He never looked back

Today was Xander’s first day of kindergarten.  We were prepared.  We’d been to the open house, we’d toured and visited the school and had endless conversations with Xander about what to expect.  We had plans for before and after school.  Supplies were purchased, clothes were ironed, backpacks were packed, forms were completed.  Last night near midnight though, I couldn’t stop the tears.  My baby was going to get on a bus, go to a school where I do not know every child and every adult.  He was going to spend his day with these people who barely knew him, and couldn’t possibly be prepared for his shyness.  And I was sure his shyness would prevent him from making friends, or from letting his teacher see how smart he truly is.

But, as I should have learned by now, my kids continue to surprise me.  Adding to my regular dose of motherhood guilt, I could not drop off or pick up Xander on his first day.  Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene threw off all of our plans, so PSU student move-in day landed on the same day as kindergarten started.

So, we jumped right into the regular routine.  Zach took the boys to the bus stop, and waited with Xander.  Parker was seriously unimpressed that Xander not only got to ride the school bus and he did not, but also that Xander was not walking into ‘school’ with him anymore.  After bouncing around with his backpack, lunch box and friend, the bus arrived and they both walked right on – never looking back.

It was worse than pulling teeth, but after much begging, I finally got some details out of the close-lipped kid tonight.  Riding the bus is his favorite part.  Pretty much everything else pales in comparison to that.  But, if he had to pick something he enjoyed most at school, that would be recess.  And, if he had to pick something in his classroom that he liked the most, that would be the science station.  He really wanted to play with the dinosaurs, but at free play only two kids are allowed at each station, and there were already two kids at the dinosaur station.

There were no tears and no complaints.  He met all of his friends (his whole class) though he doesn’t yet remember anyone’s name.  He has three other students who sit at his table (where his assigned seat is) but one girl is in the half day program, so she leaves early.  One boy at his table got in trouble today for yelling at another kid (but not him) and had to sit at his table for two minutes.  Rest time is nice, and Xander thinks I should ask my boss for a rest time at work.  I’m sure that will go over well.

So, Xander is clearly more ready for kindergarten than I am.  He went through the first day like it was nothing.  I’m not sure I’m ready for day two, but he can’t wait to go back (and ride the bus again of course).  Obviously not every day can be wonderful, but I am so incredibly relieve that the first day was.

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So, we celebrated.  Lots of people came and it was a great afternoon.  Pretty hot, but not bad in the shade.  Parker got his cake (which was really his primary focus for the day) and wound up with some really fun toys.  He is finally getting to an age where he has friends that he likes to play with, and a few of them came – it was great to see him playing so well with them.  Making this little boy happy was totally worth the 7+ hours of cleaning I did along with the 4-ish hours we drove to have a free day to clean, plus all of the hours in the hot sun Zach spent working in the yard.  We always say parties are a good excuse to make sure your house is really clean…

He is a stereotypical two year old, fiercely independent one minute, and desperate to cling to my leg the next.  His speech is getting better and better by the day, and the things he says are so freaking cute, most people can’t help but mimic everything he says – we’re guilty of it too, but if I were him, I’d be sick of people copying me by now…  Just recently he’s been in to ‘singing’ his A,B,C’s but can only do it if he’s watching someone and mimicking them (oh, the irony).  He can count to 16, but won’t do it anytime we want to show off his new skill of course.  He tries his hardest to keep up with his older brother and manages to succeed most of the time.  His imagination is phenomenal and he can play make believe with his brother for lengthy periods of time.  I am still the favorite, but sometimes Dad can kiss a boo-boo.  And he melts my heart every day when he calls out ‘I love you Mommy’ as I’m walking out the door.  He doesn’t always make it easy, but I’m still head over heels in love with this little guy.

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He loves to be in the water, and refuses to get out even after his teeth are chattering and his lips match his blue swim suit.  He is so close to having the confidence to swim unassisted – if only we had more time to spend in the water…

He is very excited about Kindergarten, but I’m not sure his mind has fully wrapped around the huge changes in his life happening in 4 short weeks…

He is still my shy guy, and takes a long time to warm up to strangers and still refuses to speak when people he doesn’t know are watching him.

He is however a very sweet brother and friend.

He is still planning to marry Katie and have four children with her, though the names keep changing.  He’ll give you answers to any questions about his future plans – the kid has their entire life planned out already.

Even though he’ll be 5 faster than I am ready for, he still likes to cuddle and will once-in-a-blue-moon wind up snuggled next to me in bed in the middle of the night.  When I ask him the next morning why he got in my bed, the answer is sometimes ‘I just needed some more cuddles Mama’  I am happy to accommodate that request any time.

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Your preschool must be one of the most fabulous preschools on earth.  The amount of effort and preparation the entire staff and students put into the event truly shows how much they care and love your class.  From the large framed picture of what you want to be when you grow up (a paleontologist of course) to the gift bag, to the book with personal messages from each of your teachers to the CD with pictures of your class throughout the 4 years you’ve been there – all amazingly wonderful.

You are also amazingly wonderful – and I’m not the only one who thinks that.  The evidence is in the book, where every message from your teacher refers to you as a sweet, kind, smart child who is happy to play with everyone.

Your current love/obsession is dinosaurs.  I’ve learned more about dinosaurs from you and trying to keep up with you than I ever thought I would want or need to know.

You are currently this wonderful mix of an adorably sweet little boy who thinks about dinosaurs about 90% of his day and a kid who is still little in a few ways.  You still like help getting dressed even though we all know that you can do it on your own and have been able to for years now.  Every few months you still wake up in the night and crawl into bed beside me, and I don’t make you leave because I cherish those cuddles – I know they will become more and more scarce in the coming years (although you can’t seem to believe that yet).

You know all of your letters and numbers and enjoy doing addition and subtraction on your hands.  You like to write, but some of your letters still give you a little trouble, and adding the extra tails to your small a’s and to the tops of your small n’s is still super cute, though I expect/hope that kindergarten will help you get those figured out.

I am so excited to see your next milestones – to see you play organized sports, to make new friends, to start at a new school in the fall and I have to keep reminding myself that despite your smarts and excitement, you are still the youngest child in your class and some of the things might be more of a challenge for you.  Don’t worry though, your father and I will be there to help, support and cheer you on the whole way.  It is bittersweet to see my squishy little baby shed his baby-ness and grow up.

Congratulations little man – we love you so very much!

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Parker and Xander are both sleeping in their own beds in their own rooms through the night.  We get an occasional visit from Xander and Parker is usually up before the sun asking me what I’m doing, but I can’t really complain.

This is what the wine storage rack looks like on my kitchen island.  What does yours look like?

Xander and I had an entertaining conversation the other day:

X: I’m going to get married when I’m 18

Me: 18 huh?  Don’t you think you might want to wait a few years? You never know who you might meet.

X: (very matter-of-factly) But I’ve already picked!

Me: Oh really, who did you pick?

X: Katie.

Me: And did Katie pick you?

X: Yep.

Me: Well, what if you meet someone else in Kindergarten?

X: I won’t meet anyone in Kindergarten.

Me: What if you meet someone in 1st grade?

X: I won’t meet anyone in 1st grade.

Me: What if you meet someone in high school?

X: I won’t meet anyone in high school Mama.

Me: What if you meet someone in college?  I met Daddy in college.

Long pause

X: Ok, I’ll wait until college and then pick.

Me: What if that person doesn’t pick you?

X: Then I’ll marry Katie.

So that’s my 4 year old with his life all figured out.  Here is his Christmas list:

• A Christmas tree for Parker’s room
• A small (miniature) tree for his room
• A house for his trains (no, not a train station – a house where he can take the trains apart and put them.  It’s a picture he has in his head…)

We’ve gotten the tree for Parker’s room taken care of, so I’ll be spending the next week or so trying to figure out how to creatively find a house for trains.

Oh, and try not to leave your step ladder up when hanging Christmas decorations or this might happen:

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Once there, the 8 of us settled into the house.  The view was beautiful, and being able to walk out the door and onto the beach was awesome.  The mosquitoes were a little too friendly for my taste, but they mostly left us alone when we were in the sun.  We spent several days just hanging out in the sand and sun.  The weather was beautiful.  The kids had so much fun running in and out of the waves.  And in the evenings, we sat on the couch and sucked up the free wireless (which was wonderful for those of us without home internet access) and often spent a little time in the hot tub before bed.  After 5 fun-filled days on the beach, we packed up again and headed out.

The ride back North was much more stressful.  We left at 11am, and by 3pm the kids had had enough of the car.  They were tired, and cranky, and sick of being cooped up.  We had to stop more often, and the frequent stops were stressing Zach out.  By 9pm we had arrived in New Jersey.  We stayed at another Marriott.  The first one was quite nice.  And while this room was slightly larger, the beds were hard as a stone slab.  It was a very uncomfortable night of restless sleep for the 4 of us.

On Saturday morning we got up and drove into New York City.  We stopped at Liberty Park and found a pretty awesome playground.  The boys had a blast running around and it was nearly deserted which was nice for us.  The wind was pretty unbelievable there, and after about 1/2 an hour we were all ready to retire to the protection of the car.  Then we drove into the city.  Xander enjoyed looking at the tall buildings for a little while.  Parker fell asleep.

We parked near Central Park, and walked through it.  I think Xander would have loved a horse-drawn carriage ride, but we didn’t really want to spend $50 on that sort of novelty.  They both had lots of fun at the playground  in Central Park, which was great.  Then we walked to FAO Schwartz.  And they of course fell in love with the giant toy store.  My favorite part was how much fun the employees were having.  It’s all staged of course, but in nearly every corner, there was an employee playing/demoing some new, fun toy.  They had hackey sacks and tossing games; skateboards and digital music displays and even a story hour.  Parker found a giant meerkat stuffed animal and fell in love.  It was (of course) $60 and much more than we wanted to spend on a stuffed animal.  Then Xander discovered it, and also fell in love.  We pried both boys away and wandered back through the store, trying to find a small souvenir, something more reasonably priced.  As we were walking out Zach told me that he had fallen in love with the giant meerkat as well, and really, how many times are you a little kid in FAO Schwartz?  I agreed.  Both boys were tired and hungry and starting to melt down, so we decided I would start walking towards the pizza place we were planning on for lunch (how can you go to NYC for the day and not have pizza for lunch?) while Zach got them their toy store souvenir and poked his head into the Apple Store next door.

As we walked to the restaurant I reminded Xander that he would have to share the toy with Parker and that the two of them would need to take turns, be good brothers, blah, blah, blah.  Zach caught up with us, and placed a large bag on the stroller, telling Xander that he had to wait until we got to the car to open it.  Surprisingly, Xander didn’t argue this point.  We ate some fabulous NYC pizza, although the restaurant we ended up at didn’t seem very kid friendly.  The hostess sort of sneered at our stroller, and the waitress took nearly a million years to even come for our drink order.  It’s the one time that cranky kids in a restaurant are useful – if you let them make a little noise, someone eventually pays attention to you!

Then we found our car.  It took a long time for the attendants to bring it up, and we were hot and tired, and ready to get home, so it probably felt even longer.  We finally got both boys buckled in, and then Zach opened up the bag and brought out not one but two giant meerkats.   The boys’ reactions were priceless and they were so beyond happy.  They laughed and giggled the whole way out of the city.

A few hours later, Zach mentioned that we needed to find an alternate route around Keene, since the pumpkin festival was going on that day.  We had been planning on stopping in Lempster to pick up Oscar from Zach’s parent’s house, and Keene is the most direct route.  I suggested that perhaps we shouldn’t find an alternate route, but instead should see if we could get a reasonable parking spot.  This is the last year that the current company is hosting the pumpkin festival.  Unless someone takes it over, it’s the last one.  I didn’t want our children to miss out on a Keene pumpkin festival, so we decided to swing by.  We got there at 8:30 pm.  We were lucky enough to park at the post office in Keene and did a brief tour of the thousands of pumpkins all lit up.  Then we were back in the car by 9pm and in Lempster by 9:30.  We slept in Lempster that night, and finally returned to our house the following morning.

It was a long but fun-filled vacation.  Parker got a bit roughed up by North Carolina (I’ll do a follow up post on that) and didn’t sleep well at all, which meant that Zach and I slept next to each other for a total of 1.5 nights during the 10 day vacation, but other than odd sleeping arrangements it was a blast!  The boys seemed to have a great time, and Zach and I had lots of fun doing new things and showing them around a few new parts of the country.

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Now there is never enough time.  Not enough time to sleep, not enough time to clean the house or put away laundry.  Not enough time to cook real food or play with my children.  Everything I do is done quickly and usually half-assed because there isn’t time for more.  This past weekend is a perfect example of what our lives are like:

Friday night – Zach played golf with some friends from work.  Sara took the boys home, fed them dinner, bathed and put them to bed.  No time for playing or enjoying children, just time to get the bare necessities done.  Then a little time for folding laundry.

Saturday – We are all up by 7am.  We shower and get the kids dressed and fed and leave the house by 10am.  We have to stop at a friend’s house because Zach forgot his laptop and keys in the car when he was dropped off after golf the previous evening.  Then we rush south to the nephew’s baseball game.  We are 15 minutes late (as usual).  We move from the baseball game to the niece’s softball game.  This one is slightly more stressful with Parker because there is a dirt road behind the dugout with  a slow but steady stream of traffic, and Parker thinks that running into the road is the best game ever.  After the softball game we grab some lunch with the family.  Then we pop into Lowe’s for a housewarming present, and head to a housewarming party (both kids crash in the car, which is a relief).  We stay at the party for several hours until Parker starts with the ear piercing screaming.  Zach and I have gotten used to it (the hearing loss helps I think) but we didn’t want to subject the rest of the crowd to his noise.  We got home in time for me to jump in the shower to rinse 8 hours of sweat (it was sooo very hot and humid that day) and dirt off before a friend arrived to bring me to a bachelorette party.  I arrived back home at 2:30 am.  My sweet husband let me sleep until 9:30 the next day, then we rushed to feed the kids brunch before heading out the door for a birthday party.  We arrived home Sunday night at 8:30 pm.

The piles of laundry and dishes and general house tidiness that I ignored last weekend are shameful.  The lawn is ridiculously shaggy.  The litter box has been ignored for far too long.  The list goes on and on.  Children are a choice.  Zach and I chose this lifestyle and 80% of the time I am completely satisfied with it.  However, when I hear about spontaneous vacations, naps on lazy afternoons, boredom, and a thousand other things that I no longer have now, that ugly green jealousy monster rears it head.  There is just never enough time…

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So here is where my confusion comes in.  It’s “Mother’s Day”.  I’m a mother, so it must be “my day”.  And if it’s my day, then how come I don’t get to do what *I* want?  I’m a mother to wonderful 1 and 3 year old boys.  I also work full time.  Although time management experts would probably disagree with me, I manage to find approximately 3 hours each week all to myself (and I pay dearly for it the next morning when I say up too late to enjoy that time).   So what is it that I want for “my day”?  Peace and quiet.  I want a day where I get out of bed when I want to get out of bed.  Where I make tea for myself and no one else.  Where I can lounge in my bed or on my couch or on my porch and read or watch tv or do whatever I feel like doing.  I want a day of peace and quiet with no crying, no screeching, no yelling, no poopy diapers, no butt wiping, no cooking, no picking up, no cleaning.  I want a day where I don’t have to talk to a single soul if I don’t want to.  Where I can take a bath in my whirlpool tub if I want (in 3 months in my new house I’ve managed 2 baths – and one was in my bathing suit with the kids).  But, society tells me that as a mother, this is not what I “should” want.  I should want to spend the day with my smiling children and husband.  I should accept my macaroni necklace* with a smile and then go about packing everything up for our day-long trip through other mother’s houses.

So I can only conclude that this day is mis-named.  It’s not really “Mother’s Day”, it’s “Mother’s Celebration”.  It’s a day we celebrate and appreciate mothers, but it’s not their day.  It’s not a day for mothers to do what they want, because I bet if we took a poll 99% of mothers would say (in one form or another) that what they really want is a day off.

So, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend of celebrating mothers, but remember, when you’re wishing them a “Happy mother’s day”, it’s not really “their” day.  I think next year perhaps we’ll celebrate grandparent’s day instead, and then give Zach and me the day off on Mother’s/Father’s day.

*it is important to note (especially for my day care providers reading this) that I have never received a macaroni necklace.  The artwork I do receive is always awesome and greatly appreciated

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And boy was it frustrating when the boys had an argument yesterday and Parker bit Xander for the first time ever.  I’m totally in love with my new iPad (yeah, yeah, I’ve heard all the negative press – it’s a bigger iTouch, it does everything a laptop does but worse, and isn’t as good as an iPhone because it can’t make calls, etc.  Whatever.  It does everything I want a computer to do, and I haven’t owned a new computer since 1999, so I’m happy).

We’re adjusting to life on the side of a mountain.  Things seem to go like this:

Me: I’ve never had a well before, do you think we’ll have to worry about it drying up in the summer time?

Zach: No, we have an artesian well – we won’t have to worry about it drying up.  Sheesh, don’t you know anything about wells?

Me: Nope, this is my very first well experience.  I am a city (well, town really) girl.

Less than 24 hours later, our well pump dies and it takes $2,000.00 to replace it.  *awesome*

Some animal has discovered our trash bins.  It (or they, I’m envisioning a pack of raccoons) were kind enough to spread garbage allll over our back yard (the nice smelly kind – since we’re out in the woods, there is no more garbage disposal which means lots more food (mostly from the kids) dumped in there to make stuff extra pungent).  It happened to be a rather windy evening, so one stray plastic bag managed to get caught at the top of a 30 foot tree.  Oh man that irritated the bejesus out of Zach.  It’s finally disappeared over a week later.

Last week a friend of ours (with kids pretty much the exact same ages as ours) and I took all four kids to Chuck E. Cheese.  It’s was day care’s “staff sanity day” so we decided to go all out and make it “parent insanity day”.  It was actually pretty fun, and other than NONE of the kids napping for over an hour on the way home, a good time was had by all.  So, the most exciting thing I’ve seen in a week is this – enjoy:

Boys riding the Carousel at Chuck E. Cheese

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