully bundled including boots and snow pants)... shall I go on? Are you mortified yet? then I see this woman who I had a HUGE fight with about 6 years ago when I had to kick her and her daughter out of Mac's playgroup and she called me all sorts of terrible names and it was my birthday! She is there in the lobby with her kids... and of course I look like crap from being out in the snow all day... and she is really not someone I want to see AT ALL ...
and then, the coup de grace... Sailor's new violin teacher (he just started the lessons today) totally chewed me out for not having a small enought violin... she went on and on and on...
and she was so LOUD I wanted to tell her we were not deaf! and then she told me I had to stay in the classroom and she suggetsed I might want to take notes and I told her I had left my bag downstairs cuz I hadn't planned on sitting in on the lesson... so I texted my sister and she actually said to me, "SuperMommy, if you are not going to pay attention, you might as well go back downstairs." I told her I was totally paying attention. So the witch had the nerve to ask me to show her what she had just shown Sailor. Which I did! Ha!
Then she told me that if we don't have the right violin in 2 weeks we should not come back...
and that if we indeed were not planning to come back I should let her know asap becuz she doesn't want to waste her time, as she has other students waiting for lessons...
Thursday, January 8, 2009
So far this year sucks.
I made a late-in-the-day decision to pull my boys out of French class. It was a heart wrenching decision but at 7:23 pm we are fed, Mac’s homework is done, his backpack is packed up for tomorrow (I think), they are bathed, they had playtime aplenty and we are ready to have stories. I wish we could drop out of all our activities. I would love to drop the piano/violin fiasco on Wednesdays. And I could do without Judo at the moment too.
Meanwhile as the boys are in the bath I change into pajamas. “I can see your boobies,” Mac says. “They’re pretty,” Sailor says. Nice.
Story time.
How We Spent Our Winter Break
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Well, back to school tomorrow. I can't tell you how bummed I am. And how tired it makes me feel just thinking about it all. In addition to all we had going on previously, tomorrow Sailor starts a new class on Monday and Friday afternoons after gymnastics. It’s a preschool class at the park district. But because it is in the same room where he used to take a Mom & Tots class that we called Circle Time, he thinks he is going to Circle Time for Big Kids! He will also be starting violin lessons while Mac is in piano lessons. There goes his Wednesday afternoon nap! I’ll have to be more vigilant about bed time!
So with 14 days of holiday behind us, I struggle to figure out where the time went. It seems all we did over break was go to the hospital and the art studio and celebrate stuff (which is, I suppse, what this break was meant for). I guess that is all we did…
We started our break immediately after school on Friday afternoon with a party at the Judo dojo. At the end of which Mac cut his eyebrow open on a camera lens requiring a trip to the ER and 3 stitches.
Saturday we lay around not doing much while Mac’s eye started to heal. In the afternoon we took a “quick trip” to the suburban outdoor mall so I could exchange a pair of winter boots and return another. Our quick trip involved Mac suddenly claiming to be starving and the need for a bit of dinner. We had a nice time and nearly $30 at Corner Bakery and spent some time in the book store to arrive home at 9pm. There was nothing quick about this trip.
The weather and a total lack of plans kept us in on Sunday and Monday. While I don’t normally stay in specifically because of extreme cold, I saw no reason to create plans just to go freeze our patooties off! We had a marathon of DVDs while I read a fascinating book on the 1958 Our Lady of the Angels School fire. On Monday night I realized we would have to venture out on Tuesday no matter what because we had just about nothing left to eat here. Really. Nothing. As evidenced by the use of the last morsels of three differnt types of cheese melted on totillas with beans, and a bowl of cereal served for dinner. I am actually feeling very poor tonight, with no food to serve.
Tuesday morning we are committed to the art studio. Afterwards we get groceries and probably run some last-minute Christmas errands but I can no longer recall.
Wednesday is Christmas Eve and my sister and I have spent a great deal of time attempting to recreate our family tradition of Christmas Eve Dinner at My Pi … our favorite pizza restaurant, which closed unexpectedly in early summer. My parents are not cooperating with our plans, claiming too much to do to get ready for Christmas. Meanwhile Mac has to get his stitches out but is terrified and so spends the day sleeping in my bed. By the time I drag him out and make him get dressed the day is nearly over and we have done nothing. Sailor is also afraid and opts to stay with my parents. I take Mac to Starbucks on the way to the ER, where we wait long enough to draw all over the paper on the table in the exam room and ransack the drawers in the room for “art” supplies to make a little tongue depressor puppet in a band-aid bikini and gauze pad skirt. Mac’s stitches come out and we have a very elegant family dinner at Four Farthings. Which costs roughly 4x more than our usual dinner at My Pi. Lucky for my parents my sister and I have offered to foot this bill – the fist in a string of expensive dinners we enjoy over break.
At home my parents have some weird freak out about turning off the Christmas lights so that we can light the Hanukkah candles. I gently try to remind all assembled that for nearly 45 years we have had a mixed-religion family that almost yearly requires some crossover of holidays. My dad throws a mild snit, which I catch on video, along with his beautiful lighting of the candles. We lay out cookies for Santa and Mac writes a note asking for things Santa has not planned to deliver.
We retreat upstairs and my sister watches my boys briefly while I stuff stockings downstairs.
Christmas morning … Santa has left two small toys upstairs for Mac and Sailor. Mac brings me a small pack of Pokemon cards, proving once and for all the existence of Santa, because no way would Mommy ever buy Pokes! Mac also has a bell that Santa brought, per his request in the note last night. Sailor shows me very exciting Playmobiles guys. We open gifts from friends and distant family while we wait to go downstairs. We read a new book, Walter the Farting Dog. My dad calls at 8:30 and we are downstairs in moments.
We starts with stockings and my dad retreats to the bathroom. You couldn’t have done that before we started?, I think. But I don’t say. Everyone gets nice things. Mac gets an Indiana Jones Lego thing called the Jungle Cutter from Santa and Sailor gets Playmobiles. My dad goes to the bathroom a few more times and I assume he is having tummy trouble. I ask my mom… her eyes tear up and she won’t tell us what is wrong. I don’t remember anything else about opening gifts at my parents’ house on Christmas morning.
Back upstairs by 9:30 I start putting together breakfast. My sister and I scour the Internet for reasons why my dad is suddenly unable to pee.
I send my sister to the shower and make breakfast for my boys. Call the doctor, who tells me to take my dad to the ER. Iron my trousers. “Why don’t you just wear jeans?” my sister asks. Two reasons: my jeans are not clean and it’s Christmas and I don’t wear jeans in Christmas. I pack food for the kids, dry shoes, and new toys and books.
I make phone calls from the ER vestibule to cancel the Christmas party at my parents’ house. My children impress me with 4 ½ hours of nonstop good behavior while we wait in the ER for my father to get some relief and some answers.
We leave when we know there is nothing more to be done for the day and my boys want to open the rest of their gifts. At home my sister unloads as much food as she can find from my mom’s fridge and brings it all up for a feast. The table is still set for 4, as only my boys ate breakfast this morning. It is a Christmas I do not want to remember but it is a Christmas I will never forget. Mac says it is the worst Christmas ever. I deny this, stating that the worst Christmas would be the one we did not get to spend together, and indeed this one was spent lovingly together.
Friday morning we haul over to the art studio for Camp. Calls to Dad reveal no new news but that he will spend the day having tests.
Saturday we spend the morning gathering our wits and the afternoon picking up lunch and visiting my parents in the hospital. My dad will come home tomorrow, hopefully. His bladder clear, his tests negative, and his diverticulitis under control with antibiotics. There is nothing wrong except that he has outlived his prognosis for an 8-year survival post-radiation for prostate cancer back in 1995 and is now suffering from some special unexpected side effects of the treatment. Hurray! We drive home in the dark, tho it is barely past 4:30. A quick stop at home reveals that the sudden drop in temperature, which has allowed us to leave the house without coats and has melted almost all the dirty snow around the city and suburbs, has not caused the basement to flood. Neither has the rain. So we hop back into the car and spend the evening with our Indian friends, eating pizza and drinking wine and relaxing in general. It’s been a challenging week.
Sunday my dad is discharged and while he waits to come home with my mom I dash around the house making everything clean and shiny for his arrival, which will coincide with the arrival of 6 of my cousins and my ex-husband. My parents’ Hanukkah dinner has been rerouted to my house. I enlist everyone via email to bring something. I order pizzas and demand the online price, not the over-the-phone jacked-up price. I tell everyone also via email that they will have to leave by 8pm so as to not over exhaust my father and so as to allow my kids to get to bed reasonably on time.
Monday is another Camp day, and the boys and I have kindly offered to fill in for my mom. After Camp we run to Target and return more than $60 worth of Christmas gifts. We return with Kung Fu Panda on DVD. At Trader Joe’s I carry Sailor, sleeping, thru the store as Mac assists me with the shopping. He picks out my dad’s red roses for my mom’s birthday tomorrow.
Tuesday is my mom’s birthday so we fill in for her at Camp again and run back to Target for eggs and Q-tips. Back at home I set about baking a cake for Mom, cleaning up the kitchen afterwards, running a bath for my boys, cleaning them up and dressing them for dinner. By the time my sister brings my mom back from her birthday lunch I am ready to take her for a manicure and coffee and my boys look very spiffy. Mom and I relax at the manicurists with our lattes and all the other women prepping for the next holiday. When we get back everyone is starving. I quick-change into an outfit I would never have thought to put together before. And we are off to a wonderful Italian dinner at Via Carducci. After our waiter sings “Happy Birthday Dear Customer” to my mom, we head home for cake and gifts.
Wednesday is New Year’s Eve and I sleep in a little. Sailor wants to stay home for the day but we have been planning this day all year. My mom drives us to Navy Pier just after noon and after watching a great juggler performance, we spend the afternoon at the Chicago Children’s Museum. We even make a skyscraper, which we put on video, which can be viewed on the Internet. Dinner is our annual eat-whatever-you-want dinner. Sailor is mostly interested in French fries, so despite our venue – Bubba Gump Shrimp -- he chooses the kids’ meal of a small hamburger and fries, an orange slice and blue jello. I order him a root beer to wash it down. Mac and I share a big display of 4 kinds of shrimp and fries. We eat everything and return to the museum for another hour of playtime. Where I get very tired. I think it must have been the tropical drink I treated myself to. We leave the museum and spend a fortune on ice cream at Ben&Jerry’s. MMMM!!!!! The fireworks are about to start. Except we are not dressed well for the extreme cold, having opted instead for our more fashionable outdoor wear. We watch most of the fireworks from outside then finish up through a window. We are freezing when my mom picks us up. Sailor is asleep when we get home. Mac is asleep before I can get my pajamas on. I am asleep by 10:30. My parents call just after midnight. I have missed another holiday.
Thursday morning we attend the pajama brunch at Café BabaReeba, our favorite tapas restaurant. We have gone three years in a row now. When breakfast is over we walk home and get ready for our annual (10th? 11th?) New Year’s Day Hangover/Leftovers (as in, bring whichever you have) Party. 24 people fill my home and polish off the bottles of cheap Riesling I have stashed in my fridge. They bring cheese and crackers and children to play with and good cheer. It’s a holiday celebration at last. By the time our guests – mine, my sister’s, my boys’, and my parents’ – leave, I have nothing left to clean up but vacuuming.
Friday morning we are awakened by the garbage men. And I have not yet brought out the cans. Reprising my Thursday morning exit in pajamas, I run out and the garbage guys help me with the cans and I dash back in for cookies to give them. We pack up for the day, I give my dad a shot, drag my boys to the bank and make it to the burbs by 11a.m. where we have lunch and spend a few hours in a ball pit with some of our best friends. We are home by dinner, tho both boys are asleep when we arrive. We eat dinner while watching movies and then go to bed.
On Saturday we decide to run downtown to the Lego store to exchange some more of our Christmas gifts. We stop at the bank first. And good thing, as I learn on boarding the bus that the price has gone up to $2.25. We are home by 12:30 and in the car 20 minutes later to make a 1pm date with Mac and Sailor’s friends Isabella & Ryan. The kids spend most of the afternoon bickering, crying and calling for help. By the time they are really into togetherness, it is time to go. Mac has a meltdown at Target because he is thirsty and I ask him to wait a few minutes. Both boys get to sit in a ten-minute time out to think about how not to behave in public when we get home. We eat, they build Legos, I work, we are in bed before 8 but the book I am reading them, Matilda, has longish chapters and it is 9 before they close their eyes.
And now here we are. I have helped Mac screw parts to make a robot. They have helped me put away laundry. Mac wants to go on a play date this afternoon but Sailor doesn’t want to let him and I am torn over fairness issues. We play Mancala… and so the day goes!
Well, back to school tomorrow. I can't tell you how bummed I am. And how tired it makes me feel just thinking about it all. In addition to all we had going on previously, tomorrow Sailor starts a new class on Monday and Friday afternoons after gymnastics. It’s a preschool class at the park district. But because it is in the same room where he used to take a Mom & Tots class that we called Circle Time, he thinks he is going to Circle Time for Big Kids! He will also be starting violin lessons while Mac is in piano lessons. There goes his Wednesday afternoon nap! I’ll have to be more vigilant about bed time!
So with 14 days of holiday behind us, I struggle to figure out where the time went. It seems all we did over break was go to the hospital and the art studio and celebrate stuff (which is, I suppse, what this break was meant for). I guess that is all we did…
We started our break immediately after school on Friday afternoon with a party at the Judo dojo. At the end of which Mac cut his eyebrow open on a camera lens requiring a trip to the ER and 3 stitches.
Saturday we lay around not doing much while Mac’s eye started to heal. In the afternoon we took a “quick trip” to the suburban outdoor mall so I could exchange a pair of winter boots and return another. Our quick trip involved Mac suddenly claiming to be starving and the need for a bit of dinner. We had a nice time and nearly $30 at Corner Bakery and spent some time in the book store to arrive home at 9pm. There was nothing quick about this trip.
The weather and a total lack of plans kept us in on Sunday and Monday. While I don’t normally stay in specifically because of extreme cold, I saw no reason to create plans just to go freeze our patooties off! We had a marathon of DVDs while I read a fascinating book on the 1958 Our Lady of the Angels School fire. On Monday night I realized we would have to venture out on Tuesday no matter what because we had just about nothing left to eat here. Really. Nothing. As evidenced by the use of the last morsels of three differnt types of cheese melted on totillas with beans, and a bowl of cereal served for dinner. I am actually feeling very poor tonight, with no food to serve.
Tuesday morning we are committed to the art studio. Afterwards we get groceries and probably run some last-minute Christmas errands but I can no longer recall.
Wednesday is Christmas Eve and my sister and I have spent a great deal of time attempting to recreate our family tradition of Christmas Eve Dinner at My Pi … our favorite pizza restaurant, which closed unexpectedly in early summer. My parents are not cooperating with our plans, claiming too much to do to get ready for Christmas. Meanwhile Mac has to get his stitches out but is terrified and so spends the day sleeping in my bed. By the time I drag him out and make him get dressed the day is nearly over and we have done nothing. Sailor is also afraid and opts to stay with my parents. I take Mac to Starbucks on the way to the ER, where we wait long enough to draw all over the paper on the table in the exam room and ransack the drawers in the room for “art” supplies to make a little tongue depressor puppet in a band-aid bikini and gauze pad skirt. Mac’s stitches come out and we have a very elegant family dinner at Four Farthings. Which costs roughly 4x more than our usual dinner at My Pi. Lucky for my parents my sister and I have offered to foot this bill – the fist in a string of expensive dinners we enjoy over break.
At home my parents have some weird freak out about turning off the Christmas lights so that we can light the Hanukkah candles. I gently try to remind all assembled that for nearly 45 years we have had a mixed-religion family that almost yearly requires some crossover of holidays. My dad throws a mild snit, which I catch on video, along with his beautiful lighting of the candles. We lay out cookies for Santa and Mac writes a note asking for things Santa has not planned to deliver.
We retreat upstairs and my sister watches my boys briefly while I stuff stockings downstairs.
Christmas morning … Santa has left two small toys upstairs for Mac and Sailor. Mac brings me a small pack of Pokemon cards, proving once and for all the existence of Santa, because no way would Mommy ever buy Pokes! Mac also has a bell that Santa brought, per his request in the note last night. Sailor shows me very exciting Playmobiles guys. We open gifts from friends and distant family while we wait to go downstairs. We read a new book, Walter the Farting Dog. My dad calls at 8:30 and we are downstairs in moments.
We starts with stockings and my dad retreats to the bathroom. You couldn’t have done that before we started?, I think. But I don’t say. Everyone gets nice things. Mac gets an Indiana Jones Lego thing called the Jungle Cutter from Santa and Sailor gets Playmobiles. My dad goes to the bathroom a few more times and I assume he is having tummy trouble. I ask my mom… her eyes tear up and she won’t tell us what is wrong. I don’t remember anything else about opening gifts at my parents’ house on Christmas morning.
Back upstairs by 9:30 I start putting together breakfast. My sister and I scour the Internet for reasons why my dad is suddenly unable to pee.
I send my sister to the shower and make breakfast for my boys. Call the doctor, who tells me to take my dad to the ER. Iron my trousers. “Why don’t you just wear jeans?” my sister asks. Two reasons: my jeans are not clean and it’s Christmas and I don’t wear jeans in Christmas. I pack food for the kids, dry shoes, and new toys and books.
I make phone calls from the ER vestibule to cancel the Christmas party at my parents’ house. My children impress me with 4 ½ hours of nonstop good behavior while we wait in the ER for my father to get some relief and some answers.
We leave when we know there is nothing more to be done for the day and my boys want to open the rest of their gifts. At home my sister unloads as much food as she can find from my mom’s fridge and brings it all up for a feast. The table is still set for 4, as only my boys ate breakfast this morning. It is a Christmas I do not want to remember but it is a Christmas I will never forget. Mac says it is the worst Christmas ever. I deny this, stating that the worst Christmas would be the one we did not get to spend together, and indeed this one was spent lovingly together.
Friday morning we haul over to the art studio for Camp. Calls to Dad reveal no new news but that he will spend the day having tests.
Saturday we spend the morning gathering our wits and the afternoon picking up lunch and visiting my parents in the hospital. My dad will come home tomorrow, hopefully. His bladder clear, his tests negative, and his diverticulitis under control with antibiotics. There is nothing wrong except that he has outlived his prognosis for an 8-year survival post-radiation for prostate cancer back in 1995 and is now suffering from some special unexpected side effects of the treatment. Hurray! We drive home in the dark, tho it is barely past 4:30. A quick stop at home reveals that the sudden drop in temperature, which has allowed us to leave the house without coats and has melted almost all the dirty snow around the city and suburbs, has not caused the basement to flood. Neither has the rain. So we hop back into the car and spend the evening with our Indian friends, eating pizza and drinking wine and relaxing in general. It’s been a challenging week.
Sunday my dad is discharged and while he waits to come home with my mom I dash around the house making everything clean and shiny for his arrival, which will coincide with the arrival of 6 of my cousins and my ex-husband. My parents’ Hanukkah dinner has been rerouted to my house. I enlist everyone via email to bring something. I order pizzas and demand the online price, not the over-the-phone jacked-up price. I tell everyone also via email that they will have to leave by 8pm so as to not over exhaust my father and so as to allow my kids to get to bed reasonably on time.
Monday is another Camp day, and the boys and I have kindly offered to fill in for my mom. After Camp we run to Target and return more than $60 worth of Christmas gifts. We return with Kung Fu Panda on DVD. At Trader Joe’s I carry Sailor, sleeping, thru the store as Mac assists me with the shopping. He picks out my dad’s red roses for my mom’s birthday tomorrow.
Tuesday is my mom’s birthday so we fill in for her at Camp again and run back to Target for eggs and Q-tips. Back at home I set about baking a cake for Mom, cleaning up the kitchen afterwards, running a bath for my boys, cleaning them up and dressing them for dinner. By the time my sister brings my mom back from her birthday lunch I am ready to take her for a manicure and coffee and my boys look very spiffy. Mom and I relax at the manicurists with our lattes and all the other women prepping for the next holiday. When we get back everyone is starving. I quick-change into an outfit I would never have thought to put together before. And we are off to a wonderful Italian dinner at Via Carducci. After our waiter sings “Happy Birthday Dear Customer” to my mom, we head home for cake and gifts.
Wednesday is New Year’s Eve and I sleep in a little. Sailor wants to stay home for the day but we have been planning this day all year. My mom drives us to Navy Pier just after noon and after watching a great juggler performance, we spend the afternoon at the Chicago Children’s Museum. We even make a skyscraper, which we put on video, which can be viewed on the Internet. Dinner is our annual eat-whatever-you-want dinner. Sailor is mostly interested in French fries, so despite our venue – Bubba Gump Shrimp -- he chooses the kids’ meal of a small hamburger and fries, an orange slice and blue jello. I order him a root beer to wash it down. Mac and I share a big display of 4 kinds of shrimp and fries. We eat everything and return to the museum for another hour of playtime. Where I get very tired. I think it must have been the tropical drink I treated myself to. We leave the museum and spend a fortune on ice cream at Ben&Jerry’s. MMMM!!!!! The fireworks are about to start. Except we are not dressed well for the extreme cold, having opted instead for our more fashionable outdoor wear. We watch most of the fireworks from outside then finish up through a window. We are freezing when my mom picks us up. Sailor is asleep when we get home. Mac is asleep before I can get my pajamas on. I am asleep by 10:30. My parents call just after midnight. I have missed another holiday.
Thursday morning we attend the pajama brunch at Café BabaReeba, our favorite tapas restaurant. We have gone three years in a row now. When breakfast is over we walk home and get ready for our annual (10th? 11th?) New Year’s Day Hangover/Leftovers (as in, bring whichever you have) Party. 24 people fill my home and polish off the bottles of cheap Riesling I have stashed in my fridge. They bring cheese and crackers and children to play with and good cheer. It’s a holiday celebration at last. By the time our guests – mine, my sister’s, my boys’, and my parents’ – leave, I have nothing left to clean up but vacuuming.
Friday morning we are awakened by the garbage men. And I have not yet brought out the cans. Reprising my Thursday morning exit in pajamas, I run out and the garbage guys help me with the cans and I dash back in for cookies to give them. We pack up for the day, I give my dad a shot, drag my boys to the bank and make it to the burbs by 11a.m. where we have lunch and spend a few hours in a ball pit with some of our best friends. We are home by dinner, tho both boys are asleep when we arrive. We eat dinner while watching movies and then go to bed.
On Saturday we decide to run downtown to the Lego store to exchange some more of our Christmas gifts. We stop at the bank first. And good thing, as I learn on boarding the bus that the price has gone up to $2.25. We are home by 12:30 and in the car 20 minutes later to make a 1pm date with Mac and Sailor’s friends Isabella & Ryan. The kids spend most of the afternoon bickering, crying and calling for help. By the time they are really into togetherness, it is time to go. Mac has a meltdown at Target because he is thirsty and I ask him to wait a few minutes. Both boys get to sit in a ten-minute time out to think about how not to behave in public when we get home. We eat, they build Legos, I work, we are in bed before 8 but the book I am reading them, Matilda, has longish chapters and it is 9 before they close their eyes.
And now here we are. I have helped Mac screw parts to make a robot. They have helped me put away laundry. Mac wants to go on a play date this afternoon but Sailor doesn’t want to let him and I am torn over fairness issues. We play Mancala… and so the day goes!
December 14, 2008
We are reading Pippi Longstocking tonight and reference is made to cannibals.
"Do either of you know what cannibals are?" I asked.
"I do!" Sailor says. "They are balls that come out of a cannon."
"Do either of you know what cannibals are?" I asked.
"I do!" Sailor says. "They are balls that come out of a cannon."
Monday, December 01, 2008
Our 5-day Thanksgiving break was set to end today. Except Mac was having so much trouble breathing last night I decided to call him in sick this morning. By late in the day I realize I made the right decision. His sniffles are almost completely gone. But what a day. On the 1st of December we wake to our 1st snow! Mac and Sailor are so excited! They want to go out to play. While I run around the house cleaning up and doing chores Sailor gets into his outdoor clothes. “I’m getting very hot!” he complains as I clean up his room. “No one told you to put on your coat!”
“I want to go outside, too!” Mac wails. “you can’s just leave a little kid home all alone!”
“I sure can if I am right outside the front window and you can hear me shoveling.”
“You don’t understand the life of a little child!” he cries.
“Oh, Mac, I do. But if you are home sick, sick means lying on the sofa, not playing in the snow! You have to get well and go back to school.”
Poor thing. “I will have my phone on me if you need me.”
“You will?”
“Yes, sweety, I will.”
Sailo enjoys the snow while I test out my $40 super mittens from Eherwon. They are no warmer than any other pair I have grabbed from TJMaxx for $19.99. Darn!
Sailor has gymnastics and my dad comes up to stay with Mac. “You look like you want to make your famous tuna salad,” I tell my dad, indicating the ingredients and equipment on my counter to make said tuna salad. “I look like I want to make tuna salad?” my dad asks. Sailor and I will enjoy this lunch. I never tell him it’s tuna salad. I call it GrandDad’s dip. Mac eats the leftover pizza from last night.
We read a few stories and it is time for Judo. By this time both boys are thrilled to walk in the snow. At Judo Sensei informs us that the Judo tournament on Friday has been changed to Thursday. The day my boys have French class after school. And it’s parents’ week at French and my parents are set to come. And Mac is set to start in his new 8-10-year-old class. But Sensei really wants my boys to be there. He says he will try to work it out. I say I will do the same. It is now 11:20 at night and I am no closer to working out anything because my helpers are probably as overwhelmed with holiday obligations as I am and so I am not getting much assistance.
I help my boys clean up their playroom, get out their clothes, set out breakfast dishes, pack up extra shoes to leave at the art studio, read a chapter of Pippi Longstocking and snuggle my boys as they pass out quickly on either side of me.
Next up, making next year’s calendar for my family’s holiday gift. It takes a while. Next I download photos for our holiday photo. Indeed the 2 calendars and 150 cards, even with shipping, cost less than the stamps I ordered last night to mail my holiday cards.
Meanwhile I look at an email and find that while I had believed I was to do a reading program in Mac's class every Tuesday in fact I am only on the schedule for 2 or 3 days in the next 3 months. I email back and forth with the mom in charge and we both look for an old email to clear up my misunderstanding. But in truth I don’t care much. I already have way too many things on my calendar, so much that it’s getting hard to read. So a few days less is probably a good thing. Nonetheless, I am surprised. Relieved a bit too.
“I want to go outside, too!” Mac wails. “you can’s just leave a little kid home all alone!”
“I sure can if I am right outside the front window and you can hear me shoveling.”
“You don’t understand the life of a little child!” he cries.
“Oh, Mac, I do. But if you are home sick, sick means lying on the sofa, not playing in the snow! You have to get well and go back to school.”
Poor thing. “I will have my phone on me if you need me.”
“You will?”
“Yes, sweety, I will.”
Sailo enjoys the snow while I test out my $40 super mittens from Eherwon. They are no warmer than any other pair I have grabbed from TJMaxx for $19.99. Darn!
Sailor has gymnastics and my dad comes up to stay with Mac. “You look like you want to make your famous tuna salad,” I tell my dad, indicating the ingredients and equipment on my counter to make said tuna salad. “I look like I want to make tuna salad?” my dad asks. Sailor and I will enjoy this lunch. I never tell him it’s tuna salad. I call it GrandDad’s dip. Mac eats the leftover pizza from last night.
We read a few stories and it is time for Judo. By this time both boys are thrilled to walk in the snow. At Judo Sensei informs us that the Judo tournament on Friday has been changed to Thursday. The day my boys have French class after school. And it’s parents’ week at French and my parents are set to come. And Mac is set to start in his new 8-10-year-old class. But Sensei really wants my boys to be there. He says he will try to work it out. I say I will do the same. It is now 11:20 at night and I am no closer to working out anything because my helpers are probably as overwhelmed with holiday obligations as I am and so I am not getting much assistance.
I help my boys clean up their playroom, get out their clothes, set out breakfast dishes, pack up extra shoes to leave at the art studio, read a chapter of Pippi Longstocking and snuggle my boys as they pass out quickly on either side of me.
Next up, making next year’s calendar for my family’s holiday gift. It takes a while. Next I download photos for our holiday photo. Indeed the 2 calendars and 150 cards, even with shipping, cost less than the stamps I ordered last night to mail my holiday cards.
Meanwhile I look at an email and find that while I had believed I was to do a reading program in Mac's class every Tuesday in fact I am only on the schedule for 2 or 3 days in the next 3 months. I email back and forth with the mom in charge and we both look for an old email to clear up my misunderstanding. But in truth I don’t care much. I already have way too many things on my calendar, so much that it’s getting hard to read. So a few days less is probably a good thing. Nonetheless, I am surprised. Relieved a bit too.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
It's almost 10:30, we're all still in our pj's and I just made a huge batch of crepes, which we are eating on the living room floor.
It’s not officially winter yet, but the weather outside is most certainly frightful. I don’t desire the opportunity to venture out for any reason, yet we have a full agenda for today, if we ever get started! The cold weather is sapping all my energy. I am already feeling short of breath and tremulous. And fat! I just want to pull up a good book, a direct line to my kitchen, and an endless supply of DVDs and camp out on the couch til, say, late March, early April!
Monday, November 24, 2008
I tell my boys they need good feet and strong walking legs this morning. We drive Mac to school in the sick car and then drop off the noisy, sick car. We walk a block to the dentist’s office where I am told my earache is due to stressed mouth muscles. My dentists then proceeds to massage my stressed mouth musles. This is the weirdest dentist appointment I have ever had. But when he is done, my ear no longer hurts. Too weird. Sailor wants to sit in the dentists chair becuz of a problem that comes up as we are walking into the office. Something about his teeth getting out of line when he bites into food and how he has to get them all back where they belong. He gets his pearlies looked at and is disappointed not to be given a goody bag of toothbrushes and dental floss. We make an appointment for Friday the 5th to have his teeth cleaned – and procure said goody bag. We walk home. Slowly. To the sounds of Sailor’s incessant whining about how the new winter boots I bought him last night are too heavy, too itchy and not good for walking. We stop at Starbucks. No, not to reward his whiny behaviour but to give me a break and him a rest. We sit at a table and I play hangman with him on a napkin. Except he is not clear on the concept of how the game works. The final “word” is something like ERDOLPA. Or some other random combo of letters that he chooses at will during the game. He runs home, energized on vanilla milk. Following his gymnastics class, we lunch with my dad. On the walk I ask him if he knows what a grandma and grandpa are. “They are old and they are the same as a Nana and GrandDad and that’s all they are.” We eat a hearty lunch of breakfast foods. When Sasilor orders a bear-shaped pancake I tease him that it might have fur. “It’s not meat, it’s a pancake!” Then he proceeds to eat the strawberry and whipped cream face off with much delight. When the waitress asks us if we want to wrap our food to go, Sailor replies, “As a fact of the matter, yes.”
After lunch the garage calls. I need a new muffler. And it will cost $225. I suppose it could be worse.
Without the car we have to walk to Judo after school. Mac spends most of the walk explaining that he has to do all the pages of math homework that he missed. “Because you forgot to call someone and ask for the homework.” What the heck is this kid talking about?? When? When did I forget to call? When you were absent? “No, when I was too busy in class doing my D.O.L. and didn’t get all the homework written down.” And I am supposed to know that he has homework that is not written in his agenda?!?!? What am I now, a mind reader? I’ll tell you what I am. An incensed mommy. How the h*** am I supposed to know when he doesn’t write down the homework completely!? There was no note from the teacher asking for the missing homework. What the bleep?! I am trying to be patient as I explain to my darling boy that this situation is in no way any fault of mine. He is seriously trying my patience. I suggest that if he knows he didn’t write down all of his homework then he should ask to call a friend. Or at the very least as me to.
We make it to Judo just on time. Mac is being weird about his box of vanilla milk and ends up dropping it in the trash. I am livid. I tell him to fetch it out but it was more than half full and sank to the bottom. I tell him he owes me a buck and won’t get anymore vanilla milk boxes.
By the time the time the boys are in their “gi” and on the mat I am so agitated. I am supposed to be enjoying this, people!
They do well at Judo and eat all their dinner. It is better.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Mac is in need of an outlet to plug in the vacuum cleaner. “Mom, I am going to have to unscrew your computer.”
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving Day. We have a 5-day break from school and I intend to leave the alarm clock unplugged for the duration. But a construction crew – yes, I said a construction crew – has other ideas for the morning. 7:30 a.m. we, and my parents below us, are awake to the sounds of pounding in a rhythm akin to knocking. My father wakes wondering what we are doing up here. Mac looks out the window. “There’s an orange cone near the stroller.” We are all up. We sit on the sofa together somewhat dazed. “You can go back to sleep, Mommy,” one of my boys offers. “No. I’m up.” Sailor asks if it is Thanksgiving Day. “Happy Thanksgiving!” Mac says. “I have an Indian movie,” Sailor says, retrieving The Prince of Egypt from the TV shelf. “I don’t think that’s a Thanksgiving movie,” I tell him. “We can watch ANTZ! But it needs to be washed off,” Mac says heading to the bathroom. Before I know what we are doing there is an argument going on around me over which movie to watch at 7:45 in the morning. I don’t recall having granted anyone permission to watch anything. It is just after 8:00 when I send both boys to their rooms and close the TV cabinet.
At 8:15 Sailor comes out on his own. “I have spots on my arm.” Indeed he does. He is in fact covered in spots from his neck to his feet, front and back. I call the pediatrician and have a nice chat with her. She sounds like she has make-up on. I like talking to women pediatricians so much more than their male counterparts. They are so much more amenable to talking to the mom and figuring out what is wrong.
Over breakfast I watch Sailor’s face break out. Literally watch it break out.
It takes some time before we are mobilized to get to the store for the allegry medicine the doc suggested. Before we leave I tell off the workmen. “Do you not realize today is a holiday? And I did not want to be up at 7:30 on a day off! You are supposed to be at home helping your wives cook turkey! You should have covered this stroller with plastic.” Ah, finally a word they understand. “Mumble mumble mumble plastic.” “I’m covering it myself but you should have done it already.” When we come out later there is a tarp over the stroller. Before we leave we also have to reorganize all the kids’ books. I don’t know why, really. We just do.
Whole Foods is open and busy. Mac is pushing the cart. Sailor is throwing a fit becuz Mac won’t let him hold the side of the cart. “You’re making me run into things!” I quietly whisper to my boys how I will spank them right in the middle of the store if they don’t stop. Sailor goes on and on even after I suggest they take turns pushing, which Mac is fine with.
Everyone needs a snack. We choose croissants and leave the store without the allergy medicine becuz it is $8. At CVS Benadryl is $7. And Mac suddenly has to pee right now. We return to Whole Foods, everyone pees, we get the allergy stuff that is homeopathic and tastes good and has to be administered every 2 hours til the symptoms go away. We get more croissants. We go home. It is too warm out for our winter coats. I am grumpy and tired and feel fluish. I am not in a good mood for a holiday. We eat lunch. The boys paint and I read them a story. They want to dress up for thanksgiving dinner. No, not my version of dress up, which includes nice clothes. They want to be a Indian chief and a Pilgrim. Mac puts on his bathrobe. This is one of those times when I need another parent to either back me up when I say no or help the kids come up with costumes. “I can be an army man if I change my pants and my socks,” Sailor suggests. “It’s not Halloween, boys.” “Or I can wear black pants and a blue shirt and be Darth Vader.” I am so ready to lose it. I send my boys down to get silver to polish from Nana. “We have bad news and good news,” they tell me. “The bad news is that GrandDad already polished the silver. The good news is I told Aunt you won’t let me be an Indian chief and she said she will make me a headdress.” I call downstairs and my father answers. “Please let my sister know that when one of my children says ‘Mommy says no,’ it does not mean Aunt should say yes. This is a total undermining of my parenting.” My father is calm. My sister would have hung up on me or huffed something about me being a bitch or just given me the cold shoulder for at least the first hour of dinner. I hang up and explain to my boys that there is no other adult who they can go to for another answer if I say no and that no amount of begging will make me say yes. They sit down on Mac’s bedroom floor and make Indian gear. I am fine with this, but they will wear their new sweaters, dammit. It’s 3pm. Is it too early to have a glass of wine? Happy Thanksgiving!
Friday, November 28, 2008
Today we were set to put up our little Christmas tree. But I am afraid our abyss of a basement has swallowed up the box containing all of our holiday décor. We’ll have to go look tomorrow, as today we worked hard to burn off the turkey-less meal we consumed yesterday by helping my friend Anna move. Hauling boxes, bags, totes and a large CHAIR down one steep set of stairs and up or down inside the new house makes for one sore mama. My boys were amazing tho, carrying boxes and less heavy items, packing the car and the truck and distributing items into the new rooms. Everyone was impressed, including Mama!
Saturday
Sailor is undressing for the shower. Quietly he suggests, “Uh, Mom, I’m almost ready. Perhaps you want to turn the water on now.”
Perhaps I might!
It’s not officially winter yet, but the weather outside is most certainly frightful. I don’t desire the opportunity to venture out for any reason, yet we have a full agenda for today, if we ever get started! The cold weather is sapping all my energy. I am already feeling short of breath and tremulous. And fat! I just want to pull up a good book, a direct line to my kitchen, and an endless supply of DVDs and camp out on the couch til, say, late March, early April!
Monday, November 24, 2008
I tell my boys they need good feet and strong walking legs this morning. We drive Mac to school in the sick car and then drop off the noisy, sick car. We walk a block to the dentist’s office where I am told my earache is due to stressed mouth muscles. My dentists then proceeds to massage my stressed mouth musles. This is the weirdest dentist appointment I have ever had. But when he is done, my ear no longer hurts. Too weird. Sailor wants to sit in the dentists chair becuz of a problem that comes up as we are walking into the office. Something about his teeth getting out of line when he bites into food and how he has to get them all back where they belong. He gets his pearlies looked at and is disappointed not to be given a goody bag of toothbrushes and dental floss. We make an appointment for Friday the 5th to have his teeth cleaned – and procure said goody bag. We walk home. Slowly. To the sounds of Sailor’s incessant whining about how the new winter boots I bought him last night are too heavy, too itchy and not good for walking. We stop at Starbucks. No, not to reward his whiny behaviour but to give me a break and him a rest. We sit at a table and I play hangman with him on a napkin. Except he is not clear on the concept of how the game works. The final “word” is something like ERDOLPA. Or some other random combo of letters that he chooses at will during the game. He runs home, energized on vanilla milk. Following his gymnastics class, we lunch with my dad. On the walk I ask him if he knows what a grandma and grandpa are. “They are old and they are the same as a Nana and GrandDad and that’s all they are.” We eat a hearty lunch of breakfast foods. When Sasilor orders a bear-shaped pancake I tease him that it might have fur. “It’s not meat, it’s a pancake!” Then he proceeds to eat the strawberry and whipped cream face off with much delight. When the waitress asks us if we want to wrap our food to go, Sailor replies, “As a fact of the matter, yes.”
After lunch the garage calls. I need a new muffler. And it will cost $225. I suppose it could be worse.
Without the car we have to walk to Judo after school. Mac spends most of the walk explaining that he has to do all the pages of math homework that he missed. “Because you forgot to call someone and ask for the homework.” What the heck is this kid talking about?? When? When did I forget to call? When you were absent? “No, when I was too busy in class doing my D.O.L. and didn’t get all the homework written down.” And I am supposed to know that he has homework that is not written in his agenda?!?!? What am I now, a mind reader? I’ll tell you what I am. An incensed mommy. How the h*** am I supposed to know when he doesn’t write down the homework completely!? There was no note from the teacher asking for the missing homework. What the bleep?! I am trying to be patient as I explain to my darling boy that this situation is in no way any fault of mine. He is seriously trying my patience. I suggest that if he knows he didn’t write down all of his homework then he should ask to call a friend. Or at the very least as me to.
We make it to Judo just on time. Mac is being weird about his box of vanilla milk and ends up dropping it in the trash. I am livid. I tell him to fetch it out but it was more than half full and sank to the bottom. I tell him he owes me a buck and won’t get anymore vanilla milk boxes.
By the time the time the boys are in their “gi” and on the mat I am so agitated. I am supposed to be enjoying this, people!
They do well at Judo and eat all their dinner. It is better.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Mac is in need of an outlet to plug in the vacuum cleaner. “Mom, I am going to have to unscrew your computer.”
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving Day. We have a 5-day break from school and I intend to leave the alarm clock unplugged for the duration. But a construction crew – yes, I said a construction crew – has other ideas for the morning. 7:30 a.m. we, and my parents below us, are awake to the sounds of pounding in a rhythm akin to knocking. My father wakes wondering what we are doing up here. Mac looks out the window. “There’s an orange cone near the stroller.” We are all up. We sit on the sofa together somewhat dazed. “You can go back to sleep, Mommy,” one of my boys offers. “No. I’m up.” Sailor asks if it is Thanksgiving Day. “Happy Thanksgiving!” Mac says. “I have an Indian movie,” Sailor says, retrieving The Prince of Egypt from the TV shelf. “I don’t think that’s a Thanksgiving movie,” I tell him. “We can watch ANTZ! But it needs to be washed off,” Mac says heading to the bathroom. Before I know what we are doing there is an argument going on around me over which movie to watch at 7:45 in the morning. I don’t recall having granted anyone permission to watch anything. It is just after 8:00 when I send both boys to their rooms and close the TV cabinet.
At 8:15 Sailor comes out on his own. “I have spots on my arm.” Indeed he does. He is in fact covered in spots from his neck to his feet, front and back. I call the pediatrician and have a nice chat with her. She sounds like she has make-up on. I like talking to women pediatricians so much more than their male counterparts. They are so much more amenable to talking to the mom and figuring out what is wrong.
Over breakfast I watch Sailor’s face break out. Literally watch it break out.
It takes some time before we are mobilized to get to the store for the allegry medicine the doc suggested. Before we leave I tell off the workmen. “Do you not realize today is a holiday? And I did not want to be up at 7:30 on a day off! You are supposed to be at home helping your wives cook turkey! You should have covered this stroller with plastic.” Ah, finally a word they understand. “Mumble mumble mumble plastic.” “I’m covering it myself but you should have done it already.” When we come out later there is a tarp over the stroller. Before we leave we also have to reorganize all the kids’ books. I don’t know why, really. We just do.
Whole Foods is open and busy. Mac is pushing the cart. Sailor is throwing a fit becuz Mac won’t let him hold the side of the cart. “You’re making me run into things!” I quietly whisper to my boys how I will spank them right in the middle of the store if they don’t stop. Sailor goes on and on even after I suggest they take turns pushing, which Mac is fine with.
Everyone needs a snack. We choose croissants and leave the store without the allergy medicine becuz it is $8. At CVS Benadryl is $7. And Mac suddenly has to pee right now. We return to Whole Foods, everyone pees, we get the allergy stuff that is homeopathic and tastes good and has to be administered every 2 hours til the symptoms go away. We get more croissants. We go home. It is too warm out for our winter coats. I am grumpy and tired and feel fluish. I am not in a good mood for a holiday. We eat lunch. The boys paint and I read them a story. They want to dress up for thanksgiving dinner. No, not my version of dress up, which includes nice clothes. They want to be a Indian chief and a Pilgrim. Mac puts on his bathrobe. This is one of those times when I need another parent to either back me up when I say no or help the kids come up with costumes. “I can be an army man if I change my pants and my socks,” Sailor suggests. “It’s not Halloween, boys.” “Or I can wear black pants and a blue shirt and be Darth Vader.” I am so ready to lose it. I send my boys down to get silver to polish from Nana. “We have bad news and good news,” they tell me. “The bad news is that GrandDad already polished the silver. The good news is I told Aunt you won’t let me be an Indian chief and she said she will make me a headdress.” I call downstairs and my father answers. “Please let my sister know that when one of my children says ‘Mommy says no,’ it does not mean Aunt should say yes. This is a total undermining of my parenting.” My father is calm. My sister would have hung up on me or huffed something about me being a bitch or just given me the cold shoulder for at least the first hour of dinner. I hang up and explain to my boys that there is no other adult who they can go to for another answer if I say no and that no amount of begging will make me say yes. They sit down on Mac’s bedroom floor and make Indian gear. I am fine with this, but they will wear their new sweaters, dammit. It’s 3pm. Is it too early to have a glass of wine? Happy Thanksgiving!
Friday, November 28, 2008
Today we were set to put up our little Christmas tree. But I am afraid our abyss of a basement has swallowed up the box containing all of our holiday décor. We’ll have to go look tomorrow, as today we worked hard to burn off the turkey-less meal we consumed yesterday by helping my friend Anna move. Hauling boxes, bags, totes and a large CHAIR down one steep set of stairs and up or down inside the new house makes for one sore mama. My boys were amazing tho, carrying boxes and less heavy items, packing the car and the truck and distributing items into the new rooms. Everyone was impressed, including Mama!
Saturday
Sailor is undressing for the shower. Quietly he suggests, “Uh, Mom, I’m almost ready. Perhaps you want to turn the water on now.”
Perhaps I might!
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