The boys and I went for a walk with my dad this morning after which I asked Cody to take a picture of me with his Gpa. It was the classic portrait taken by a five-year old in all his short stature glory. Basically we looked like giants with large nostrils and protruding chins. So instead of showing you that I will show you this instead.
Golden chain tree leaves with feather.
Cody took this one also. I find this one more pleasing to the eye and less embarrassing.
The boys and I dropped Husband off at the airport shuttle this morning before starting our day of pool physical therapy, lunch out with a friend, more physical therapy, and finally our traditional Friday at home with pizza and a movie. Carter was a sobbing wreck on the car ride home and Cody got a bit weepy too. No amount of me telling them that he would be back in a couple of days or that we could call him on the phone would help. Do you know what helped? Carter spotted a fire hydrant out his car window and got very excited about it. He is big into fire hydrants these days as only a three-year old can be.
And really, what's not to love about them?
Husband is off on his yearly pilgrimage to the Reno Air Races with a long time friend of ours. It sounds like they basically stand around on hot slab of tarmac in the beating sun for two days waiting for some airplanes to race by. Other than watching the occasional ear-splitting plane race by, the waiting is also accompanied by lots of walking around looking at various airplanes. I do believe there is food and beer involved in their weekend too. Eventually Cody and Carter will be old enough to join them in their male bonding weekend but until then we have to plan our own fun.
Our weekend plans consist of an overnight trip to my parents house. It will be a bittersweet visit since this is the first time I will be seeing my dad since he, more often than not, does not know who my mom is. I hope he remembers me. Alzheimer’s is truly evil. But we will go and I will treat every second of the time my dad is coherent as a gift. My dad is good at hiding his confusion, at least during the day, so I don’t think my boys will notice any difference. It means a lot to my mom that we visit and I enjoy going back to my hometown and visiting them in the house I grew up in. There are a lot of memories under that roof.
So I have three bags to pack for our adventure tomorrow and a note to write to our babysitter turned dogsitter. I hate leaving Rosy and Dexter behind especially since they are getting older and Rosy is starting to show her own signs of confusion as of late. But I don’t think it fair to my dad to further his own stress and confusion. It will be enough chaos with me and my boy herd visiting I am sure. Plus I know the dogs are in good hands and will be well cared for. But that doesn’t stop me from having guilt.
I wrote the above paragraphs this morning during a couple lulls in the general household chaos that happens around here. I planned on wrapping it up with a nice story about family, ageing, and our collective journey through life, once the kids were tucked into bed but, now I think I will just go have a beer. About ten minutes into our nightly movie I get a call from Husband letting me know that he and his friend are still alive and well. Well of course you are, I think to myself. But then I tend to live under that proverbial rock everyone talks about and had no idea about the tragic plane crash that happened there earlier this evening.
I spend the rest of the movie mostly watching the backs of my kids heads feeling glad that I did not have to tell them that their papa was hurt or dead. So sad. My heart goes out to all the people affected by the awful plane crash in Reno.
The beds are made and there are no monkeys around here to jump and mess them up. Cody just started Kindergarten last week and I just sent Carter off on the little school bus to preschool. This means that four days a week for a couple of hours each day, I have a quiet house with clocks I can hear ticking and dogs I can hear snoring. Today is the first of such days and it is rather strange.
My little monkeys heading off to the school bus stop this morning.
How, might you ask, are you going to fill your newly found free time? Thanks for asking. I have been thinking about this for a while now and depending on when you asked me this you would get a different answer.
The nursing and/or pregnant with a child days: Sleep! I will sleep from the minute they are gone to just before I have to pick them up, I will sleep!
The chucking of baby food on the floor days: I will clean the house! I will finally have a clean house! And once I have cleaned then I will sleep.
The kids always fighting days: I will put myself in time out and do absolutely nothing but eat copious amounts of chocolate! And while I am there, I may just sleep.
The last month of summer before both kids go to school: I will organize! I will be the most organized person you have ever seen. I will be a meal planning, whiteboard writing fool. I will alphabetized my spices and color coordinate my closet – oh, it will be so grand!
These are all great answers and I will most likely end up doing all of the above at some time or another (well, except for the closet thing and maybe the spice thing too – I should save something to do for when they go off to college). But what I am really going to do is become one of those crazy parent helper type moms that you find lurking in the back of classrooms cutting out shapes or glueing googly eyes onto popsicle sticks. Yeah, I know. I couldn’t wait for the day when I would finally get some “me time” and I end up signing up to help in Carter’s classroom on Tuesday mornings and to be the room mom of Cody’s classroom. I have already attended a VPO meeting, the schools equivalent of a PTA, so it is official and everything.
I have never though of myself as PTA material. I would rather talk to my dogs than a bunch of random women (not trying to be sexist but the attending masses were 99% female) about how to raise funds for new gymnasium equipment. But the fact is that the school does need new gymnasium equipment, the budget cuts last year were harsh, I am part of the community, and well, I feel that as long as I am doing the stay at home mom thing, I can help out. Plus it is wicked fun to see Cody and Carter interacting in their classrooms with their new friends.
Well, I have a filing cabinet to organize and a chocolate chip cookie to eat before Carter gets home so I best get at it.
Ten years ago today I woke up to my radio alarm clock, got out of bed, took a shower, flipped on the tv in the bedroom and wandered into the adjoining bathroom to get ready for another day at work.
I was four months into my first “real job” after graduating from college with a BS in Microbiology. I did not hear the normal lighthearted newscast telling me the local news and weather.
Instead on the screen was a large tower on fire and lots of smoke. Husband (who at the time was Boyfriend) and I watched as the second tower was hit. I called my mom and told her to turn on the tv – any channel – it didn’t matter.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I sat and cried.
That is what I was thinking to myself yesterday during the final cleaning stages of a rather horrible and unmentionable potty training accident.
While waiting for Cody’s school bus to arrive Carter hid behind a tree and well – it wasn’t pretty. And we still had to stand there and wait. After our ten minute walk of shame home, in which I am quite certain every neighbor on our dead end street drove by and saw Carter’s stiff legged unmistakable walk, there was a child to hose off in the bathtub, laundry to sanitize, a bathtub to sanitize and a bathroom sink and floor to sanitize. I think I washed my hands at least twenty times. I felt like pouring a giant vat of bleach into the tub and climbing in – like a bubble bath only cleaner. And with fewer bubbles. I considered splashing a bit of gasoline around, lighting a match and just walking away but I don’t like camping that much so I continued to clean.
I try to be friendly to our earth. We know our three R’s around here. I use cleaning products that are “green”. But I love bleach. I can not help myself. Bleach is my go-to cleaner for things involving the big P (or S if you are in the mood and want to be graphic).
Slap a sparkling clean mask and a flowing cape on this bad boy and you have just met my personal superhero.
There are days where I swear that I would rather gnaw off my right arm than deal with another potty training accident – and I am right handed. If it wasn’t for bleach I don’t think I could make it though the potty training stage of my children’s lives.
There you have it – Captain Clorox – restoring cleanliness to the world – one bathroom at a time. Care to share with me your personal superhero?
Wikipedia – yes, I used Wikipedia and not Websters here, please don’t judge – defines a revolution as “…a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.”
We listen to a lot of Pandora around these parts (wait for it – there is a tie in to my opening paragraph somewhere in here, I promise). I have a station that I started with Jack Johnson that plays a mix of kid and non-kid music. I am not sure how it morphed into such a strange mix – Baa Baa Black Sheep to Beastie Boys’ She’s Crafty, Skip to my Lou to Sublime or Raffi’s Most Singable Songs to Red Hot Chili Peppers – but there it is. Oh yeah, it is just that good. I did have to give the thumbs down to a Bloodhound Gang song the other day because, well let’s face it, there is nothing kid friendly about that band.
The boys get really excited when they hear a song they used to listen to at their preschool. Quite often Cody will stop whatever he is doing and holler out “hey I have this song at my old school” when such songs as The Wheels on the Bus or Apples and Bananas comes on. Carter who has only about five weeks of preschool to Cody’s two plus years simply refuses to be out done by his older brother. Whatever song Cody claims to have heard at his school, you can bet that Carter has the exact same one at his. But the other day Carter took this to the extreme.
The boys and I were out and about running errands and I was playing a new album Husband had recently bought. Husband is fond of buying random music based on one song he heard and liked on Creamy Radio (check it out if you have not heard of it) and this was one of those albums. So we are listening to this when Carter pipes up from the back seat in his loud and important voice, “Hey! I have this song at my school!” Ummm, yeah. I don’t think so. I gently tell him that I don’t think his teacher, Miss Sue, has this song at his school but Carter is very insistent. Carter is three and therefore Carter is never wrong.
If you looked and dressed this good all the time I bet you would never be wrong either.
Anyway, all this led to a discussion about revolutions, what they are and why they happen. Now that my kids have this information tucked in their little heads it is only a matter of time before they will form a resistance and attempt a revolt. On the upside, at least they will be working together.
I think it is normal to have anxiety and nervousness when preparing to send your first born out the door of home and through the door of that big yellow school bus. We have attended the “Meet the Teacher” and “Parent Orientation” events. I stayed up past my bedtime of shortly-after-the-kids-are-asleep to shop, kid-free, for all of Cody’s school supplies. I have signed up to volunteer in his classroom. And I have filled out paperwork. Lots of paperwork.
It is the paperwork that has distracted me from the normal concerns parents have: will he get to his classroom alright, will he remember that he needs to use the boys bathroom and not the girls like he is used to doing with me, will he make friends, will he get off the bus at the right stop. Of course, now that I have typed all that, I realize that I am worried about those things too. But I have been focusing mostly on getting the paperwork just right for his Individualized Health Care Plan. It is a plan that several key people at the school will use if/when Cody has a seizure during school hours.
In my About section of this blog I gave a brief history of Cody’s premature birth and the long-term medical issues that derived from that. When Cody turned three, he started attending preschool in a public school with an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan) focusing on occupational and physical therapy services. Yup, he even got to ride the short bus. At that time we did not have any concerns about seizures; he had only had two of them. He has had four of them this year alone.
Watching your child seize – eyes rolled back, completely non-responsive, begging him to squeeze your hand or look at you – all the while watching the clock because after three minutes you have to administer the anti-seizure medicine rectally, is terrifying. Husband and I have become better at dealing with this and no longer freak out and call 911. We have a system. We have a seizure action plan on our fridge where I see it everyday. Among other things, it reminds me to breath and stay calm. So this is what I am thinking while filling out the paperwork to send my five-year old off to Kindergarten. The possibility of a shunt failure or the fact I have not yet met with his new OT/PT takes a backseat to the real chance of him having a seizure during school hours. Yup, pretty scary stuff right there.
I do want to say that I am excited for him. His teacher is wonderful. His best friend from preschool will be in the same class. I have done my best to keep my fears about what I secretly think of as the little black cloud in his head, to myself. He is looking forward to it. Kindergarten is a big milestone and Cody is going to rock it.
I just need to remember to breath and stay calm…
Yup, I actually had to say that to my five-year old today.
Let me start at the beginning. Today the boys had a friend over to play. It was a drop off play date which is exactly what it sounds like. With this type of play date the parent, or grandparent in this case, drops off their child for a previously determined amount of time and gets to go do something child-free. It is quite nice when you are the droperoffer and, as long as you have some sort of activity planned for the visit, not too painful when you are the one hosting the thing. These types of play dates are fairly new to us.
It started out alright. We played a board game (Richard Scarry’s Busytown eye found it!) together and then the boys played for a bit back in Cody’s room.
Very fun game - you can't really go wrong with Richard Scarry.
The sun made an appearance and so everyone wanted to go outside. Cody and his friend headed out while I finished helping Carter get his shoes on. When Carter and I caught up our guest had already found the bikes and was madly riding around on the chalk road that we had made earlier in the week. Cody, however, was standing in the driveway holding what appeared to be a stunned baby chipmunk while our neighbor’s cat, Delilah, proudly stood by. My first instinct was to holler at Cody to put it down but once he did Delilah started mauling it. The poor little thing was still alive and rather unhappy.
Replace the lion with a small black cat and, well, whatever that was, with a chipmunk, and you get the idea.
I grabbed a plastic toy shovel and tried to scoop it up but it was not very cooperative. Instead it darted under a bike to hide. I managed to distract Delilah until it got brave enough to make a run for it back into the woods.
The rest of the play date was mostly uneventful. The boys rode bikes and I drew more chalk roads. We ate popsicles. Fun was had by all. I just hope Cody’s friend does not go home and tell his parents that I let them play with wild rodents.
I am one of those people who hate being late. I have always been like this as far back as I can remember. Going hand in hand with this, I am not enamored with those who are late. I had a college professor once who was nice enough to get involved in a study group with some of us and her comment about others being late was so perfect that it has stuck with me. Her M.O. was to show up at least ten minutes early. Everywhere. Therefore if you show up on time, in her mind you are already ten minutes late and God help those who are truly late. At first it made me laugh but then I completely saw myself in this comment and was secretly glad to discover that there were others out there who felt so strongly about this topic.
Being late makes me physically ill. I actually get stomach aches and sweaty palms if I even think I may be late, no mater what the occasion. I turn into this clock watching, hand wringing, cranky neurotic biotch who obsesses over each and every passing second. It is especially bad if I have no control over when I will arrive at my destination. I try to give myself an extra fifteen minutes to allow for scenarios that cause lateness. These may include but are not limited to: a dog randomly vomiting on the carpet, a potty training “issue”, a melt down by one child or the other for not being allowed to wear their snowboots on a hot summer day, or realizing that while I got everyone else ready I am still in my slippers and have not brushed my teeth.
I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!
Of course the obsession with not being late can sometimes backfire into being very early. There are times when we are standing in the entryway all ready to leave and I look at the clock and realize that if we leave right then we will arrive twenty minutes early, to the bus stop, in the pouring rain. In such a situation we invoke the “holding pattern”. This involves reading a couple of books on the couch all bundled up in jackets while I keep a hawk-eye on the clock. Yet another reason I am glad my boys love books!
I realize that this issue with lateness is my curse and as such I try not to hold it against “those who are late.” I have a couple good friends who fall into this category. My husband falls into this category. Don’t even get me started on this. I could tell you about the very first time I met his mother and he was late picking me up. I would tell you this story but as it is we have somewhere to be at 9:30 this morning and the boys are still in pajamas and there is breakfast to eat, and… Well you get the idea.
Shoes On The Wrong Feet 