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.
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