i was folding laundry and starting a load of whites in the basement when i heard yelling.
paul: [from the top of the basement stairs] mommy?!
me: yes?
paul: when you come back up, you have to say the password.
me: okay.
me: i'll have to think about it, though, because i don't think i know the password.
paul: i'll give you a clue.
paul: it's a four-letter word.
me: [cheerfully] oh, i know LOTS of four-letter words!
paul: what?
me: oh, nothing...
saturday was a busy (rainy) day.
playing with my cell, nola managed to call paul's dentist. sigh.
we went to a book fair at paul's school. as far as we knew, it started at 9. we planned to get there at 9 because we had afternoon plans, but... we're us, so we got there after 10. sitting in the car in front of the school, i looked out at the marquee and discovered, hey, it started at 10. i was so glad we didn't rush.
even though paul kept saying all morning with great excitement that that the book fair would be open until 2, we were out within half an hour. they didn't have any encyclopedia brown books, so he got a cam jansen one instead, along with a military picture book and two little nature books. nola picked a book with a clock with positionable hands.
after the book fair, we went home, got my mom and headed out to moreno valley for a birthday party. this party would usually be a joint birthday party for my grandmother and my uncle's mother, but my poor little grandmother didn't make it this far. but everyone ended up watching the remembrance and funeral video my cousin made, so i guess it was her party, too.
we were late because we stopped for lunch at cpk in riverside. even though the party was to be a typical filipino party (you know, with lots of food), there is almost never anything for the kids or me to eat. for myself, that's fine, i'm used to it, but i always feel a little weird when family is coaxing me to eat and i really just want to say, "well, then you should have cooked something for me." while we were there, we watched the news on a big screen tv about tsunami warnings in hawaii. (thank god they didn't amount to much!) then after lunch there was a lot of traffic on the freeway, so we were even later than expected. (kind of the story of my life.)
the party turned out to be a pretty good time. nola was charming and funny (clingy, of course), and even paul seemed to enjoy himself. poor cam was so tired after the drive because he had stayed up very late the night before, so he took a nap.
i had a work emergency, but it was cleared up fairly quickly.
towards the end, my favorite aunt insisted on taking pictures with everyone. she explained to me that she always hated picture time because she thinks of herself as ugly, but recently she realized that means she's missed so much because she's not in the pictures she has, so now she's determined to be in as many pictures as possible. for some reason, that made me tear up.
then we drove home. nola talked ALL the way home. the conversation went something like this:
nola: daddy?
cam: yes, nola?
nola: shoes.
cam: i don't have any shoes.
nola: mommy? [pronounced mahMEE!]
me: yes?
nola: shoes.
me: yes, i know you have shoes.
nola: meema? [pronounced meeMAH!]
my mother: yes?
nola: shoes!
my mother: yes, you have shoes.
nola: meema?
my mother: yes?
nola: shoes!
my mother: yes, you are wearing shoes.
nola: meema?
my mother: yes?
nola: SHOES!
my mother: [wearily] yes, shoes.
paul slept in the car, so he got to push off bedtime until later (would have preferred that he stayed asleep when we got home, but fat chance of that). nola and i went to bed by 9, then i got up at 10:30 to work. i just finished what i wanted to finish about 10 minutes ago.
i guess it's time for bed, but it's also just about time for another day. decisions...
me: are you the only one wearing a uniform these days?
paul: practically.
paul: i liked james' shirt yesterday.
paul: it said green day and it had the military on it.
paul: do you even know what green day is?
me: a band.
paul: [silence]
me. was i not supposed to know that?
cam, paul, nola and i have been sick for what feels like years.
paul has been in and out of school. cam has spent quite a few days working from home. (my mother guilted me for going to work while nola was ill.)
everyone coughs, snuffles and swallows painfully.
i had pinkeye!
these past few days have been particularly galling because cam and i seem to have gotten worse (although it's been okay today) instead of better. i'm losing my voice for the second time in two weeks, and the illness is completely different from what it was then. nose, please stop dripping.
must we run through the entire gamut of potential colds/flu before this winter is over?
cam: why do you get to make all the decisions?
me: because he whines the loudest.
cam: [laughter]
paul: [seriously] I make all of the decisions because I whine the loudest.
me: that's right.
paul: whine is a homophone.
paul: there's whine, which is to throw a fit, and there's wine, which you drink.
i crown paul the newest little robot in the house.
the children are yelling hellos at each other while climbing all over their new foam home. (no, we didn't pay that price, it showed up on kids woot for about half that, i think.) the house is super-cute, but the kids are even cuter.
nola is very talkative. when paul was her age, he communicated mostly by signs, so this is new to us. (of course, now paul won't stop talking, so this means we have multiple children with mouths that. never. close.)
she calls her grandfather "beepa."
she likes to count: "one two three four five six five six five six"
our favorite sentence (a little garbled, but still understandable): "help, i'm stuck!"
she likes to laugh like the count: "ha ha ha."
she likes to sing "tinkle tinkle," much to the delight of her grandparents. she also likes to sing the theme song for "yayoo" (caillou).
wook (look), uh-oh, mulk (milk), wahr (water) and mommy/daddy/paul still pretty much make up the bulk of her conversation, but it's a lot of fun trying to deciper the rest of her warbling.
in the car after running some errands this evening, paul declared it was time for a "just being silent" contest.
predictably, both kids fell asleep.
i have been informed that nola now knows how to unbuckle the top buckle on her graco snugride. not so good when she does it while the car is in motion... on the freeway. paul, sitting next to her, apparently freaked out and lost his shit when she did it.
time to dust off paul's old britax marathon. it was newly manufactured when we bought it, so it's still got a couple of good years left in it.
while going through the mail last night, i discovered a baby announcement.
me: sweetie, you have a new cousin.
paul: nola has a new cousin?
me: you do, too.
paul: you said nola.
me: no, i said sweetie... i should have said sweeties!
paul: [no longer interested]
nola wandered over to me. i held up the baby picture and she took it. she walked around, waving it, occasionally stopping to study it. then, with the same degree of nonchalance, she dropped it into the trash.
my children. so very much the center of the universe.
i was pleased to see cam wearing his glasses.
paul was not pleased. "you look like harry potter!" he smart-assed.
cam was not pleased.
skipped out on work a bit early today to accompany the family to the discovery science center in santa ana. it was a good break, even if i was checking my blackberry every few minutes. (cam's office has been closed all week, so the fam has been on museum mode for the past several days.) paul likes it there a lot, and i think nola enjoyed herself, even though the place isn"t really structured for toddlers. my mom was with us, and she was kind of amazed that such a kid-centric environment existed. right. my childhood was clearly all porn, hookers and blow.
they went to the aquarium of the pacific a few days before. i suspect i would have liked that better, but this was fun. i'm just glad i was able to accompany them on at least one trip.
today:
i sobbed.
cam yelled.
paul whined.
and nola ate mud.
but it wasn't all bad.
paul: [holding up a roll of gift wrap with a glove on the end] this is a good human analog!
paul: i spy with my little eye...
paul: something that starts with o.
paul: it's something that nola likes.
me: um...
paul: do you know what it is?
me: starts with an o?
paul: yes.
me: no, i don't.
paul: nola likes it...
me: no, i'm sorry, i still don't know.
paul: obama!
today cam and i met with paul's teacher.
we were very interested to discover that he works just as slowly at school as he does at home. good grief. but his teacher felt that he was just a methodical worker, not that he lacked focus.
this evening paul lollygagged over his homework (various locations, various pencils, various excuses) until cam took his homework away. hysterics ensued. paul was given a second chance, and he turned around and finished his homework in less than 15 minutes.
exasperating.
my children like their oatmeal with chocolate chips. why do we bother making oatmeal? let's just make a huge batch of chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies and call it breakfast.
a few weeks back, i left my laptop on in the bedroom and went to the kitchen.
at some point, paul came upon my computer and took over. i'm used to him stealing it to play games, so i didn't think anything of it.
i don't really remember the details, but i did notice that paul was unusually secretive about what he was doing. we were admonished to not look. cam and i joked that it was almost as if he were checking out porn.
when i got back to my computer, i realized that the last thing i had been looking at was a slideshow of nsfw american apparel ads. it had been a link off some fashion forum. oops! i guess he was sort of looking at porn. cam laughed when i told him.
can't help but cringe every time i see an american apparel ad these days. have to be much more careful what gets left up on an unattended laptop.
i bought matching pajamas for the whole family. paul and nola are so very adorable in theirs. as for cam and myself, i cannot express how hilarious it is that we two now have clothes from gymboree.
paul: i just woke up.
paul: DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?!
last week paul kissed me on the cheek, told me he loved me and then promised to give me all of his brown legos so i could build a pirate ship.
today he said he loved me, but he didn't offer me any legos.
at least he didn't make me promise to buy him more.
paul is jonesing for a snuggie.
cam just informed me that paul ("our vain boy") wants a blemish covered. um. i don't think my concealer will be the right shade.
with paul's latest bout with illness, i've come to see that mr. baby is a perfect nickname for him. he really is a querulous and cantankerous little old man when he's sick. it will be interesting to see if this changes as he gets older.
future wife, when you enter the picture, we are going to have to have a little talk about how men usually are babies when they don't feel well, but this one goes to the other extreme...
the children are very sick, so we stayed home today.
cam's dad delivered turkey to our doorstep for dinner (to make up for our lack of thanksgiving lunch).
the flu actually hit me last friday (by the way, the bowling birthday party paul attended last friday? perfection. i see more bowling in paul's future, but hopefully not in mine), so i'm pretty much well-ish now. still a little sniffly, a little worn around the edges, a little cloudy, but not too bad all things considered. cam, remarkably, may actually get through this unhealthy season unscathed.
nola is feverish and clingy. she threw up on me twice last night, and today she has scarcely eaten. i have been carrying her for most of the day.
paul complains of cold and stomach pains. he whines and squeals in misery.
neither one slept well last night. naps today have been brief.
it's going to be a long day for my poor babies.
paul: [irritated] STOP IT, NOLA!
me: what's going on?
paul: she's rubbing me with an eraser!
me: maybe she's trying to erase you.
paul: [highly annoyed] NOT FUNNY!
nola cut paul with a pair of scissors. oy vey.
i was trying to attend to a screaming bloody-thumbed paul -- "oh MY! oh MY! it HURTS!" -- but my mom kept getting in the way. i finally had to stop her.
me: would you PLEASE keep an eye on nola?
eventually she left the room to pick up nola... and then came back to crowd us at the sink. sigh.
we stopped the bleeding and put a bandage on his thumb. then he wanted a frozen lemonade to help stop the bleeding ("from the inside out?" i asked). then he wanted me to hold his thumb with one hand and feed him orange veggie straws with the other.
cam was out buying sandwiches when it happened. by the time he came home, all was well. of course, when paul told cam about it, he was very dramatic, but that luckily did not last that long.
point to nola, i guess.
paul: daddy, it looks almost like a cruise missile!
paul sang a song today:
i like to have money
to buy things from the store
money money money
i want more
a penny is worth one cent
a nickel is worth five
a dime is worth ten cents
and a quarter is twenty-five
children. so moneygrubbing. so materialistic.
nola likes to pretend to sleep -- she will lie down and mock-snore, but her eyes stay open. she likes to say "look" (wook), "hat," "babies" and "shoes" and loves to wear her little boots (target-brand faux uggs). nola won't drink milk other than breastmilk and drinks more water than i do. at the ripe old age of 18 months, she is finally wearing 9-12 month clothing.
paul is a really good speller and is also very good at math. he finally had his first birthday party with friends. paul loves sweets, but is partial to vegetable soup and english muffins. he likes pizza crust, but can do without pizza. his arms are too long for size 4 lands end long-sleeved polos, but he can still wear that size in the short-sleeved ones.
both children snore. they love to be swung around by their arms. paul will drop food on the floor and nola will pick it up and eat it. in a fight, i think nola would win because she uses her claws. i haven't yet decided which one is funnier, though.
about two weeks ago, cam got concerned about paul's lingering cough, so we went to the doctor. a nasal infection was the cause of the cough. the doctor put paul on a two-week course of amoxicillin and off we went.
over this past weekend, paul started to complain of an itch. cam woke me in the middle of the night to show me a series of raised welts on paul's chest. he had recently discovered sesame balls (the kind with sweet bean paste in the middle), so we wondered if perhaps there had been an allergen in them. since his breathing wasn't affected, we thought we'd give it a day or so to clear out of his system.
my second thought was chicken pox, but it wasn't scabbing.
but then the hives spread to his legs and his arms. he was itchy and miserable. cam debated with himself about taking paul to the doctor, when it seemed to me that he was futzing for no reason. i mean, look, the child is covered in welts.
so cam took him to back to the hospital and discovered that the poor thing was having a reaction to the amoxicillin. they took him off that (his infection had cleared, yay) and put him on atarax (antihistamine) instead. and they gave him a note to stay home from school.
yesterday the rash had moved up to his face, but today his skin is much clearer. he's not as itchy and life seems sunnier. he should be back at school by thursday.
my poor boy. don't you ever get a break?
pretending to be piloting a plane:
paul: i need to go balls to the wall.
(i had to look up the origin of the phrase. benign enough, yes, but from a six-year-old it sounds so... wrong.)
paul: what does dna stand for?
me: [laughing in disbelief] you know, i don't remember!
paul: you're supposed to learn that in high school.
paul: you're THIIIIRRRRRTTY-FIVE. [me: not yet!]
me: you can read.
me: look it up.
the other night paul was giggling and not sleeping.
me: why aren't you sleeping?
paul: because daddy was stupid and gave me cake!
me: he gave you CAKE before bed?
a few days ago paul saw a commercial for a giant cupcake pan and declared that he wanted that for his birthday cake.
in a panic, i told cam that we had to find that pan in a store because it was too late to order it. finally made it to a target friday night. they didn't have the exact pan (silicone), but they did have a very similar one made of metal. so we bought it, a box of cake mix and a container of frosting. (i would have preferred to do it all from scratch, but you can't have everything.) i planned to make the cake that night.
but then paul announced that he wanted to help make the cake, so that nixed the nighttime bake-off. and cam's parents suggested we go to disneyland, so that threw us into a puddle of confusion. not that we had firm plans for saturday, but we did think a family lunch party was in the works. paul agreed to disneyland (and to bring nola rather than leave her with the in-laws), so we tentatively decided to come by afterwards with cake.
fast-forward. paul no longer wants to help with cake, throws tiny fit about the giant cupcake pan being too small. paul wants pancakes for breakfast. i wake cam and get him to go out to buy round cake pans (because i have one square and a loaf pan). i throw cake ingredients into the mixer and cook pancakes with a baby girl on my hip. paul watches tv. when cam returns, it comes out that paul no longer wants to go to disneyland. cam and i instantly become frustrated and stressed-out wrecks. (yay, parenthood!) we dither around for a while (yes disney, no disney, yes grandpa's house, no grandpa's house), and then finally hit on a plan to just go to grandpa's house after lunch for cake and ice cream and presents. much easier and lower on stress because we (and they) don't feel obligated to make a big lunch.
paul was snitty. so much so that he and cam went back to bed for a minute or two so they could start the day over. it sort of worked.
we went a bit crazy on the presents. cam's dad and uncle went similarly crazy and bought model planes. as i scraped tiny nubs of plastic off the sides of tiny plastic parts with an x-acto knife, i remembered why i don't always like sewing. there's only so much leeway... cooking is more my speed. improv. dash of this, sprinkle of that. much better than 1/4" seam allowances and x-acto knives! but re the model planes -- it's a nice idea in theory, but paul is still a little boy, and these can only take so much playing. go ahead and call missing pieces and broken bits "battle damage" because he can accept that when his stuff breaks or goes missing. but when we get upset with him for not respecting his belongings, well, how much did we respect our stuff when we were that age? i'm sure we all went through periods of acting like our parents were made of money.
nola had a lot of fun. cam's sister had a friend visiting, and by the end of the day nola was comfortable enough to be carried by her all over the place.
cam and i snuck out to buy a birthday present for a next-door neighbor kid -- paul will be going over there for a birthday party on sunday afternoon. we wanted paul to come along to pick the present, but he threw a mini-fit. secretly i was glad, and it worked out fine because he told us to get legos and we found a nice little lego set that wasn't too old or too expensive.
one thing i've known about but yet didn't really see until today was paul's devotion to his new friends. i swear, once we got to cam's parents' house, i think i saw paul for a total of one hour out of five. it's so cute, but it's also a little irritating. like when we went to pick him up on friday night, he CRIED when he saw us and complained we were too early. um, buck up, kid, it's already bedtime. but i am pleased he has friends because i was a little concerned about his lack of connection to people his age.
the day worked out well, better than i was expecting. still think disney would have been nice, though.
happy birthday, dear boy. (holy crap, how did i become the mother of a 6-year-old? dude.) it's independence day -- time to be a big boy ALL. THE. TIME.
i was informed a few days ago that paul intends to have a birthday party. um, what?
but all attempts at getting information out of paul (other than the potential invitees) have failed, so i'm just going to focus on my original plan of getting classroom goody bags ready to distribute next friday.
paul has been really picky about what is to go into those bags. i had been considering buying more of the little diecast jets that paul got from the miramar air show, but paul didn't appreciate that idea.
paul: i already have those.
me: but these aren't for you.
paul: but i get a bag, too.
couldn't exactly argue with that. i ended up going with pencils, pencil sharpeners (that's a story for another day), a tiny notepad and a pullback jet toy. hope paul is satisfied.
a few months ago, paul told me that kari byron was pregnant.
(we don't watch mythbusters all that often anymore, but paul is watching is right now, so that's why i'm thinking about this.)
me: really?
paul: [nodding] don't tell daddy.
months went by, and one day it popped into my head again. disregarding paul's wishes, i mentioned the conversation to cam.
me: and then he said, "don't tell daddy."
cam: why?
cam: did he get her pregnant?
i wish paul wasn't so thin-skinned. not every single comment is a rebuke. my poor boy has some toughening up to do. it feels like he's saying "i give up!" or wrapping his arms around himself (self-protection? this one breaks my heart) a zillion times a day.
cam recently bought the beatles: rock band (and an xbox 360). he plays it with the children: cam on drums, paul on guitar, nola on cam's lap with microphone. they are so painfully cute.
tuesday night cam and i went to back-to-school night at paul's school.
i like paul's teacher. she actually had a lot more to say than the "we hope to have a great year!" speech that school administration seems obligated to deliver. (i understand that i haven't actually witnessed too many of these as a parent, but goddammit, i was a student once, too.) she talked for longer than the allotted time, which obviously was not a big deal for us because we don't have kids in other grades, about the curriculum and new programs. she talked a lot about a new math system the school is trying out, and she provided a handout for the parents. she talked about a reading program and the science studies for the year. she described her homework schedule. she talked about spelling tests. she explained the need for "high-frequency" words and the importance of reading to get the message in what you're reading.
sitting in paul's little chair at paul's little desk, i felt like i was in school again. it was a little intimidating but also a little exhilarating. sure, the homework schedule seems excessive, but it sounds like there could be some real learning at work here.
because of paul's extreme interest in military airplanes, cam's dad showed him a heavily, heavily, heavily edited version of "top gun."
even knowing this, i did have a brief moment of befuddlement when i heard him humming a song from the movie this morning.
come on, "top gun"! that's a movie from MY childhood.
paul seems to be enjoying school. the work is going well, he's eating a lot of his lunch, he's doing a lot of running. he's also as modest as ever.
me: you have beautiful handwriting.
paul: [weary] i know.
cam and his sister have apparently hit upon the secret of making him do his homework -- turning it into a competition. who can write her/his name faster? can you finish your homework before i finish taking out the trash? whatever they're doing, it works better than standing over him and saying, "why aren't you doing your homework?"
today his class did some cooking -- they baked an apple crisp. the teacher, intentionally or unintentionally, bought a dairy-free margarine, so we didn't even need to provide anything. the school sent home a new set of forms for paul's epipen, so we didn't even need to request them. if the school didn't push the fundraising so much, they might be almost perfect.
paul's first (partial) week of school is over. it's going to be both a long year and a short one.
lunches were easy this week because the "main course" was premade -- at paul's request, i made dairy/egg-free pigs in blankets on wednesday morning, and he ate those during the week. he also ate oatmeal bars that i baked, fruit and dairy-free cheddar crackers. he carried a thermos of soy milk, but he didn't really drink it, so i'm returning to milk and juice boxes next week.
he is still in last year's uniforms, but his old pants are a little too short. haven't broken out the new pants yet, though, because he's been wearing shorts instead (i only bought him one pair of uniform shorts last year, but i made two more over the summer by cutting and hemming two pairs of uniform pants with worn-out knees). he's wearing the same shoes, carrying the same lunchbox. new camouflage backpack.
cam and i worked from home on wednesday so that we could take paul to school and pick him up. we had been feeling a little apprehensive because we hadn't heard a damned thing from the school, and we were wondering if a letter from the school had been misdelivered or just lost. we didn't have a school supplies list, we didn't have a teacher. we didn't know anything at all.
so off we went to school. the class lists were posted on a little wall close to the front gate, so that solved that mystery. we peeked in the classroom, then headed out to the playground to figure out where paul's class would line up. i was a little sad to see that only one of his kindy classmates was in his class. i was also a little sad because everyone else in the class seemed to know each other. (and i was also a little sad because paul often pulled away from me to cling to cam, but that's nothing new so it hardly rates a mention.) the principal gave a short speech, and the classes marched off. we followed behind, but paul didn't pay us any attention.
i had a work conference call in the middle of the day. they asked me how the first day of school went. "i expected tears," i said, laughing, "but there were none!" someone told a cute story about how his sister followed the school bus to school, then came back to school at the end of the day to follow the school bus home. her kids had a great day and didn't even know. "oh, the parents are always worse off than the kids," we joked.
at the end of the day, we picked him up and he was perfectly fine. happy, even. we left him and nola (she came along to pick him up) with their grandfather and aunt, and returned home to work.
that night, the homework struggles began. homework was laid out the same way as in kindergarten (assignment sheet and assignments distributed at the end of the week, each night's homework returned the following morning in a folder), and paul's attitude towards homework was equally unchanged. wednesday night and thursday night were difficult. i found myself getting really rather impatient on thursday (to my shame) because i know he can do the work really quickly if he decides to do it, but the dawdling stretches out 5-minute assignments to over an hour's worth of fuss. good gravy.
but -- all in all -- this year is off to a better start than previous school years. fingers crossed it stays that way.
yesterday was a tremendously eventful day. busy busy busy. i can't have too many days like that or i'd be even more of a wreck than i am now.
in the morning, we went to the farmer's market with my mom to buy flowers to take to the cemetery. nola and i went with my mother to the flower stall while cam and paul bought fruit. it was hot and crowded and cam and i both got very stressed. i was glad to leave. (amusingly enough, we ran into our next-door neighbors. the husband commented on cam's rather hirsute appearance, saying he looked a bit like keanu reeves. i smirked internally. personally i think cam looks more like bo brady (at least in the 80s-90s... dunno if he still looks like that), but i see where my neighbor was going with the comparison.)
then we went to the cemetery. it's important to note that my mom doesn't like to drive if she can avoid it -- and as a non-driver, i understand -- so she was squished in the backseat between paul's high-backed booster and nola's rearfacing infant seat. (we had to take her pt cruiser because our a3 isn't big enough for three in the backseat AT ALL.) she never wants to sit up front if cam's driving, so she insists on sitting in the back even though it would be less of a squeeze for me back there. nola fell asleep on the way and continued to snooze upon arrival, so cam stayed in the car with her. paul had picked out a bouquet of flowers "to plant," he declared (note that we had already bought the flowers and they were waiting in the car by this time, so it was just one more thing to be stressed out about -- hurry up and let's go!), so he came with us to the gravesite. cam let him run across the street unattended -- it was a cemetery, after all -- and i questioned cam, but ultimately it didn't matter because no one was coming. part way through the flower arranging, paul got bored, so i escorted him back to the car. he then decided he wanted to come back to us, so he "helped" us out by rearranging flowers and cutting some very short. i then refused to play because 1) i was still dealing with flowers and 2) we were in a cemetery for chrissakes, so i brought my sulky little boy back to the car. my mother got very stressed.
on the way to the cemetery, cam and i had joked about test-driving a bigger car (this topic had actually come up about a week prior) afterwards. well, after we left the cemetery, that's exactly what we did. paul was reluctant, so cam convinced him of the fun of it. then cam got cold feet, but paul really wanted to go. har. so cam test-drove his big car of choice at the moment, a ford flex (which he partially likes because it looks like a giant mini cooper). we were initially going to all go on the drive, but then i thought maybe nola, my mom and i would stay behind. but then paul wanted cam to sit with him, so i decided to tag along to give paul a traveling companion (and to let cam focus on the car). oh, how nola wailed when i handed her to my mother...
the drive was nice. cam seemed impressed and paul LOVED it. we sat in the third row and paul was the happiest little test-driver in the world. he wouldn't stop talking -- we were, he said, in a big airplane with cupholders and storage for toys. if we pushed certain spots on the car, things would happen. i asked him, "can we do anything to help the people up front?" he told me to push a spot on the window while he did the same on his side.
me: what was that for?
him: it made cupholders pop out in the front.
me: oh, how nice.
after the test-drive, we drove to a local mall for lunch. i was thinking food court, but cam convinced paul to let us go to cpk because i had been wanting to go there (grilled vegetable salad, yum). turned out cam needed to bribe paul with a ride in a $7 (!) rental double stroller shaped like a fire truck. lunch was beyond stressful. nola nibbled crayons, paul pouted. nola screamed, paul climbed around on the bench seat. nola rubbed food on my shorts. a table of pretty young girls in their 20s looked over at us while i shoveled food in my mouth while trying to keep nola from crawling on the table.
i've had finer moments.
after lunch, we walked about the mall with our expensive rental stroller. the kids were happy (even nola, the hater of strollers), but i was embarrassed to be walking a mall with that monstrosity. i can struggle with a car cart in a grocery store, but a mall? ugh. i then took my mom into nordstrom, abandoning cam with the kids, and we hit the shoes, then the petite section. i ended up buying two dresses, a wrap and a sheath with elbow-length sleeves. now that i'm not pumping anymore, i love my dresses. i wasn't sold on one of them (the sheath), but i wanted to show cam before just saying no to it completely. besides, my mom would have been disgruntled if i didn't get that one because that was the one she liked better. (cam ended up liking that one better, too, but he liked the wrap as well.) my mom didn't like anything she tried on, so she left with the same amount of money she brought in.
after the mall we finally went home. i fed nola and we took a brief nap while cam filled up an inflatable pool in the backyard. when nola awoke, we got in the pool. it was freezing, so we didn't stay in too long. then we took quick showers and went to whole foods for groceries and dinner.
the kids got to bed really late. cam and i intended to stay up and have some wine, but we were completely bushed and fell asleep. sleep of the just, i say.
a woman was soliciting donations for a womens' shelter outside of a local drugstore. cam gave her a dollar, so she told him he could take a tootsie-pop. paul and cam deliberated, and finally settled on a cherry one. we had looked up tootsie rolls once upon a time and were surprised to see paul could eat them, so we were fairly confident he could eat one of these.
but we were wrong. cam checked the ingredients and found a milk product. paul burst into tears. "i give up on all candy," he sobbed. i fought the lump in my throat and blinked a few times.
cam: breaks my heart.
me: i know.
i know some of you might scoff and think we're fools for even wanting to give our boy such an unhealthy treat, but i don't care. every kid should be able to enjoy an unexpected sweet every once in a while and not have to worry about getting very sick from it.
sweetie, those self-adhesive googly eyes do not belong on my ipod. or daddy's phone. or that screwdriver over there. or the front door, for that matter!
it is cool to have a kid with a great sense of humor. it is not cool when that kid uses that great sense of humor to delay bedtime for HOURS.
paul informed me a few minutes ago that he loves starlight mints and that he wants me to buy him a big bag. i had to chuckle. even though i've seen them in stores, i can't say i've ever seen anyone buy any. can't we just grab a handful at the next restaurant we visit?
last night we had a bit of a pissing contest at dinner: who's the boss?
paul declared he was the boss -- and that it was because he sings fewer dora songs than everyone else in the house. or that it was because he talks less than everyone else. and because of this and that and that and this.
every time he said something new, we'd refute him.
cam: that sounds like nola.
me: or me -- i'm the boss.
cam: nope, that's me.
after a few minutes of this, paul put on his i'm-so-clever face. he announced that the boss was five. aha!
cam: then you'll only be the boss for a few more months, then nola will be the boss in few years.
he seemed fine with that, so, well, he's the boss. enjoy it, kid.
i am SO tired of struggling with the children over the trimming of fingernails and toenails. can't i just have them declawed?
it's a little disconcerting that paul can be happy watching either noggin or the military channel.
paul slept at his grandparents' house last night. I walked by his room a minute ago and it just seemed so dark and lonely. not that he's normally a bundle of energy at this time in the morning, but the room was just so... still.
paul is slowly getting accustomed to the idea of moving things out of nola's reach instead of yelling at her and pushing her head to try to get her to turn around. (i know.) unfortunately, this also means they argue more because he has no qualms about yanking stuff right out of her hands. i'm in no hurry for her to talk if it just means that the chorus of "but mommy"s is just going to double.
paul: what is that?
me: cheerios -- want some?
paul: they taste like bread.
paul: why do they taste like bread?
me: they just do.
me: they make them like that.
paul: i don't like bread made into tiny circles.
just got back from a half hour or so at the park. I thought we'd just have another walk, but paul had other ideas.
me: how did our nice little walk get so complicated?
cam: our nice little boy got so complicated.
so we drove to the park. nola and i walked around while paul and cam played with a balsa wood airplane and a frisbee-type thing. it was cute.
now we're home and i'm trying (in a very half-assed way) to get nola to sleep. (one could argue that nola is trying in a very half-assed way to go to sleep.) paul will be bed-bound soon, too. good lord, evenings are short around here.
last night cam went to a birthday party for a former coworker. i stayed home with the kids. we watched a bunch of wiggles dvds on netflix (because i am the lazy kind of mom). all was fine (there were some dinner squabbles that were irritating, but not a big deal) until paul started getting a little too aggressive with his little sister.
he had been picking on her a little bit -- running to get ahead of her, standing in her way -- but then he started yelling and tossing stuff around. he'd see that she had something and he would come flying across the room to yank it out of her hands. he pushed her, nearly hit her.
me: stop it, paul, let her play.
me: stop it, paul.
me: PAUL.
me: STOP IT.
finally he looked at me.
paul: no one can stop me.
me: i can.
i stood up, turned off the lights and the tv.
me: go to bed.
the tears! cam arrived a few minutes later and i willingly turned paul over to him. it was past nola's bedtime and she, too, was getting cranky. paul cried and whined for what seemed like an eternity.
paul: i don't have ANY choices.
me: you did have choices, but you lost them.
paul: i don't have any choices!
cam: you do: bed or bath?
that kid. i would have totally relented if there hadn't been a fit of such enormous proportions. but i guess it's better this way because he did need to realize there were consequences for his behavior.
today felt like a sunday because we had friday off (which still strikes me as odd, although i'm not sure why).
my mom's youngest brother has been here since thursday. he just got back from the philippines, and because he's between jobs, my mom and i decided to pay him to paint a fence. so while he worked on that, we worked on the railings in the front -- sanding and scraping in preparation to repaint.
but before we could get started, there was a lot to do. i made pancakes for breakfast (paul requested shaped pancakes, so i made him an airplane and a rocket (cooked in cookie cutters in the pan). it was so much effort, i decided against making others like that and ended up just making big pancakes and cutting them with cookie cutters. after breakfast, paul wanted to go early to cam's parents' house (where we were going for lunch), but had to wait an hour while they got ready... so cam had to amuse him while i started in on the railings (nola hung out with my mom). i worked alone until cam returned from dropping paul off, then we worked together for a bit longer than we should have. cam had to call his parents to tell them to eat without us. by the time we got over there, everyone had already eaten, but paul sat with us and ate a shocking amount of corn.
after lunch, paul and cam's sister made lemonade and set up a stand in the backyard, where they sold said lemonade for a penny a cup. nola played in the sprinkler and got soaking wet. i had to forcibly remove bits of dried grass from her mouth. that child will eat anything. around 3ish, i tried to feed nola so she'd take a nap, but she was uncooperative. cam and i ended up leaving paul there while we took nola home to sleep.
we returned to cam's parents' house around 7ish. we ate dinner and went outside to watch the fireworks. it was much more toned down than in previous years. the whole day was much more toned down -- we used to dislike this holiday because of the block parties and the insane fireworks. but today was quiet and mild. paul still thought the fireworks were too loud, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before. nola was fine with the loud sounds, but she started melting down because she was up past her bedtime.
when we got home, the kids went to bed fairly quickly and easily, so now here we are, sitting in front of laptops and tv with wine and coffee. it's a little noisy outside, but nothing too bad. happy 4th of july.
the kids, oh how they fight. nola usually wins with a swipe and a scream. paul falls back, pouting and whining. it's a little disturbing to realize that it can only get worse from here, but i can find comfort in the fact that it will not last. at least it won't if i can help it.
my brother and i fought like crazy when we were growing up. we argued over anything, everything. (my mother blamed me for the decline of that relationship.) we were legendary amongst the family for our inability to get along. it was so bad that at my own brother's FUNERAL my aunt asked me why i was sad. "you hated each other." never mind that we had pretty much eased up on the fighting for years by the time he died. never mind that he was MY brother and i was HIS sister and that DEATH had taken away a person i had known my entire life. he was GONE. is GONE. FOREVER.
pardon the caps. the rank stupidity of that comment never fails to rankle.
i like to think that my brother and i could have had a good adult relationship. it hurts that there isn't one. i think about people estranged from their siblings and i wonder, "how could they have let that happen? this is the only person who knows exactly what you went through. there is a lifetime, a wealth of shared experience wasted because of past strife." (not that i always think in such language.) nola and paul will one day be friends -- or just not enemies. that's all i ask.
did i mention that nola is now standing on her own? it is sooo cute. paul likes to have standing contests with her -- when she sits down on her diapered behind, paul cheers. "i win!" (it's crucial to him that he wins, and it's not important to her if she loses, so... there you have it.) i both can't wait for and fear the advent of walking. it will be a new era.
but even without walking, it's not like she's not mobile. just the other day she scooted through an open baby gate and shoved it closed -- with me on the other side. i looked at cam. "your mom says she does that to her all the time," he remarked.
she's almost 14 months now. paul started walking at 15. when will her turn come?
well, so things did kind of go to hell while i was away, but i wouldn't have missed paul's performance for anything. so cute! dressed in yellow with yellow chicken hats, his class performed to a medley of the chicken dance, the itsy bitsy spider and head shoulders knees and toes. one class sang a truncated version of bob marley's "three little birds." they wore red/yellow/green cardboard bands on their heads with long black and brown yarn dreads attached. it was sort of surreal. another class (also in yellow, but with curious george hats) sang a song about sharing. there was also hula dancing and a new york, new york ("first grade, first grade") revue. at the end the classes all got together and sang a mostly garbled song about summer vacation that involved jumping up and down. the teachers were very excited that the year was over.
then the students went back to their classes and the principal stalled the parents for a few moments so the kids could get settled.
the parents milled around while the kids ate. then the parents stood around while the kids played. paul chased some friends around and was chased in return. it's always so nice to see him having fun with other kids. then we went home, happy and overheated after all running around in the mid-afternoon southern california sunshine.
so far it seems there are two things that the children will watch together that doesn't seem to be inappropriate for either. (yes, my one-year-old watches tv. do you have a problem with that?) one would be the they might be giants dvds ("here come the 1-2-3s" and "here come the a-b-cs"). the other, amusingly enough, is wow wow wubbzy.
(the kids will watch the wiggles together, but it's pretty young stuff so i'm surprised paul tolerates it. same with blue's clues. nola apparently likes family guy and conan o'brien, but paul doesn't watch either one. paul's shows aren't really big hits with nola. she's not that keen on dinosaurs yet.)
so we are watching wubbzy right now. i think nola likes it because of the songs and the colors. paul likes it because it's funny and "old." (i don't know what that means.) i like it because it's surprisingly uncloying. it could be worse, right?
paul still has some interest in his usual topics (bugs, spiders, dinosaurs, giant squid, calamitous weather conditions), but he has a new obsession:
world war I and II fighter planes.
i know. perfect for a five-year-old.
and to top it off, cam's uncle gave paul a model plane (8+, of course) on memorial day -- complete with tiny naked lady painted on the side. jesu cristo. i think nola already snapped off a propeller blade.
i see lots of tiny wheels, fancy decals and special glue in our future.
it was open house at paul's school this evening. it was nice to see paul's teacher again and to hear from her that he is doing well and that he has come such a long way.
i read an interesting thread today on a message board about keeping kids back in school even if they make the age cut-off for kindergarten. i remember my uncle's daughter from his first marriage had spent the year in between kindergarten and first grade in something called "transition." i think it was for students who had done passably well in kindergarten, but were not yet deemed ready for first grade (of course, my mean-spirited brother and i were rather gleeful that she had "failed" kindergarten). in retrospect, it was a good idea -- i don't think i ever knew anything about her academic performance, but i did know that she had some social readiness and maturity issues. better that she go into transition than have to repeat kindergarten and be bored. i don't think she would have benefited from just spending an extra year at home. she was only a couple of months younger than me, so i don't think they would have kept her at home, anyway.
but the reasoning some people were giving for keeping their kids back a year amazed me. keeping girls home so they can be leaders? keeping boys home so they can be bigger for sports?
paul is on the young side, so we conceivably could have held him back -- socially, maybe it would have been a good move because he is a very young five. academically it would have been silly. but according to his teacher, his classmates have tried to comfort and cheer him up during his tantrums. "it's okay," they tell him. "we lose sometimes, too." cam and i think this has worked out well for him. besides, the cut-off is there for a reason -- he was a couple months ahead of it, so why pretend that he wasn't?
yes, i understand that pictures are worth a thousand words, etc. etc. etc. i know that i will be happy to have so many pictures of paul as a kindergartener because he'll one day be an adult and i will cherish my fading memories of him as a tiny boy. yes, yes, yes, yada yada yada. i know all this is true.
but that doesn't mean i want his school to push photos on me at every opportunity. tell me, why are there two picture days a year? (the first one, i understand -- but the second one? how dare you send home $45 worth of pictures and then tell me just to simply send back what i don't want. how can i return pictures of MY son? SHADY.) why is there an expensive custom classroom photobook? stop trying to appeal to my mommy heart while stealing from my mommy wallet.
paul kept saying he was going to play "shay dinos" and have a pretend lunch. i kept thinking, "what the hell is that?"
a few minutes ago paul asked for help with his menu. how utterly amused i was to realize he was playing "chez dinos." what a good name for a restaurant!
am home with nola today because she is a sad and sick little girl. cam came home midday (with lunch) because he is sick, too. all i need is a call from the paul's school nurse to make my day complete.
the kids saw their pediatrician friday afternoon. paul is doing well, but the ped was concerned about nola's weight -- nola has plummeted since january. she has gained weight, but very little. the ped hoping that her recent illness (she's only been sick since yesterday) and poor appetite account for the weight issue, so we have to go back in two weeks. because she was clearly sick and unhappy, her immunizations were postponed until that follow-up appointment. poor baby. (lucky paul, though -- he doesn't have any more shots until he's 11!)
the only threat these days that seems to strike any fear into the heart of paul is "i'm going to tell mrs. [kindergarten teacher]." i don't know why this is, but apparently the idea strikes fear into my heart, too.
this morning i woke in a panic after this dreamed exchange:
me: i'm sorry, he seems to have the flu.
her: the flu?
her: you need to take better care of your son.
her: i know you're busy, but...
good grief! do all parents develop a fear of their children's teachers?
today i planned to work from home a half day. in the afternoon, i was supposed to meet paul at school for a kindergarten performance and mother's day tea.
but this morning i was awakened by a very sad boy. "mommy, i am sorry you can't come. i am sick."
so paul is taking a sick day with me while i work. (my mom took nola away because she wanted to play). we've eaten oatmeal, answered brain-quest questions and watched "here come the abc's." i've promised cupcakes later. he's promised to do catch-up schoolwork later. he's doing a puzzle right now. "mommy, when you're done working, would you please help me?"
working from home is so exhausting when it also involves mommying.
i had a very nice mother's day. it took a while to get moving, but that's typical for us.
paul made me the awesomest poster. i love it. i need to hang it up at work.
we got takeout from veggie grill and noah's bagels, then went to a park in rpv for a picnic and playtime. sitting happily on the grass, nola made plenty of people smile as they walked by. after we ate, we explored the park for few minutes, then paul and cam went to play baseball. nola and i went for a walk and i took many pictures of her. at one point i let her crawl around on the grass. while looking at the camera, i was alarmed to discover that i had snapped a picture of her eating weeds. she screamed with delight and fun as i tried to fish greenery out of her mouth.
on our way to cam's parents' house afterwards, we drove by the trump golf course. who knew it was so close?
it was a good day. we need more of those.
paul walking by the kitchen with a sour expression:
me: where are you going, paul?
paul: to my room.
paul: i am giving up on everything.
me: everything?
following him to the hallway:
paul: [thoughtfully] but you can keep making pancakes.
me: you'll come back out for pancakes?
paul: yes.
me: okay.
last night paul said he was going to marry me. then i got a hug. i'm going to have store that pretty memory to cling to the next time paul has a meltdown.
this morning i got up at the usual time, took care of the usual chores (lunches, unloading dishwasher, refilling coffeemaker) and then returned to the bedroom to feed nola.
when i got back to the bedroom, i just stopped and burst into hysterical silent laughter. all three of them (cam, nola and paul (our 2 am visitor)) were asleep with one leg sticking out from the covers. (nola has recently become crazed about not sleeping with both legs under covers. she can be totally asleep, but she'll start wiggling and kicking as soon as i pull the blanket up.) i couldn't help it -- i had my phone on me (i don't really know why), so i took pictures of them. i don't really like pictures of sleeping people (i blame that on my mom), but these pictures just crack me up.
paul: daddy, where do my eyelids go when i open my eyes?
i have a bazillion of these to post. sadly, i wrote very few of them. it's all i can do to get paul's lunch (and my own) made. i think i must have murdered that morning person i once was. oh well.
paul's t-ball team had their first (and only) and only practice game last night. it was freezing cold and cam had to stand in the outfield with paul -- one, to try to shield him from the wind, and two, to keep him company, it seemed. i had flashbacks to preschool. cam looked stressed.
but i thought he was okay with the whole thing until we were walking back to the car. then there were tears and cam had to carry him.
paul: you know what i was thinking while the coach was talking?
paul: i was thinking i wanted to quit before saturday [opening day].
my poor baby. is this really a good idea?
paul: the enemy of protoraptor is n-o-l-a.
i used to take off every friday because i had an overabundance of benefit time that i needed to use up. but... a combination of circumstance, illness and incompetence has been forcing me into the office for the last few weeks.
today is the last weekday of paul's spring break, and someone else's illness meant that i didn't get to enjoy any of those days with him. cam and i had briefly discussed disneyland for friday, but we wouldn't have ended up there anyway because the crowds this week (being spring break and all) have been monstrous.
STILL.
fine, don't give a shit about your health. fine, make lameass excuses to yourself about why you are the way you are. fine, ignore everyone who has ever made an effort to care about you. but goddammit, it's not fair that your inability to take care of your own business means i have to miss out on my child's life.
paul: since you're not going to work tomorrow...
me: no, sweetie, i have to go to work, i'm sorry.
paul: oh.
paul: if you didn't have to go to work, you could dye eggs with us.
me: oh.
i hate you sometimes.
paul needs new shoes. size 13. he requested a pair of pink ones with red flowers. where on earth am i going to find those?
paul is registered in a local tee-ball league. he had his first practice the other day, and from what i heard and what i saw (my mother picked me up from work so that cam could take paul -- and nola -- to practice; we arrived at the park at the tail-end), it was not the most successful mission ever.
on the way to the park, my mother and i discussed pauls and sports. i am not particularly keen on tee-ball. i am not particularly keen on team sports in general. i had kind of figured maybe we'd enroll paul in a martial art, maybe something academic, i don't know, something a little less prone to be populated by sports-parents and blame.
my brother spent a very short period of time in little league. i remember him with a red face, wheezing, big-eyed. i always thought he quit because of the asthma attacks, but my mother fondly and nostalgically dispelled that notion.
my mom: he thought if he knew...
me: statistics?
my mom: he thought if he knew everything about it, he would be able to play.
my mom: he thought if he knew all the rules... who was the best...
my mom: if he knew statistics, he thought he'd be able to hit the ball.
she laughed a little ruefully. he was so nervous, so anxious, so plainly miserable that my mother convinced my father to take him out of little league. my dad didn't believe her at first, but he eventually saw what she saw. it was not fun; it was disillusionment and confusion. that was the end of paul's baseball career. he continued to have a fondness for the sport, watching, studying, but not playing. he was no athlete. he just wasn't.
it was a sad, sad little story. i look at my own little paul and wonder what his experience will be like. will he be a good player? it's a little early to tell, but i fear for him. when i tried to talk to him about tee-ball a few months ago, he boasted of skill without ever having tested it. now that he's going to see that there's a lot to learn, he is not going to take it so well. (oh god, and how i dread the kids and parents and what they'll say to my poor sensitive boy.) people may think i'm overreacting -- maybe i am overreacting -- but this is not a child who stomps blithely through life. this is a child who screamed about failure because he couldn't draw a dinosaur the way he saw it in his head. no child is a failure, especially at the age of five. (yes yes, i understand this is supposedly common for kids this age, but i don't care about all kids this age. i don't need to care about all kids this age.) i fear the road of disillusionment and confusion that may lie ahead.
paul: it's saint patrick's day?
paul: let's pick some clovers and decorate the house!
cam bought me a purse today (a dooney doctor satchel in a yummy brown leather -- it was nice to see that there weren't ducks all over everything), but paul would have preferred it if cam bought him one instead. i swear, he found at least three or four little bags that were to his liking.
paul: mommy!
paul: [holding up bag, pointing to bag, then pointing to himself]
paul: for me.
he even stopped in the coach store to put a little hobo bag on his shoulder. i knew at one point i'd have to share my bags with nola (i often tell her, "one day these will all be yours"), but it never occurred to me that paul might want them first.
went to my aunt's house for my grandmother's birthday party yesterday.
the drives went very well. with the help of david archuleta, there was minimal crying on nola's part. poor cam forgot his headphones, though, so there may have been slightly more crying on his end.
the party itself was fun. it was nice to see my aunts, uncles and cousins. not much for us to eat, but that's pretty much how things have gone for me since i stopped eating meat over a decade ago.
one of my cousins has a son two years older than paul, and they played together pretty well for two boys with very little in common. my poor boy can be very sensitive sometimes. as cam puts it, paul is "pretty good -- he's social, but playmates can be overwhelming." it was a little alarming to see how my cousin's boy appears to have an aversion to going to the bathroom. (we thought paul's own distaste would go away soon -- but if the other boy is still going strong two years later... ugh.) my cousin's boy also had some temper/fighting/behavior issues that i didn"t really see -- cam took him in hand, though. cam is a really good dad.
paul was terrified of a little dog. i don't think he's always been afraid of dogs, so i was a little surprised by the tears.
everyone loved nola, but nola wanted nothing to do with everyone. she has been considerably more social in the past, so again, i was a little surprised by the tears.
it was a pretty good day (surprisingly), but i'm in no hurry to do that sort of socializing thing again anytime soon (unsurprisingly).
if paul whines half as much as school as he does at home, i will send his teacher the BIGGEST bouquet of flowers at the end of the school year.
grrr!!! is there anything that boy won't whine about? thank god for cam. i don't know how he manages sometimes.
when i worked with first-graders, i don't think they whined as much, but it could have been a school thing. they may have been total holy terrors at home -- with their mothers, fathers, siblings, nannies... in their palaces, villas and mansions (they were rich kids, after all). but then again, it could be because they were older. i don't know. i will have to see, but good freaking god, will i live that long?
paul: your feet are made of coprolite.
paul: do you know what coprolite is?
cam: what?
paul: fossilized poop.
cam: oh, the insults of the nerdy.
this morning we took paul to school.
as usual, we were running late. cam dropped us off at the front while he and nola tried to find parking.
three boys tried to keep paul from hanging up his backpack. he didn't seem upset, so i stood back and just watched. he just kept smiling -- an "oh, you guys" kind of a smile -- but i felt a little bit worried for him. he was finally able to hang up his backpack, then he came over to me to get his bag of valentines.
one of the mothers introduced herself after paul went in the classroom. she was rather fond of paul, it seemed. i felt totally at a loss because she seemed to know so much about me while i didn't have a clue who she was. she didn't introduce herself as so-and-so's mom, so i wasn't even sure if she was a kindergarten mom at first. i fear i babbled in my discomfort.
of course, then to make matters worse, i had no idea where cam was after i exited the school. i walked one direction while the other mom walked another. i ended up crossing paths with her again. she made a commiserating comment ("that happened to me once, too"), but i still wanted to hide. i eventually found cam and nola parked near the entrance of the school.
if paul is half as awkward as i am, school must be really rough on him.
cam and paul just went to t-ball sign-ups.
i'm happy that our boy is interested in an activity involving other kids, but i have to say that i am very wary and very nervous about this. i get that most kids this age are not necessarily athletically gifted or even coordinated. i get that a lot of kids this age are going to be prone to perfectionist meltdowns. i get that t-ball is much more lowkey than baseball. i get that this could be very good for paul. but goddammit if i'm not freaking out inside that my very sensitive, very hard-on-himself little boy wants to thrust himself into the world of organized team sports. i kind of expected that maybe he'd start with a martial art or something. something a bit more, i don't know, solo?
i've tried to talk to him about the importance of practice and how it's okay to not be perfect at something from the very beginning, but he dismisses me. i ache with the fears of anticipated tantrums and slights. will the other little kids be nice to paul? will their parents? i appreciate how his bravery levels have so drastically improved (after all, this child once cried at school everyday), but that doesn't mean i can't be scared for him as he ventures further out into the world. i read once that being a parent is like having no skin. every nerve is exposed, tingling. some days i can laugh it off, but other days i cry even before the hurt comes.
last night i read to paul while cam watched nola.
he picked a dinosaur book, and because it was so big, i put it on the bed and propped myself on my elbows to read it. he did the same next to me, so i told him to lie down and put his head on the pillow. he informed me that he would do that when he was tired and ready to go to sleep.
paul: then my dad reads to me until he falls asleep.
me: when do you go to sleep?
paul: about six minutes later.
me: oh.
cam was amused.
paul just reminded me that his favorite song when he was three was daniel powter's "bad day."
me: how did you remember that?
paul: my head was singing it.
paul: it was in my head!
he declared that it had been in his head since he was one, two, three, four, five. good grief, i think that song would have driven me mad after just one year.
paul loves pajamas -- the kind with a button-down shirt. he just got his first pair (red with polar bears -- makes me think of coca cola) in mid-december because he needed to wear pjs for a kindergarten "pajama party." he liked them so much i got him a camo pair on sale from garnet hill (love that site, but damn, the prices are a bit much).
it's amazing how hard it is to find that style of pajamas, and once you find them, it's amazing how expensive they can be. the ones from target are thin polyester -- they started out soft, but after a while they just feel kind of nubby. the garnet hill ones are cotton flannel, nice and thick. paul asked for more, but i haven't found any to his specifications. instead i keep coming across these ugly spongebob or spiderman ones that are just polyester long-sleeve t-shirts and matching pants. what's wrong with the button-down kind? is it just too hard to fit a licensed character on them?
anyway.
paul's latest thing is to wear the camo top with the red pants -- or the red top with the green pants. he comes to show me, and then triumphantly cackles when i say, "hey, you don't match!" why is this so funny? i laugh at his exuberance, but part of me is thinking, "oh, you cute little dork."
the children and i stayed at my mom's house from 3-8 so that cam could watch the game in peace. they ate almost nonstop. you'd think we never fed them.
paul: the mass extinction is beginning!
my little guru told me to return the boots. he doesn't like boots. so back they go, i suppose.
poor paul lost his balance and fell, smack! right on his head on the corner of the coffee table. he's going to have a bruise or a bump or both right by his left eye.
i was in the other room, changing my clothes, when i heard the thump. cam had both kids with him, and i thought, "oh my god, he dropped the baby on her head." but it was paul who lost his balance and fell. the poor sweetie screamed and screamed out of pain rather than fear, he said, but the opposite was probably true because he settled down very quickly. now he's eating a hot dog while cam dabs at paul's head with a bag of frozen corn. kids always recover quicker than adults. paul was already calmly watching tv while cam was still gasping for air.
paul is my tiny fashion guru. "what not to wear says yes," he'll whisper approvingly as i model a new outfit.
but lately i've begun to wonder about his sense of color. on saturday, he insisted that what not to wear would say no to my dark blue trouser jeans, navy top and brown suede jacket. my jacket also needed to be dark blue, he said, and my shirt should be red. on sunday, he declared i needed to wear a blue dress with a pink jacket and red pants.
eeesh. thank goodness he doesn't buy my clothes.
says paul:
tyrannosaurus rex says.... boo!
paul just introduced me to the concept of the "love triangle." apparently that is what is formed when cam, paul and i hold hands. when nola is old enough to hold our hands, we'll be a "love square."
"or a love rectangle," says cam, "because mommy and i are longer. or a love rhombus because we're all different sizes."
i could pretty much see the "whatEVER!" on paul's face.
damn. as usual, i'm behind.
from 1/12:
Dear Paul,
I hope you are having a great day at school! I can't believe your vacation is over already. Thanks for doing such a great job on your letters -- you are fabulous. :)
Love,
Mommy
from 1/13:
Dear Paul,
Have you had to write 09 yet for the year? I have. This is the second note because I accidentally wrote 08 the first time.
Love,
Dad
P.S. Wedge tornado [tiny drawing]
from 1/14:
Dear Paul,
I would like to go on a bug hunt with you soon. I hope you are having a great day at school.
Love,
Dad
from 1/15:
Dear Paul,
Hope you are having a great day at school today! Can you believe it is already Thursday? Soon you can play with the humidifier all day. :) How foggy it will be!
Love,
Mom
from 1/16:
Dear Paul,
Happy Friday! It's almost time for a 3-day weekend. We get Monday off because it is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday*. Have you learned about him yet?
Love,
Mom
*i was not about to explain -- in a lunchtime note, no less -- the notion of a birthday being "observed" on a day different from the actual birthday.
from 1/20:
Dear Paul,
I had a great time with you yesterday! We should spend more mommy-Paul time. I really liked working on the dinosaur book with you. More teamwork! :)
Love,
Mommy
i do think paul has to be the first person ever to request -- and eat -- a turkey AND tofurky sandwich.
one night paul came into our room, frightened nearly to death by the experience of sleeping in his own room. much to my astonishment, the child was carrying a stick. where does a kindergartener get the idea that he needs to be ARMED to walk through his own house?
since paul is now in kindergarten and is writing in a regular basis, i decided that this would be the time for paul to learn how to write his own thank-you notes. i printed out some lined paper (complete with that cute little dotted line in the middle) for him to use. he is supposed to be doing some writing practice over his winter break, so i figured that this would cover it. we'd just send photocopies of his work to his teacher when school started again.
sounds like a good idea, right?
can i just say that this is one of the most painful activities i have ever invented? jesus h. christ. watching him futz and fiddle and generally waste his time and my time while trying to avoid doing anything is seventh level of hell kind of stuff. what's worse is that we can't simply abandon this project because that would show him that it's okay to 1) be ungrateful, and 2) be a brat about things he doesn't want to do because we'll "save" him from it. bullshit. so on we trudge, with threats of returned gifts and gritted-teeth encouragement for the stuff he does grudgingly write.
that said, his letters are fabulous. i would be THRILLED to get one.
how could i forget the song that started the wiggle parade in my skull? "rock-a-bye your bear" became an earworm of epic proportions because i made the mistake of letting paul know it was in my head. at every opportunity he mocked me and attempted to torture me by making cam sing it or having me listen to it every single bleeding time it was on tv. but little did he know that his utter joy in the joke made the song tolerable... there's something just so honest and so hilarious about a little kid's sense of humor.
paul has been off school since 12/19, so i've been hoarding these in my bag for over a week.
from 12/12:
Dear Paul,
I was impressed with your drawing last night. You are quite the artist.
Love,
Dad
P.S. [drawing: stick figures (labeled Nola, Mom, You, Me), the sun and a large spider labeled "Spider."]
from 12/15:
Dear Paul,
The last week of school before winter break is here. You won't have school until next year! See you tonight.
Love you,
Dad
from 12/16:
Dear Paul,
December is passing fast. We are already more than half way through. Have a good day.
I love you, Dad
P.S. Have you heard the joke on the other side before?
Joke: Why is six scared of seven? Because 7-8-9!
from 12/17:
Dear Paul,
I am glad that you are my son. Have a great day. I love you. See you tonight.
Love,
Dad
from 12/18:
Dear Paul -
I am looking forward to seeing your holiday program and going to the Kindergarten pajama party with you tonight. It's a Paul kind of day!
Love,
Mommy
from 12/19:
Dear Paul,
You did such a great job yesterday! We are so proud of you. I wish Nola could have seen you. Would you like to perform for her? You could put on a private show! :)
Love,
Mommy
merry christmas!
so far it's actually been a pretty decent day. all of the gifts at home have been opened (except the ones not for us, of course), nola is having a late breakfast, my poor sick mom went home to lie down, and cam and paul are playing with legos (ones he already had, of course). nola was not that interested in her gifts, but oh how she loved the idea of eating wrapping paper. paul was dismissive of clothes, but he did say, "i've always wanted this" to a number of presents -- it's always nice to hear that.
as always, i'm astonished by the generosity and the sheer amount of stuff that the kids have received. my co-workers -- one assistant in particular -- lavished gifts on paul and nola. it's true, this part of the holiday is really for children, and it's fun to shop for them. it makes me feel a little sheepish that i did giftcards, but since i have the youngest baby, i think people might cut me some slack.
we'll be heading over to cam's parents for lunch and more gifts. our food contribution this year -- and honestly, we usually don't bring a thing -- is a vegan chocolate fondue and assorted things (banana bread cubes, pretzels, raspberries, strawberries and bananas) for dipping. earlier this morning my father's sister and her family dropped by for a brief visit. it's not even noon and i've already had to be more social than i can stand -- especially when i'm sick and losing my voice (yeah, not sure when that happened). but oh well, peace, goodwill towards man and all that good stuff.
hope you and your families and friends are having a good day.
paul was so silly at babies'r'us that i thought i was going to have a meltdown. at one point he actually hid something in his pocket and giggled about it. oy vey.
cam, paul and i went to benihana today with cam's parents, sister and uncle for an early birthday lunch. i had originally planned to stay home with the baby while my mom went with them, but she changed her mind and volunteered to babysit so that i could go. i took pity on her obvious discomfort (what, go out with the in-laws without me?) and agreed.
we had a really nice lunch. i had been a little leery about it because paul has traditionally not been a fan of the experience (we go to benihana every year except for the year that our local one was closed for remodeling), but this time he was into it and ate a lot. there were some tears (when he dropped his chopsticks on the floor, when cam broke a water glass, when he got a splinter from a chopstick), but he was generally in a good mood. after lunch we stopped by two baby stores, then headed home. he was so boisterous that it wasn't a surprise when he passed out in the car.
i dealt with laundry and wrapped up a package for cam to drop off at the ups store (so last-minute, alas), then went to get nola.
i should have known something was wrong when the first thing my mom did was apologize. there, on my poor baby's head was a small purple bruise. she had fallen off the couch. i calmly inspected her head while my mom went on and on, apologizing to nola and to me. "she didn't even cry..." she said, "much." what really distressed nola was when my mom tried to put ice on her head -- she preferred to suck on it. i sighed inwardly.
she does seem fine and the swelling and discoloring is actually very faint. i know these bumps and bruises are the price she pays for mobility, but that doesn't mean any of us -- her included -- have to like it.
last night paul sang a song:
santa claus is doing some stuff.
he's making a list
and checking it twice
he's going to find out who's naughty or nice
santa claus is doing some stuff.
i was a little disappointed to find out that he got it from cam -- who couldn't remember all the words. still, it was pretty funny.
paul was telling me a very elaborate story about a racecar driver this evening, using a pen/racecar toy to demonstrate. the driver's name was "drive captain." the car? "flaming ball of death," he said. (in his defense, the car did have orange flames printed on the sides.) i don't know why i was surprised. it's not like i thought he'd say herbie or kit or something like that, but "flaming ball of death" just seems so... not five years old.
for the first time, yesterday made me feel like the holidays were upon us.
in the morning, we did our annual holiday decorating thing at the cemetery. every year i think, "why?" but every year i dutifully go for my mom's sake. honestly, my brother wasn't exactly kris kringle, nor was my dad, but we go and decorate their graves like they were known for wearing christmas sweaters or something. but, you know, it's not like flowers or whatever are really for the dead folks, anyway, so if this activity actually forces certain family members to remember to honor my grandfather -- if not my dad and brother -- then good. i felt bad because i carried nola almost the whole time and therefore couldn't exactly help out too much. then i walked around with paul and nola, so there was more time spent not being useful to the rest of my family. my cousin showed up with her husband and new baby just in time to take pictures, so i guess she was even less useful. she didn't even seem that interested in her own baby, but that's a story for another time (or not). we tried to take some pics of paul and nola to use on our christmas card, but they didn't want to cooperate. great pics of them separately, but together? not quite.
after we finished up, they all went out to lunch to a filipino restaurant. because we are eschewing eggs and dairy, the four of us declined to go with them (much to the surprise of two cousins and an uncle, who hadn't realized we weren't until they arrived at the restaurant). i was ready to head home, but paul declared we needed to go to a restaurant that didn't require us to drive on the freeway. big sigh. we ended up at a red robin five miles away. i was expected crowds (aren't most of those attached to malls or shopping centers?), but it was positively empty.
late afternoon, two old friends arrived at our house for a visit. it was lovely, although i did feel a little sad about how they found marriage to be such a logistical and practical nightmare. (i do understand their concerns, however, and i do agree that it is easier if you marry younger rather than older because you aren't so set on your own ways, etc.) paul was so keen on playing with my friends that cam eventually had to forcibly take him away. he returned close to the end of their visit, and showed off legos like they were going out of style. cam repeatedly called him back, but "i'm not paying attention to my daddy," he said. we took some pictures and paul cheerfully bossed everyone into position. he also gave them school pictures with his name written twice on the back -- once with solid lines, once with dotted lines so that my friends could write his name, too.
it was a nice festive kind of a day. more social than we're used to, but that's no surprise because we're hermits.
from 12/11:
Dear Paul,
I sent in the pajama party form today. I said we'd come and bring Nola. See you tonight.
Love,
Dad
does anyone besides me think that it's really sad that cam is writing more of my blog than i am these days?
from 12/10:
Dear Paul,
Your ladybug was better than you described. Twelve spots! I didn't know that. Its wings were open and it was flying. Awesome!
Love,
Dad
paul made a craft. it was awesome.
from 12/9:
Dear Paul,
I have a pig. What do you have? 3. I have a cow. What do you have? 4. I have a horse. What do you have? 5. I have a duck. What do you have? 6. I have a lamb. What do we have? 7.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. What?!
on monday nights, part of paul's homework is to read a little book (called a "pre-decodable" -- of course, the first time i heard that word, i said, "what?") to two people. this past monday the book was called "the farm," and my silly and frustrating little boy either couldn't stop laughing. when he finally settled down, he started reading the page numbers just to be funny, so that's where tuesday's note came from.
from 12/8:
Dear Paul,
Make an awesome beetle today in art class. I can't wait to see it.
Love,
Dad
tell me:
how can FOUR people be asleep in one room and yet only ONE of them can wake up to the sound of an alarm? and how is it that the remaining three then don't hear the second alarm going off in the same room, while the one awake person can hear it... from the BASEMENT?
you people scare me.
from 12/5:
Paul,
I'm looking forward to hanging Christmas lights with you this weekend.
Love,
Dad
P.S. Deadly spider [drawing of spider]
sadly enough, our house is still unlit. who has time, i ask?!
from 12/3:
Dear Paul --
We missed you last night! You must have been so tired. I hope this means you got enough rest and are ready for a great day!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. We have to talk about your progress report. Great job!
from 12/2:
Paul
I made you a bologna (pronounced baloney) sandwich today. I hope you like it. Have a good shortened day. I'll see you tonight.
Love,
Dad
from 12/1:
Paul,
Look! December already. I put lettuce, tomato and pickles in your sandwich today. I hope you like it. There is another half at Grandpa's.
Love,
Dad
P.S. Bug [tiny drawing of bug]
from 11/31:
Dear Paul,
I'm holding Nola as I write this note. She will do the P.S. Have a good day at school and Grand'pa's. I love you and am proud of you.
Love,
Dad
P.S. [scribble] I held the pen to the paper but she moved it.
from 11/26:
Paul,
Congratulations on your Student of the Month award. Mom and I are very proud of you. Hope you are having a good day. See you tonight.
Love,
Dad
this morning i got to work at 9 because cam and i went to paul's school. our dear boy has been named one of the students of the month (am pretty certain they have rigged it so that EVERY kindy kid gets to be student of the month), so we got a little handout the other day inviting us to an quick outdoor assembly set for last wednesday. the handout stated that the assembly would be postponed if it rained, so we crossed our fingers.
i woke up in the middle of the night to hear pouring rain. i sighed.
but by the time i got up in the morning, it wasn't raining anymore. cam, my mom, cam's dad, nola and i accompanied paul to school... only to discover that it was too wet outside for them to hold the assembly.
so off we went to work.
this morning it wasn't rainy, nor was it wet, so we tried again. this time, my mom stayed home because nola was still asleep.
it was just as well. while the main road was drenched in sunlight, the school was shrouded in fog. the assembly was postponed yet again.
tomorrow we have a parent-teacher conference before school, so we'll try again. if the third time is NOT the charm, then sweetie, i'm sorry, but i don't think i can go to work late four days in a row.
while the rest of the family lounges around at cam's parents' house, paul and i are at home. he's having a time-out in his room -- for 90 minutes, he declared! -- because he hit cam with a baton. (no, not a police baton, more like a twirling one with water and glitter inside a clear tube.) i'm hoping that he'll take a nap because he claims he's tired, but we'll see. i'm sort of thinking in that direction for myself.
paul's biggest problem, i think, is that he seems to expect that a simple apology will get him off scot-free regardless of what he's done. come on now, whacking someone with a stick? he seems to think whatever he is doing is fine until he's in trouble. (then comes the apologies, the tears and the screams.) i don't care if this is "age appropriate behavior" (as in "all kids this age are testing limits, blah blah blah sensitiveparentingcakes"), that doesn't make this any less a pain in the ass.
from 11/25:
front of card: "Thinking of you"
Paul,
Nola picked this card. She must think of you a lot. I hope you enjoy your fruit salad and cornbread.
Love,
Dad
P.S. Is it raining?
from 11/24:
Paul [gigantic scrawly P with an 8-looking thing at the bottom],
The hi from home on the front is from Nola. She wrote part of it including the P in your name.
Love,
Dad & Nola
P.S. Did you see her 8?
paul has been asleep FOREVER. he was asleep when we got home from work a little after six. he slept through dinner. he didn't do his homework. he didn't change clothes. he was just sound asleep on the couch. moving him to his bed, i reasoned, would make or break the night. if he woke up, we had a late night ahead of us. if he slept, we had a good chance of getting some sleep, too.
he slept on.
we went to sleep before nine so that we could get up really early (or really late) with him. he woke up around midnight, but only stayed awake long enough to be transferred to our bed.
and now it's almost 5 am. we're all awake... except for paul. good god, i bet he's not going to sleep for the whole weekend.
paul: you have to go with me everywhere i go.
[pause]
paul: except school.
paul: you can't go to school.
from 11/20:
Dear Paul,
Who do you think is louder: you or Nola? She talks and cries pretty loud, but I think you win. :) Hm, between the two of you, I think I need earplugs for Christmas!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Earplugs? What?!
maybe this one wasn't so nice, but dammit, my kids are noisy.
from 11/19:
Dear Paul,
Today it might seem like you have a lot of sandwiches, but it's actually the same as yesterday -- everything is just crammed into a smaller box! Hope your day is a good one.
Love,
Mommy
we were playing tug-o-war. paul declared he was going to "dis-socket" my arm.
me: dislocate, is that what you mean?
me: or did you say "dis-socket" like you were going pull my arm out of its socket?
paul: dis-socket.
paul: things coming off its normal body part.
paul: like your arm comes out of your body.
paul: now i'm going to pull your head off your neck!
paul: i'm going to pull your back off your legs!
Dear Paul,
Hope you are having a great day at school today. Today I gave you some banana bread -- cut into little cubes and served with the funniest fork ever. Enjoy!
Love,
Mommy
okay, it wasn't exactly the funniest fork EVER (i think that would have to be a spork), but it was a little two-pronged cocktail pick that was the perfect size for his lunch container.
Paul,
Thank you for a fun weekend. I had a good time at the Natural History Museum. I hope you did, too.
Love,
Dad
P.S. Dung beetle. [accompanied by a drawing of a dung beetle]
from 11/13:
Paul,
Happy Thursday. I am proud of how well you did in our spelling bee last night.
Love,
Dad
P.S. aaah. (drawing of face with a tongue sticking out. to make it clearer, there's an arrow pointing to the tongue with "tongue" written next to it.)
paul has been concerned about his spelling because he knows he will be tested on his "high-frequency words" (more on that some other time). i sure hope spelling skills aren't genetic because there are some pretty poor spellers on both sides of the family.
we're watching the wiggles again. cam is singing and waving his arms. nola is watching him with a very stoic expression on her face. cam and paul danced earlier to "the wiggle groove." i feel very nostalgic.
paul just informed me that we'll be singing a new song for christmas.
paul: happy christmas to you...
then for thanksgiving we get another song.
paul: happy thanksgiving to you...
he's been bringing me "presents" for the last 15 minutes -- books, toys, various small things he can wrap up in a halloween placemat. it's so nice to have him in a good mood that i don't mind the frequent interruptions. my last present consisted of two books, stickers, a hug and a kiss.
paul: you know why you're getting a lot of presents?
paul: it's because i heard the word "party."
paul: next time i'm going to give you a lot more presents.
paul: next time i'm going to give you fifty presents.
it's so funny how a single comment from cam about my firm's christmas party suddenly unleashed a whole bucket of cute from paul.
Dear Paul,
Happy Friday! Can you believe it is time for another weekend already? Soon you can pick up more bugs from the museum. :) Have a great day at school!
Love,
Mommy
just a minute ago, my boy counted all the way up to 201. good job, paul!
front:
Have fun at recess!
this was the last note paul chose himself.
Paul,
Two sandwiches again. If your lunch looks weird, its because I put part of it together.
Love,
Dad
P.S. Madrona Mars
there was a funny little squiggle below the last line. cam informed me that the squiggle was madrona mars. i wonder if it's related to madrona marsh.
front:
what's as big as a hippo but weighs nothing?
its shadow!
clearly another paul-selected note -- this time from 11/10.
Paul,
Two sandwiches for you today. One jelly and one turkey. I hope you're having a good day at school. See you tonight.
Love,
Dad
Dear Paul,
Happy Friday! For lunch you have two little jelly sandwiches (along with the usual stuff) -- give 'em a try. Hope today is a great day... for science. :) Love you!
Love,
Mommy
i used another one of the paul-selected notecards. this one reads:
why do birds fly south?
it's too far to walk!
why do all kid jokes = corny?
paul picked a bunch of notecards in advance. today's has a joke on it. "hear this," he ordered:
what did the teddy bear say when he was offered dessert?
no thanks, i'm stuffed!
cue uproarious kid laughter.
Dear Paul,
Happy Thursday! It's been a while since you've gone to school this many days in a row. :) Hope you are having a great day. Computer lab today, right?
Love,
Mommy
Paul,
The marks on here are from Nola. She helped me write your note today. We love you.
Love,
Dad & Nola
the note is covered with little scribbly lines. cam told me he had to take the pen away when nola started doodling on the counter.
Dear Paul,
Happy Halloween! Did you have fun on Halloween?
Love,
Paul and Mommy
not only did he help write the note (and he drew a witch -- i drew a ghost), paul picked his own notecard. on the front it reads:
What never gets any wetter, no matter how much it rains? The sea!
he thought this was hilarious. this was written last sunday for his monday lunchbox.
i'm way behind because, well, because.
october 30 (packed the lunch and wrote the note, but he didn't go to school):
Dear Paul,
You and me, googly eyes and pedipalp pipe cleaners, tonight! We need to finish your costume. Can you believe Halloween is tomorrow?! Exciting!
Love,
Mommy
another halloween is over and i managed to eat no candy whatsoever. but paul did pick up some candy, so i guess there is still the possibility i'll stuff my face with his stash when he's not looking...
paul didn't go to school today again. instead we went to the hospital for an emergency appointment. turns out he has bronchitis and an ear infection (it was the earache that brought us there), so he's on amoxicillin, mucinex/robitussin pe, motrin (for days) and tylenol (for nights). he was a whining mess all night thursday -- he and cam got very little sleep -- but after the first dose of amoxicillin he seemed much happier.
of course, because we would be absolute ogres otherwise, we did do some trick-or-treating in cam's parents' neighborhood. (i was pleased because goddammit, i made those costumes.) amusingly enough, people seemed to think nola wasn't a girl because she was dressed as a little brown spider. next year i guess i better make her a princess. paul was more interested in passing out candy than eating it or even trick-or-treating for it, so there wasn't much difference there from the year before. nola rolled all over the floor and kicked her little feet while watching the simpsons with great intensity.
i'm glad paul got some joy out of halloween. he missed school, he missed thursday's craft project, he missed the costume parade and the school festival, but i think he was reasonably happy enough. if he were a more outgoing kid, he may have mourned the loss more, but he's not -- so the day at home wasn't too much of a chore.
i don't mean to be unsympathetic -- i do really feel bad that he's sick -- but because his sick whining is the same as his pissy bad mood whining, the sound just sets my teeth on edge.
paul did not go to school today -- he seems to have caught the flu, possibly from cam's dad. poor kid. is he going to be sick every week? it was too bad he wasn't able to go to school, but at least the popcorn did. it wouldn't have been fair to deprive the other kids just because my poor boy has a less than stellar immune system.
Paul,
Library day! I want to see what book you picked.
Love,
Dad
P.S. [drawing of spider]
tonight i have to pop around 40 cups of popcorn for paul's class tomorrow. (they're doing some kind of craft activity that requires popcorn, spider rings, juice boxes, candy corn and some other stuff. if it turns out that they're just going to eat popcorn and candy while drinking juice and wearing rings, i will be, well, not exactly livid, but at least irritated.) we own a microwave popcorn bowl that doesn't need oil or butter or anything. since paul can't have any dairy, that rules out most prepackaged microwave popcorns, so i think all the popcorn he has ever eaten has come from this bowl.
when i was a kid, we had two popcorn poppers that i can think of -- an air popper (we have actually had multiples of this because i know it kept breaking) and an old fashioned oil-in-the-bottom/melted-butter-on-top popper. the latter was probably in some marvelous retro colors, like avocado or mustard. i still remember bringing salted popcorn (not buttered) from home into drive-in movies in a big yellow kodak plastic bag with a red logo. for the sake of convenience (and coolness), we moved over to the jiffy pop stovetop pans, and when microwave popcorn entered the scene in those little paper bags, we were all over that. my brother particularly liked microwave caramel popcorn. then came the flavored popcorn rage (i think i liked the cheddar cheese), which seemed to manifest itself in large tins given as christmas gifts. a few years later farmers markets became trendy in the suburbs and we all fell in love with kettle corn.
add all that to the sentimental favorite, movie popcorn, and you can see that in my lifetime i've eaten at least 8-10 different kinds of popcorn. easily. some healthier than others. some i've liked, some i didn't. but this new breed, these kindergarteners, what do they know? have their lives been filled with nothing but movie popcorn and overly processed microwave stuff? will paul's favorite unsalted and unbuttered popcorn strike them as being something akin to packing peanuts?
Dear Paul,
How are you doing today? Learning anything fun? I'm really glad you are enjoying school more -- school is a great place to learn about cool things and to make friends.
Love,
Mommy
Dear Paul,
I hope you are having a great day at school. Have fun in art class. I'm looking forward to seeing what you painted.
Love,
Dad
Dear Paul,
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Paul, happy birthday to you! Hope you are having a great day at school. We love you, you brand-new 5-year-old!
Love,
Mommy
clearly i'm behind. this is for october 24.
this weekend has been a little slapdash, a little thrown together. we were supposed to go to san diego to celebrate paul's birthday -- sea world, the fleet science center, weekend in a hotel, fish & chips, etc. etc. etc. i was all set to take friday off so that i could get ready and pack, then we could pick up paul from school and be on our way. it was going to be great... but then we all got sick. paul was sick enough to miss two days of school. i was sick enough to break my self-imposed no-meds ban.
cam canceled the hotel reservations, i canceled my day off. yesterday we didn't do much of anything (except cough), but today we had a small family party for paul.
we (our usual crowd: cam's parents, sister and uncle; the four of us, and my mom) had a good time. paul has been generally less whiny since he turned five -- cam may disagree -- and he was in good spirits. he enjoyed his gifts, liked his cake, had fun smacking his pinata (after two pinatas at two birthday parties, he was more than ready for one of his own), and loved rolling around in the giga ball we bought him from target. everyone was happy.
it wasn't san diego, but it was still good. it may have even been better. there will always be time for the four of us to spend together, but we won't always get to share that time with other people who love us.
happy birthday, dear boy! hope you are feeling well enough for a whole day of school -- i would consider keeping you out another day (i mean, it IS friday), but i hear you miss school. so go... and enjoy yourself.
a funny story about paul and school: on tuesday we worked from home, so we brought him to school ourselves. he told us in the car that when the bell rings and we see his teacher, we should leave. his teacher has been working with the kids on being independent and has been trying to keep parents from walking with their children in line to the classroom -- i guess it's been rubbing off on him. so there we were about 15-20 minutes later, standing by him as he waited in line on the playground when he suddenly blurted out, "there's my teacher. go!" i kissed him and rushed cam away (poor cam was all "wtf?"). but cam wanted to look for a certain little female friend of paul's who was apparently a little late for school, so we lingered by the gate to watch the kids go by. our very independent little paul saw us and waved multiple times when he got close. sweet boy. big enough to not need us to walk with him, but small enough to not get embarrassed when we are clearly loitering in his territory.
Dear Paul,
It's already Tuesday -- the week is that much closer to being done. Are you looking forward to your birthday and weekend in San Diego? Enjoy your warm pasta and cold fruit.
Love,
Mommy
paul: can you carry a house?
cam: only a small house.
Dear Paul,
Happy Friday! Hope you are having a good day. Did you smile for the camera? I look forward to seeing your pictures -- I bet they are very nice.
Love,
Mommy
Dear Paul,
Happy Friday! Another week almost over and done -- now it's almost time for the weekend! Think of all the things you want to do...
Love,
Mommy
this note is actually for 10/10. i just found it under the couch.
Dear Paul,
Have a good day at school. Eat your lunch. Let's catch crickets for the spiders tonight.
Love,
Dad
"you can't say he doesn't love you," said cam, handing me a piece of paper.
written in blue felt-tip marker was a message just for me:
i LOVE YOU MoMY
drawn underneath were two stick figures, one big, one small, and five red hearts in a line above the little stick figure's head.
i need to frame this.
(note: a strange word appears in multiple places on the paper -- XEEASL (the s is almost always backwards.) OYV shows up three times. i must find out what he was trying to write.)
tonight paul was going to sleep over at his grandparents' house, but around 9 pm he decided he had had enough and wanted to come home. i was pleased because i missed him. but because the crying and whining started within minutes of his arrival, i had to wonder if maybe tonight i would have preferred to miss him.
Dear Paul,
Hope you are having a good short day! Please try to eat a little more lunch today, okay? You need food for energy -- you also need it to grow big and strong.
Love,
Mommy
sometimes i wonder why i write these little notes -- he already told me that he doesn't read them. the other day cam wrote the note instead, and paul apparently not only read it, he wrote him a note in response. oh well. if it's possible to be a daddy's boy, paul is it.
Dear Paul,
Happy Monday! We hope you have a fabulous day today. Please think of what we need to add to your costume -- googly eyes, maybe? :)
Love,
Mommy
about a year or so ago we received a little subscription request notice from highlights magazine. (we had subscriptions to turtle and humpty dumpty -- and nick jr. magazine at one point -- so i guess our names were in the great big kids magazine subscription system in the sky.) because i had super-fond nostalgia for highlights magazine from my childhood, we signed up for a subscription (even though i thought the magazine pretty much sucked by the time my childhood subscription ended -- the ones from the late '70s were really much better).
now i don't know if things were like this before. i didn't get the mail (was i tall enough to reach the mailbox?), so i don't know if highlights has always had A THOUSAND different spin-off "clubs," each with their own publications/invoices/account numbers. maybe they did and my parents wisely tossed them. in any event, we are not so wise: i signed paul up for one because he seemed interested. cam signed paul up for another -- in fact, paul painstakingly filled out part of the invitation card himself.
after about four months, i cancelled both of those club memberships. stuff was coming faster than paul could read it; i felt like i was constantly sending them money. and to be honest, some of these activities were a little old for him. maybe at some point in the future we can resume his memberships, but until then, those membership invites are going into the recycle bin the minute they show up in our mailbox. I MEAN IT.
paul has very recently become interested in styling his hair. am very recently wondering if it's time to add a second bathroom to our house.
Dear Paul,
You are doing really well at school -- we are so proud of you. I hope you are proud of you, too! :)
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Please bring home your behavior card!
Dear Paul --
Hope you are having a great day! You are my number 1 boy and it makes me happy when you are happy.
Love,
Mommy
today's note was supershort because i was using these tiny little cards we bought the other day from target specifically for this purpose (it's kind of like these). there was a drawing on the other side of a piece of notebook paper and a red crayon. "i love you" and a wobbly happy face were written in red. much to my delight, paul drew a red and black bug on the "paper." so cute!
people always say that babies have oral fixations, but until we had nola, i wasn't sure i believed it.
paul was never that interested in putting stuff into his mouth. we didn't have to worry too much about him on that front. in retrospect, maybe he was just wary because there were so many things out there that made him feel sick.
nola, on the other hand, would lick a raccoon if it got close enough. everything goes to her mouth. i am constantly prying things -- sodden things -- out of her slimy viselike grip. it's insane. i've never seen a child so hellbent on tasting THE ENTIRE WORLD.
in many ways, nola is the total opposite of paul. it's funny, but it's a little weird. so much of this baby-raising thing is familiar, but a lot of it is completely new territory.
paul is not the biggest fan of school. he doesn't like the fact that we can't be there with him. if he had friends, it would be better, i think, but when he talks to us about school, he doesn't seem to be interested in forging friendships -- all he wants to tell me is that kid x and kid y got in trouble.
paul: do i have school today?
me: yes.
paul: waaaahhhhh!
paul: do i have school today?
me: no, it's saturday.
paul: do i have school the day after tomorrow?
me: yes.
paul: waaaahhhhh!
on thursday night he was miserable. he was dreading school because his teacher was to attend an all-day meeting, thus necessitating a substitute teacher. paul is very attached to his teacher. when we met her at back to school night, she said very matter-of-factly that paul wasn't happy at lunch because she wasn't there with him.
friday went better than he expected, but he's still not so happy about school on monday. i do feel for him -- i was afraid of everything as child, shyer than shy (little has changed) -- but i'm worn out by his whining. i try to be sympathetic, but he's clearly wanting me to say that he doesn't have to go to school and i can't say that. i can't rescue him from this. i've started saying, "i'm sorry, but you don't have a choice." (then cam comes in and is so understanding and kind-sounding that i feel like bad cop.) i've tried talking him about taking what he's unhappy about and trying to make it better, but he's so stuck on the notion that he's alone at school. i wish he was happier, i wish i could do something for him, but isn't school something he needs to do on his own?
Dear Paul,
I hope today is a good day at school. I know you miss Mrs. Graff, but she'll be back. Give the substitute teacher a chance -- he might be more fun than you expect. Hope Mrs. Graff told him about the treasure box. :)
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Did I show you Nola's behavior chart from daycare? She did much better.
Dear Paul,
I really like the footprints you made last night! May I bring it to work and put it up in my office? I think it would be nice to have your footprints next to Nola's footprints. You know, when you were a baby, your feet were as small as hers. Hard to believe, isn't it?
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Enjoy the oranges!
today part of paul's homework was to practice writing the letter g.
me: my name starts with g.
paul: my teacher's name starts with g.
me: that's right.
me: you know who else has a name that starts with g?
me: aunty gail.
paul: aunty pail.
me: aunty pail?
me: who's aunty pail?
paul: you know who i was talking about?
paul: sarah palin.
paul: there's no g.
me: no, there is no g in sarah palin.
Dear Paul,
Happy October. I used orange paper because pumpkins are orange, jack-o-lanterns are made of pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns are made for Halloween, and Halloween is in October. Enjoy your day at school.
Love,
Dad
[small drawing of a jack-o-lantern]
Dear Paul,
No school today! You know what that makes you? A lucky duck. :) What?! Hope you have a really fun free day.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Quack quack...
Dear Paul,
Did you have a good time at the party yesterday? Was it cool holding a real live tarantula? (Was it scary?) Maybe the girls will have the Lizard Wizard come to their party again next year and you can try holding a snake!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. I like it when you are happy.
Dear Paul,
Did you enjoy The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Did it make you hungry? :) When you were a baby, you had a little outfit with that caterpillar on it. You were very cute in it. We didn't save it for Nola because it was a boy outfit, I think, but she would have been cute in it, too.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Happy Friday!
Dear Paul,
I hope you are having a good day at school. Have you decorated your shoebox yet? I bet that you will draw bugs all over it (or maybe polka dots)! It's fun to do art and craft projects. I always liked doing them when I was your age.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Have fun in computer lab!
Paul,
I hope you are having a great day at school. I'm looking forward to hearing about it.
Did you like the Morris and Boris book we read last night?
Here is a drawing from Nola. [scribble]
Love,
Dad
argh!! where did the elastic strap for paul's bento box go?! why is nola awake?!
Dear Paul --
[drawing of giant of squid] vs. [drawing of spider and web]
Who will win?
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Please don't forget to bring home your behavior cards. Thanks!
paul just delivered the strangest monologue:
i hate dairy cheese. it tastes just like turkey flesh. no, turkey beak. dairy cheese tastes like rotten turkey. rotten. and dairy milk tastes like cowtooth. that tastes like nolie.
i know his disdain for dairy stems from his allergy to dairy, but where did he get the idea that his sister tastes like the tooth of a cow?
Dear Paul,
Happy Monday! I hope you have a good day. Please ask for help when opening your lunch containers -- they are really hard to open and close! By the way, I put all the meat (and fake meat) in one container so I could put a surprise in the last one... enjoy!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Why was the train a criminal train?!
today's lunch was a homemade version of lunchables -- we just call them cracker sandwiches (made with saltines, tofurky, turkey, ham and tofutti american cheese slices). we packed it in this strange four compartment container that relatives sent him from hawaii. his surprise was a little piece of chocolate banana bread. to my surprise, he only took a small bite.
because paul thought we should, nola and i accompanied paul and cam to the newest exhibit at the la museum of natural history: the spider pavilion.
blech. i am not a fan of spiders.
but it wasn't too bad, and paul was obviously thrilled to be there. i was amused to note that little boys outnumbered little girls 10 to 1, and paul was far from being the only little boy there wearing a t-shirt with a spider on it. afterwards we split up for about half an hour -- nola and i to a quiet place to nurse, paul and cam to the insect zoo.
it was a nice way to spend a sunday morning.
Dear Paul,
You did it! Happy Friday -- a whole week over and done. Think about what you would like to do this weekend. (I know -- but hunts!) Maybe we can go to the park or an aquarium. Hope we have nice weather!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Nar!
Cam also included a note -- a drawing of a dinosaur saying "Have fun at school!" (They were drawing dinosaurs the night before as part of Paul's Thursday night homework.)
on tuesday, cam and i worked from home in order to make it to paul's back-to-school night on time. i know that sounds weird, but when you think of how much driving cam has to do and how crazy the traffic is, it makes sense.
since we were home -- and cam's dad was sick -- we took paul to school. it was, as i said to cam, "a rare treat." apparently lots of parents had similar ideas about working from home/taking the day off, because there were lots of parents there. i actually thought that there were normally that many parents lingering about, but cam told me that was not the case (he's gone to school with paul before). a little boy asked paul to play, but paul said politely, "no, thank you." then we walked him to class from the playground (they have to line up there in the mornings and the teacher picks them up), helped him put his backpack on the hook and dried his tears when he didn't want to go inside. we peeked in the room while they sang their morning song, then we went home to work.
nola and my mom made frequent appearances during the day. whenever i'm home, i've noticed that my mom takes one of two positions:
1) i want to reassert my role as alpha female during the week, so i want to give her a bottle. go ahead, tell me no.
2) since you're here, take her, i'm going home.
we had to pick paul up at 12:40 because cam's dad still wasn't feeling up to watching him. we got there on time, but because parking was scarce (i would hate to live in that neighborhood) and the teacher appeared to be a few minutes ahead of schedule, cam and nola dropped me off and drove away in search of parking. paul saw me, got dismissed and walked over my way, but then started to cry and fight me. i felt like saying, "sorry i'm not daddy, okay?" but i bit my tongue. he told me later that he cried because he wanted his grandfather to pick him up, so apparently i got the generation wrong if not the gender. cam and nola showed up shortly afterwards and we walked back to our car. stopped by the burger king drive-thru for lunch.
once home, cam entertained paul while i tried to work (both with and without nola). after a while, i took over the entertainment of paul while cam worked. a little before five, cam's mom came over to watch paul (my mom was still on nola duty), and cam and i went back to school.
the first fifteen minutes were spent in the auditorium. from 5:15 to 5:30, the principal spoke to the kindergarten and first grade parents (other grades came later). then the parents were sent off to the individual classrooms for half-an-hour. paul's teacher had folders per kid for the parents -- included were forms, schedules, kindergarten standards and a laminated sheet of words the kids were expected to know how to read and spell by the end of the year (none of the words were longer than four letters, i think). she talked about classroom policies and took questions. one thing she mentioned -- that we had already read about in the school bulletin -- was that birthday cupcakes (any food at all, actually) were now forbidden due to the large amount of allergies in the student body. although i was a little sad about this at first, it was also a relief because while we could make acceptable cupcakes for a boy, we couldn't say the same for anyone else. dairy and egg substitutes are just a part of our lives. but this creates a whole new host of problems because gift bags with trinkets are a bit more expensive than cupcakes, and i have to wonder if there will be some competition at work amongst the parents. (there was a birthday on thursday and paul came home with a goody bag with playdoh and a "high school musical" pencil -- nice to be the first birthday kid. less pressure.)
one thing that surprised me was the focus of so many parents on getting their kids into the magnet program. people were OBSESSED. (oh, and one mother was a little too proud of her daughter because she had already read all the books (her older brother had just finished kindergarten) and would clearly be so BORED this year.) cam and i talked about it later. our focus is more on making sure that paul is happy and well-adjusted, but it might be a different story if he were a little less whiny and a little less obviously bent on world domination. if he wasn't already reading and throwing out words like "invertebrate" on a daily basis, maybe i'd be a little more of a school stage mom, waving the flash cards and blasting the beethoven.
the teacher had everyone write a note to their kids and leave it on their desks. she would be reading the notes to the kids the next day. for the kids whose parents were unable to attend, she would write notes for them. (very thoughtful.)
we talked to the teacher a bit after the session. she told us that paul was improving and having better days. cam mentioned to her that paul wasn't eating (his lunch had been coming home a bit grubbier but still essentially all there), so she promised to look out for that because hunger might be contributing to his sleepiness (he had been oversleeping during naptime) and general grumpiness.
it was a good back-to-school night, i thought. the teacher and the principal really stressed being involved in your child's life and i appreciated that. i don't really remembering my parents doing a whole lot with my school work when i was a kid, but i chalked that up to the fact that they worked odd hours (plus i wasn't even really sure my dad could read until i was a bit older) and that they expected us to not need the help. i liked school, but it was pretty stressful. i'd like paul's school experience to be as positive as possible, and i think this place is off to a good start.
Dear Paul,
Today you get strawberries and kiwis with your lunch. I don't know why strawberries and kiwis go well together, but they do. (Are they friends?) When I was a kid, strawberry-kiwi juice was one of my favorite drinks. Yummy! Hope you have a good day today.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. We eat seeds because we are birds. What?
Dear Paul,
Today you get an extra drink: one for lunch and one for snack. It's just an experiment to see if you like having more to drink. Please eat something at both recess and lunch -- you need fuel to get through the long school day.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Tasty cricket soup...
Dear Kiddo,
Do you even need to bring a lunch today? If so, here it is. Have a great (short!) day at school and we'll see you soon.
Love,
Mommo
P.S. "I'm not listening." What?!
paul, wearing my slippers, looked down at them and declared he wanted ones just like them.
paul: [smirking] army...
me: [looking] no, old navy.
me: new army?
paul: [very patient look]
sigh. he's supposed to find me funny for at least another few years.
Dear Paul,
Today is the first day you get to use your cool new lunch container. For a nice treat I gave you strawberries and powdered sugar (not cornstarch!). Your sandwich is in the bottom. Hope you have a good day at school. It will get better, I promise.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Gluten-free walking sticks! What?
paul and cam giggled and taped a little piece of paper over the label on a bag of pretzel sticks. glutino would be disturbed to discover that they now make "gluten free walking sticks." oh, the grossness!
Dear Paul,
We hope you are feeling better today. Nola and I missed you last night, but we know you needed your rest. Daddy needed his rest, too -- he was asleep by 8:35. :) Have a good day and don't run around too much.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. A blanket with a head? What?!
this was from friday -- paul stayed home again. on thursday, he fell asleep on the way home from cam's parents' house and miraculously enough didn't really wake up until the next morning. clearly he wasn't feeling well because he NEVER sleeps like that. i wish he would, though, because he always wakes up in a fabulous mood when he sleeps longer than usual.
the fact that paul now needs a full-fledged lunch packed for him every day is a little intimidating. sure, i can pack a cute snack twice a week, but lunch five days out of seven is brutal. because of his allergies it's not like i can give him cafeteria money and call it done, so i guess i should potentially prep myself for 13 years of lunches.
i bought a copy of vegan lunchbox (not because he's a vegan, but because it's more appealing to add meat to a vegan meal than it is to use dairy and egg substitutes in a non-vegan one -- who knows if the substitutes will blend well or not?) and pored over it, but cam warned me to stay away from fancy. he's right, of course, but i'm hoping that these recipes might get me interested in cooking again, period. i've also spent some time looking at bento sites online and know that i will never reach that level of lunchtime coolness, but i'm hoping at least to pick up some tricks.
happily, paul has agreed to carry his lunchbox again. when i asked cam why paul wanted paper and plastic bags, he thought it was to fit in, which struck me as weird because i thought most of the kids carried lunchboxes. but when i asked paul myself, he said it was because it was too heavy. i managed to convince him that with the substitution of a milkbox for the thermos, the lunchbox would be fine. he's been carrying it ever since. the trick now is figuring out what kind of containers to use inside. the standard containers that we use for lunch aren't really working too well because there's too much space between the top of the subcontainers and the lids, which means that contents are mixing (sometimes unpleasantly). i've heard that press 'n' seal works well to keep stuff in those interior containers, but i haven't had the most luck with that (i learned this while packing my own lunches back during the gestational diabetes days). he does have a set of nesting shinkansen containers, but i suspect that the lids might be too hard for paul to remove. i like lock & lock containers (used one for my own lunch on friday), but there's still that little gap at the top. tomorrow i'm hoping to get to the local japanese 99-cent store so i can hunt for a container narrow enough to stand upright in the lunchbox.
foodwise, these lunches have been pretty boring. a plain turkey half-sandwich, a fruit (either a fresh fruit, a fruit cocktail cup or blueberry applesauce), a cereal bar (possibly for snack), milk and crackers seem to be it. i've put in some baby carrots and unshelled edamame and neither were particularly successful. (we usually eat shelled edamame, but the unshelled was all trader joe's had during my mom's shopping trick last week.) from what usually remains of his lunch, i think he eats very little at school and then maybe eats a little more while at his grandpa's house. i'm not terribly concerned about when he eats as long as he eats enough when he's hungry. i figure he'll adapt to the lunch schedule over the next few weeks.
i'm hoping to get a bit more creative with his lunches, at least in part because i've been packing my own lately, too -- since i pump, i need to eat. maybe once we all get settled and have the proper supplies, we'll be able to move past the crustless turkey half-sandwich and applesauce.
today's note was a drawing of a giant squid holding a person that was supposed to be me.
Dear Paul,
Help!
(paul didn't go to school today because of a stomach bug, but he still took his lunch over to grandpa's house.)
Dear Paul,
Once upon a time there was a giant squid named Joe. Joe liked to eat cuttlefish. One day a little cuttlefish got mad and bit Joe. "Ow," said Joe, and while he was looking for a band-aid, he got chomped by a sperm whale. The end. :) What a silly story!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Joe was 60 feet long.
Dear Paul,
How are you doing today? We hope you are having fun at school. Are you reading any good stories in your classroom? (I think Nola liked the Bono the monkey one!) Maybe you can read to us tonight.
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Awesome burrow, by the way. I bet the RC tarantula is happy there.
Dear Paul,
Hope you are having a great day at school today. Learn anything cool? If your class goes to the jungle gym today, give it a try. (Be careful!) It might be more fun than you think. See you tonight!
Love,
Mommy
P.S. 1-2-3-4, I declare a thumb war!
paul was never all that big on stuffed animals, and now all of a sudden he's amassed a few and is actually playing with them. he got a dolphin (which has a most irritating battery-powered voice/motion box) and a killer whale (blissfully silent) from sea world. he reclaimed my stuffed giant squid as his own. he got an eagle ray from the aquarium the week before school started. today he took one of our old stuffed animals (a dark purply-blue lizard) on a trek in the backyard. the poor thing posed for pictures, rode down a hill tied to a tricycle, and had to feign amusement when tickled.
i'm a little puzzled by this new development, but hey, it's not the first time paul has baffled me with newfound interests.
yesterday i had to discuss the lausd internet acceptable use policy with paul. that was kind of weird. then i had to talk to him about the school handbook. that was also kind of weird. while this was all going on, he was pretending to be at [a very different type of] school. at the end he had a request.
paul: you have to say, "now it's time to practice crossing the river."
me: now it's time to practice crossing the river.
and he did -- he hopped over his sleeping bag on the floor and landed on a mattress.
me: okay, now i want you to practice crossing the river this way.
me: and give me a hug.
paul: [crossing river and giving me a hug] i did really good.
me: yes, you did.
i don't really know how or what paul is doing at school because he won't really talk about it. this doesn't necessarily mean that anything is wrong (like the child is hiding his misery) -- he is known to only talk about the things he wants to talk about, and school has NEVER been something he's wanted to talk about. he doesn't like to talk (at least not extensively) about places he's been or things he's done or even things he's seen (unless, of course, those things are bugs or other cool science-y things). i understand that this is how is he is and i don't try to badger him about it. (cam is better at drawing him out, but even he hits tot-sized brick walls a lot of the time.) i figure that he'll talk about stuff when he's ready (after all, it's not like he's silent, he's just mum on certain subjects), but part of me wonders if my laissez-faire attitude is making him even less inclined to speak.
that said, my sister-in-law said that paul told her he cried "just a little bit" today, so it sounds like the kinder-life is improving. i just hope that he won't have to start from scratch again on monday.
Dear Paul,
We hope you have a great day today! Learn something new so we can play school this weekend. You can be the teacher if you want. Nola can go to the principal's office again. :)
Love,
Mommy
P.S. Now it's time to practice crossing the river.
Paul,
I hope you are having a good day at school. Are there any spiders or insects on the playground? I will see you when I get home from work. You can tell me about your school day.
Remember that Grandpa is picking you up today. Give him a thumbs up when you see him.
Love,
Dad
cam talked to the teacher -- she said paul had a better dya, but he cried during snack and lunch. my poor, poor sweetie. everyone says, "oh, he'll get used to it," but that doesn't mean i have to like the tears.
you know, kindergarten, it would have been good to know in advance that you planned to give the kids legal-sized folders. we wouldn't have sent the child to school with a too-small backpack. and to think i laughed when i saw all the tiny kids with their enormous backpacks, thinking that we had done something clever by getting him one a little closer to his size. apparently we were the silly ones.
i'm a little bummed about his backpack. it's a cute little black ll bean one with storm chaser patches (did i write about how i accidentally sewed a pocket shut when i sewed the patches on the first time? note how i say "the first time." i would have left them -- what does he need pockets for, anyway? -- but i felt guilty.) sewn on it. he used it in preschool and it still looked a little big on him, but i guess not big enough. cam picked a new one up from rite-aid. the new one is perfectly nice and i'll be sewing on a spider patch tomorrow night, but i'm still sad about the old one.
i'm also sad about his lunchbox. i got a sort-of matching one from ll bean with a spider patch on it -- and i packed his food in a cute little plastic bento box with his soymilk in a thermos -- and it didn't meet paul's standards. nope, he wants a brown paper bag, soymilk in a juicebox-type thing, and food in ziplocs. (all attempts at reducing waste have been thrown out the window.) now this, i hope this is a phase. i don't mind the ziplocs and the milkbox so much, but why scuttle the lunchbox? i can totally see cam saying, "you know, boys don't care about this stuff," but dammit, this is a boy who picked grape crocs as his shoes of choice. was i so offbase to think he might actually care about a lunchbox?
color a picture of a school
practice the pledge of allegiance, the name of the school, the teacher's name and his room number
the verbal stuff, no sweat, but coloring was surprisingly difficult because a certain little con man kept trying to make ME do it. as it was, i did some coloring, plus i had to draw part of a fence, a death's head cockroach, a black widow and a school bus. his teacher is going to be quite surprised.
silk's spice-flavored soymilk is almost as good as silk soynog. not that i get to drink that much of it, though, because paul is a spice-flavored soymilk HOG.
so... paul didn't appear to enjoy the day too much.
he had a rough time, the teacher told us when we got him at the end of the day. poor thing. cam picked him up and he burst into tears. he insisted on being carried for most of the walk to cam's parents' house.
by the time we arrived at the house, he seemed to be in a better mood, but it pretty quickly turned to a case of the sulks. at one point, he grabbed a bunch of papers out of my hand and hid them. every question or comment got a reply of "good night," "i give up" or "i'm going to bed." cam had enough, so we took paul home instead of letting him play at their house. he cried a bit more.
the rest of the afternoon passed decently enough. with the help of a snack and some ice cream, he cheered up enough to answer some questions about school. he did some of his homework (still needs to finish it) and we played in the backyard while cam ran some errands.
today is paul's first day of kindergarten. he looked like such a big boy at home (in his uniform!), but he was so little once we got to school.
how can mr. baby possibly be old enough for kindergarten?
of course i cried.
with a dark room, two flashlights and two pieces of wooden lettuce from a wooden sandwich-making kit, paul created his own planetarium. where does he get this stuff?
(clearly not from me: i have a vague memory of my mother waxing rhapsodic about one of my little cousins and her imaginative powers, so i've always taken that to mean that i have little of my own.)
one day i called paul "kiddo." in return he called me "mommo."
school starts september 3. paul has a backpack with tornado patches on it, a lunchbox with a spider on it, a new pair of navy blue pants, six new polo shirts (two white, four light blue), new socks, new underwear, a new navy blue jacket just like daddy's, a new pair of shoes just like grandpa's, assorted name labels -- and two parents who are silently freaking out about the idea of kindergarten. god help us all.
paul breaks into song quite frequently. i almost wish i had a dance i could teach him so that i could pretend that i lived in a musical. how awesome that would be. we could be chatting or something, and then bam! song and dance!
his song of choice at the moment is a hawaiian war chant (at least that's what he tells me). at first he just hummed it. then i'd occasionally hear a few words. the other day he just busted out with the whole song. (i apparently failed to realize that he had been in the process of learning the song.) on the way to san diego we heard it many, many times.
sometimes paul will sing the alphabet to the tunes of all the songs he knows. sometimes he sings 1-10 in (somewhat garbled) spanish to those same tunes. i tell you, you just haven't lived until you've heard spanish numbers being sung to the tune of "taba naba."
i'm thinking that maybe i want to introduce him to some of MY music. after all, he has shown a tiny spark of interest in some crowded house stuff (he greatly enjoyed their live earth set), and i think that the alphabet in the tune of "fall at your feet" could be pretty cool.
we just took a mini-vacation to san diego -- sunday afternoon to tuesday afternoon. sunday we went to the fleet science center in balboa park. monday we went to sea world. today we just drove home. it was a very spur of the moment thing. i mean, we knew we wanted to take a short trip, and we had kind of a halfassed idea that sea world might be the thing to do, but we didn't make any real plans until friday or saturday.
but, oddly enough, it worked. we stayed at a hyatt near sea world, and although it was a bit pricey, it was a great place to stay -- we got upgraded to a nice suite (very west elm in decor, i thought), they offered soy milk on the room service menu, we could see the sea world fireworks from our room, and the hotel had three pools (one of which had a little sloping "beach" area). we ate breakfast and dinner in our room (we had a big dining/conference table) and spent some time in the pools. both nights dinner for the guys was fish and chips from a place within walking distance. paul declared that fish and chips were the best dinner ever. he loved the room. he loved san diego. he had the best time ever. in fact, he cried as we prepared to leave because he "hate[s] home" and "love[s] vacations." (i don't necessarily agree, but i understand the sentiment.)
we brought the stroller with us to sea world, and thank goodness we did because paul refused to walk -- he spent almost the entire day (which was abbreviated because he got tired, anyway) riding the wheeled board. nola, on the other hand, spent her time in the sling. poor baby got a mild sunburn on one arm because it was hanging out of the sling.
i don't know if it was just me, but sea world seemed really outdated. the aquariums were not very spectacular. some of the tanks just looked too small for their inhabitants. plus i've never been a big fan of trained animal shows, and those are key at sea world. (never mind that watching marine life documentaries has really messed with my ability to enjoy killer whales and other animals. eesh.)
today we initially planned to return to balboa park for the natural history museum, but changed our minds because paul and cam are going to the natural history museum in la tomorrow. i'm glad because i need a rest. it was nice to come home and just veg after spending the last few days out and about.
we should take impulse vacations more often. it will be interesting to see if we can top paul's assertion that this was the best vacation ever.
paul is planting a vegetable garden in the living room. there's a tomato plant on the floor (two throw pillows wrapped in a green blanket, a lemon one next to it, carrots growing on the couch, an eggplant on the tansu and a green bean hanging from the lamp. (i also found an apple in a cabinet -- i was wondering why it wouldn't close properly.) the boppy and the couch cushions appear to be some kind of irrigation system. my phone is being used as the water controller. this must be related to a game he was playing last night in which he and nola were ears of corn.
spent a lot of time in the pool again today. i had no intention of getting in -- i was just going to sit by the pool so paul could play in it -- but he asked me to, so i sighed and agreed. unfortunately, the water was so cold that i wished i said no for both of us! but we perservered and had a lot of silly fun.
nola wasn't initially in the water with us, but she kept looking over to see what we were doing. eventually my mom put her in a swim diaper and brought her to the pool. sitting in the water she was miserable, but she settled into some sort of glazed contentment while floating around in the inflatable plane, which paul called "the nola tour." she didn't look thrilled, but she didn't scream, either, so we figured she was happy enough. when i accidentally splashed water onto her head, the crying started, so i thought she might be ready to get out -- but when we put her back into the plane, she settled down immediately and passed out. i wanted to bring her into the house, but paul was adamant that we remain in the pool until cam got home. (ugh. after a morning of fights, i was just... not wanting a fight.) because it was getting kind of chilly, he permitted us to put a towel over nola like a blanket. luckily, cam arrived not too long afterwards.
once in the house, nola (now awake, obviously, and less than thrilled) and i took a nice warm shower while cam got paul dried and dressed. cam had told me earlier he had a headache, so i told him to take a nap while i sat with the kids. much to my surprise, paul and nola were soon asleep. i wanted to nap, too, but i needed to get those bathing suits and towels into the washer. then i sorted mail, drank some coffee to thaw out my insides and opened a package. nola woke up while i was thus engaged, and i stopped what i was doing to nurse her on the couch next to paul's sleeping self. cam got up a little while afterwards and was much amused (and mildly horrified) that paul was asleep.
funny how my family all reacted the same way to different experiences -- cam to work, paul to play and nola to riding around in a pool float. me, i think i deserved sleep, too, but every home needs a martyr.
cam inflated and filled up our kiddie pool again today. he also set up our old canopy as shade and inflated a little floating airplane that we got at a kbtoys outlet for a few bucks. paul wanted to ride in the airplane before the lunch, so he put on his swim trunks and got in. of course, once he was in there he didn't want to come out for lunch, so he whined for a while until cam got him out. then we left the pool uncovered so the water could warm up for the afternoon.
after a few hours, cam and paul got ready to get into the pool. i dressed nola in a swim diaper and a onesie and put her in the floating airplane. she seemed to enjoy it -- at the very least, she didn't seem to dislike it. once cam and paul were in the pool with her, i left the three of them and changed into my own suit.
we spent a long time in the pool. nola got out earlier than the rest of us and stayed with my mom. it was pretty funny because even though she didn't want to be in the water, she wanted to be near the water (and therefore near us) so every time my mom tried to bring her inside, she would scream bloody murder until they were back with us. the first time my mom brought her inside to change her clothes, but she cried so hard that my mom brought her back out in just a bathrobe. then she brought her back in for a diaper, but she could only manage a disposable instead of a cloth one because a cloth one would have taken her too long to put on. they spent most of their time sitting on my mom's front steps.
cam was trying to get paul to float on his back (nola had submitted to my attempts at floating her), but i don't know how successful he was. i do know that he did get paul to hear underwater. paul's favorite game was one where he would try to crawl/float away while i was holding onto his ankle. then when he got far enough to almost grab a toy fish, i would yank him back. we must have played that game a thousand times. he did get dunked once and started to cry, but after wiping his eyes he decided he was okay.
again, he didn't want to get out of the pool, but i forced the issue because his lips were turning blue. once i got out, he, of course, was in a hurry to get out, too.
it was a good outdoorsy afternoon, and i have the tan lines to prove it. (really should have picked a bathing suit with straps instead of a halter.)
me: i will take him somewhere -- and i WILL lose him.
cam: [smile]
for a while now paul has been playing a game called "____ hunt." it might be a bug hunt, a spider hunt, a natural disaster hunt, a sea creature hunt -- but whatever it is, the game involves hiding pictures of whatever all over the house, and then dragging cam along to show him where said pictures are hidden. and then pictures are taken. (unless you're talking about a bug hunt or spider hunt outside the house -- those involve dragging cam outside with a camera to take pictures of said items. and then there is all the fun of cropping those pictures! yeah, i don't get it.)
in the early days of these hunts, he used to hide plastic spiders, pictures cut from magazines, drawings by adults in his life. lately he has taken to doing his own drawings and they are surprisingly good (says his mother). there has been another change -- in the beginning these hunted items were just lying around. now they must be taped down with blue painters tape. i now have a purple starfish (which i drew and colored at paul's request) taped over my bed.
paul loves the blue tape and is constantly asking for tape loops so he can stick stuff up. (yesterday he taped something to a plant. sigh.) we currently have at least three rolls in use and i am trying really hard to keep them out of paul's hands. i've stored them (along with other rolls of tape) in a box on a shelf, but cam keeps getting them down for paul and then forgets to put them away. then they have the audacity to ask me where the tape is. um, same place where your MIND is hiding?
this evening i was forced to do almost all of the drawing. i had to draw a megalodon, a starfish and a reef shark sans fins because he wanted to draw the fins himself. then i had to cut them out because he couldn't remember where his safety scissors were, and then i had to get the tape and tear off little pieces so he could make loops. he kept asking me, "what sea creature should i draw?" but i guess he actually meant "what sea creatures should you draw?" (the other day he had us draw shells and he piled them up on a balled-up blanket and declared it was a coral reef. it was cute for about a minute, then he started whining when i dared to lift nola off the boppy because apparently she, too, was a denizen of the reef.)
i'm getting sick of the taped stuff. in the past, i could pick up the volcanoes/spiders/worms/fish-spitting-out-an-ostracod myself and put them in an envelope in his room. but the taped stuff... if i even suggest taking them down or moving them, i get shrieked at like i just stuffed his best friend in the dishwasher. or god forbid, suggested he eat what the rest of us are having for dinner. we have a firefly squid taped above the linen cabinet, a clam on the floor, a tinier clam on the tansu, a whale above the alarm keypad, a reef shark taped to the bedroom wall, a giant squid on the fireplace, a humboldt squid taped to the computer room doorframe, etc. etc. etc. i am constantly finding these damned things all over the freaking house. i don't mind the hunting games, but the tape, the blasted tape...
about a week or so ago, i got a catalog in the mail for fancy kids clothing. i found a shirt with a spider on it and thought paul might like it. i showed him the catalog and he was meh, but he was all fired up about the idea of a spider shirt. (figures.) so we went on an online spider hunt and eventually ordered one from a store called "gimos."
gimos is apparently the gap of argentina or something like that. since i don't shop at the gap, i was amused to find myself shopping at a foreign alternative. the shirt was a little pricey (okay, make that a lot pricey for a long-sleeved t-shirt), but turns out that it is a great shirt. soft and sturdy, washes up pretty good (had to air-dry it, though, for the sake of the spider) -- all that is fine and dandy, but the spider is actually really cool and fuzzy! nice detailing. paul insisted on putting it on immediately. plus the shirt arrived quickly, wrapped in orange tissue in a white shirtbox tied with an orange ribbon. there was also a logoed orange ballpoint pen and a matching notepad. very pleasant touch.
i'm not sure if i'll be ordering again from them anytime soon, but if they one day again have a shirt that corresponds to paul's next obsession, i would buy it from them without hesitation.
paul just announced that cam looks older than me. when asked how old i am, paul declared confidently, "22." wow. thanks, kid.
my mom is off visiting relatives for the day. paul and cam are off bug-hunting at madrona marsh. nola is asleep. why am i not asleep? so far i have done some laundry, loaded up the dishwasher, tied the water hyacinth to a rock to keep it from floating around the edge of the pond (the raccoons savaged it last night), and general picking-up-around the house.
i was convinced i'd fall asleep instantly because we had a rough night. woke up at one point to find paul in the bed. four people in a queen-sized bed does not make for a comfortable sleeping experience. my children are aggressive sleepers. nola by herself can almost knock me off the bed. paul CAN knock me off the bed. i spent a lot of time hanging off the bed while trying to protect nola from her brother's feet and elbows. yes, i could have put her back in the crib, but where's the fun in that?
my head is splitting, my bones ache and yet i persist in sitting here, awake...
my mother announced a few days ago that she had some bananas on the verge of overripeness so if i wanted to make banana bread again i could have them. i took her up on her offer, and today i baked the very popular bread with the substitution of egg replacer and vegan margarine and the addition of allergen-free chocolate chips, just like before. (i think it's pretty funny that this recipe comes from the woman behind learning movable type. i spent much time there when i was starting this blog,) amusingly enough, it's already half gone. i suspect paul would consider eating the whole thing if i would let him.
the other day at whole foods, we told paul to pick a flavor of ice cream (they sell this great dairy-free ice cream by turtle mountain). the last time we bought "cookie avalanche," a cookies & cream alternative. i expected him to pick the same flavor since it struck me as very kid-friendly. nope, instead he picked pomegranate chip. when i was four, i don't think i even knew what a pomegranate was!
after a semi-disastrous trip to the citadel outlet mall in commerce, cam and paul inflated our little swimming pool and filled it partway with cold water. since it was already heading towards late afternoon, i sort of questioned the wisdom of such actions -- but since hell hath no fury like a paul thwarted, i just shrugged.
turned out to be a pretty good move. nola and i even donned suits (hers was an old tshirt and an oversized swim diaper) and stayed in until nola's and paul's lips turned blue. great wholesome fun!
paul has discovered a new skill. my mother just spent the last ten minutes hunting up every scarf, handkerchief and towel she owns just so he could have the fun of unfolding and refolding them.
made a banana-chocolate loaf yesterday. after the peach cobbler incidents (paul: i'm sorry, i thought it would taste better), i wasn't all that sure that paul would eat it, but he LOVED this. success! i'm always happy to shovel homemade sweets into my children.
after shoving some stuff around in paul's room (he isn't here, after all), i have come to the conclusion that he has too much furniture and junk. of course, i am sure he will disagree -- and there is also the good possibility that he will throw fits that i dared to move anything. he is not the most laid-back of children.
on friday paul is going to disneyland with cam's folks and sister. they'll be picking him up mid-morning and he'll be spending the night at their house. i think it's great that he gets to go, considering that nola's not ready for anything like that yet, but it still makes me sad that he's going without us.
bought a pair of peep-toe low wedges from eddie bauer. they showed up today and i modeled them for paul, nola and my mom.
paul: you look like someone from "what not to wear."
me: is that good or bad?
paul: good!
paul: everyone is staring at you.
oh, dear.
paul was eating wagon wheels with tomato sauce for dinner. he noticed a bowl of cooked wagon wheels sans sauce on the counter and proceeded to eat them, too. then he noticed a jar of craisins (courtesy of my mother) on the counter and asked for those, too.
paul: can i put the craisins with the wagon wheels?
me: uh, you can, but i wouldn't -- i was thinking we could eat them with oatmeal tomorrow since we're out of raisins.
curiosity got the better of him and he mixed some craisins in with the plain wagon wheels.
paul: you know what i call these?
paul: cran-wheels.
then he insisted i eat some. all i have to say is thank goodness he didn't mix the craisins with the tomato sauce. i'm not sure i would have been able to eat that with a straight face.
as usual, paul and nola didn't go down easy.
cam: how did we end up with nocturnal kids?
cam: is it because we are, too?
how can he say that we're all nocturnal? it's only 10:55 and i'm the only one still awake!
paul has been calling nola "nolies" for several weeks now. the funny thing about this affectionate little name is that the rest of us get the same treatment.
paul: good night, nolies!
paul: good night, mommies!
me: good night, paul.
paul: don't you mean "paulies"?
am a little rattled. not a big fan of earthquakes. nola, predictably, didn't seem to notice. (paul, on the other hand, cried a little bit and didn't want to come out from under the table at his grandparents' house.)
because of a strange little conversation we had yesterday, paul keeps saying "comic sans" and laughing.
dammit. i hate comic sans.
after paul nearly spilled frozen lemonade on the couch:
me: okay, i'll feed you.
me: poor couch, we've only had it a little while and it's already so abused.
paul: you know why the couch is abused?
paul: because it's obese.
me: what?
paul: see how wide it is?
paul: it's so wide!
i honestly had no idea how to respond to that. have i transferred my poor self image to the couch?
i just realized i have never mentioned how we fit nola into our house.
when we bought this house, i think we originally intended to have only one kid, so the fact that we had only two bedrooms wasn't an issue. (yes, we have a computer/craft/junk room, but it opens to the backyard. like hell i am going to give a child a bedroom with a door to the outside world. if said child grows up and sneaks out the window, that's one thing, but i'm not about to hand the kid his/her very own escape route.) now that we have two kids, they'll share a room once nola is old enough for a big girl bed until they can't stand to share a room any longer. (no idea when that will be.)
nola's crib (paul's old crib, painted purple) is now in our room. the underbed drawer kept falling off its track, so we removed it completely and put it on casters. i moved paul's old rocking chair (which is upholstered in blue denim) to our room, too. we used to have two canvas-covered shelving units with our clothes (the closet in our room isn't very big, so we kept stuff on shelves and in plastic drawer units hidden by the canvas covers) but they were farmed out to other places in the house and replaced with ikea pax wardrobes. the plastic drawer units now live in our closet, full of nola's stuff. her little dresses also take up part of a clothing rail.
paul's room has not escaped unscathed. i replaced the rocking chair with a big chair and ottoman poached from the living room (for storytime). he keeps his clothes in a big blue armoire, so we cleared out his closet to hold the changing table and nola's diapering supplies. we call it the "changing room." luckily the closet has a little window in it so we can air it out every once in a while.
after all the prep for paul's nursery, it was weird and a little sad that we had to shoehorn nola in like this, but she doesn't seem to mind. this whole process has reminded me how little a baby actually needs. as long as she has food and diapers, she's a happy girl.
my mom: don't jerk her so much.
paul is constantly playing a little too rough with nola -- tugging her legs, twisting her arms, pushing her head. (not out of meanness, of course.) drives my mom batty. i've taken to saying, "don't do that or grandma will freak out." i have been careful to avoid her eyes when i say it. sure, when it's just me and the kids, i'm always telling him to stop doing whatever it is he is doing:
don't you dare step on her head
let go of her feet
don't drop her
don't touch her eyes
but his level of "stop that!" activity always seems to go up when my mom's around. i'm not sure if he's actually doing more or if her panicked reaction to every move just makes it seem that way.
so... during my past life as an adult working outside the home, paul would spend every wednesday and every other friday with cam's dad. oddly enough, during my temporary current life on house arrest, paul has been spending practically every day with cam's dad. you'd think he'd want to spend more time with his mother, but it seems to be the opposite. sometimes it hurts my feelings a little bit -- i'll think that we're getting along SO well -- or maybe that he's mad at me and is choosing to lash out by shunning my company -- but sometimes i'm all, "go on, get out of here, good riddance!" it's not that i don't want to spend time with both my kids, but inevitably there will be a moment when everything is happening/everyone is talking or screaming or crying at the same time and i want to cover my ears and holler "eeeek!"
paul's imitation of me saying, "everything's going on at the same time!" is note-perfect. he lives to mock me, i suspect.
a few days ago, i had the rather unique experience of both children pooping at the same time: paul was in the bathroom while i was changing nola's diaper. then the phone rang (cam), so i hurriedly fastened nola's diaper and ran to the phone. didn't put the diaper cover on. big mistake. she pooped again and warm wet babyshit was soon running all over my hand and down my arm. paul laughed hysterically from the bathroom. poor cam, the stuff he must have heard. (the same thing happened the next day, minus the phone and the diaper explosion. i swear, these children are in cahoots.)
i'm glad that paul adores his little sister. the lack of "pay attention to me!" does make life easier, but i could do without him crawling all over her, trying to carry her, trying to pick her up, dragging her around the couch, etc. (i could also do without my mother's irritation and panic with paul's mild rough-housing and less-than-gentle caresses.) the way he tells me that she wants something that he really wants -- as if he were the royal translator -- sometimes makes me roll my eyes. don't feed me that bullshit, i do not believe that the infant wants a frozen lemonade.
i think as far as keeping paul home with me, this maternity leave has been an absolute failure. however, as far as keeping my sanity, having paul not here all the time has been a wee bit of a blessing. (oh, the guilt i feel by putting that in writing...)
paul: mommy, i have good news for you.
paul: i don't have any work today.
me: work?
paul: i don't have to work today.
me: what is your work?
paul: my work is playing minesweeper.
paul: stepping on your mail...
paul: is good for your life!
me: what?
paul: stepping on your mail is good for your life.
me: why?
paul: because then you can take a piece of it and put it in your mouth.
paul: it will dissolve and you'll feel better.
paul: it's like a paper pill.
me: okay.
me: thank you, paul.
me: stop it.
me: you're messing up my stuff.
me: stop it.
me: stop.
me: how many times do i have to tell you to stop?
paul: just one.
cam: paul, what did mommy say?
cam: how many times did mommy tell you to stop?
paul: just one.
cam: i heard her say it at least three times.
paul: maybe it was the echo.
paul: i was raised in a barn - i left the door open!
paul: [humming]
paul: do you know what that was?
cam: i know - silly old gordon fell in a ditch, fell in a ditch, fell in a ditch, silly old gordon fell in a ditch, all on a monday morning.
paul: no, it was similar to "wheels on the bus."
cam: the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round...
paul: [humming]
paul: the wheels on the bus... version 10.
i am genuinely bewildered by this. if paul's feet are too hot, they need to be cooled down (with a damp cloth) or he can't sleep. i told cam i thought it was crap, but he revealed that he was the same way as a child. tonight i watched cam cool off paul's feet. within minutes paul was asleep. it was the oddest thing. if it works, it works, but it's still weird.
paul has been home just a few hours and has already been reprimanded SEVERAL times.
me: can we give him back?
seriously speaking, though, i'm glad he's home. i had a hard time getting to sleep last night because i missed him. (i also had coffee too late, but i'm not taking that into account!)
i miss my boy. i know that lots of kids do overnights with the grandparents, but mine generally isn't one of those kids. goodnight kisses should not also be goodbye kisses.
a boy declared he was going to have a slumber party at his grandparents' house. it's almost 11 and we haven't been asked to come pick him up yet...
paul and i went for a bug hunt this afternoon while my mother watched nola. not much of a choice outside around noonish - guess it's too hot? all we saw were wasps, bees, flies and ants. the spider webs were all dried out. paul, much to my amusement, tried to step on every fly he saw on the ground.
paul: i'm fly attacker robot 2000!
i asked him why he disliked flies. "they eat your food," he said.
during our walk, two boys in a go-kart passed by us. "i'll race your lawnmower," one boy yelled to a gardener driving by. paul was intrigued. when we got home, we found a picture of a go-kart and emailed it to cam with a request to build one. i think bug hunts would certainly go faster if we had a go-kart.
damn my next-door neighbors for cooking their breakfast so late and giving paul the idea that he wants something for breakfast other than what i've already given him.
paul: that makes me think i want something cooked that isn't sweet. [like the plain oatmeal i gave him that he completely covered with sugar?]
paul: i want BACON.
i am ashamed of the way i can barely control my emotions when it comes to paul's constant whining. i know that he's still maneuvering through the world of boundaries and expectations. i know that he's still figuring out his own capabilities and abilities. i know all this. i know he's supposed to be testing me - that's what little kids do. so why am i failing so miserably?
paul: subterfuge.
me: what?
me: did you say "subterfuge"?
paul: auf wiedersehen.
me: look, i cut my finger.
paul: how?
me: i cut it when i was cutting up peaches.
paul: i'm sorry.
paul: i should have watched you.
a few weeks ago, we found ourselves watching an episode of "franklin." his parents were going on a trip and his grandparents were unavailable, so he needed - for the first time - a new babysitter. she managed to win him over, but it took time and a special [hand]bag of tricks. (she was like mary poppins!) paul and i talked it over and we decided that i needed to restock my own bag. with paul's input, we determined that i needed to add the following items to my usual arsenal of wallet, first aid kit, benadryl, diapers and other baby supplies:
bubble liquid
blanket
screwdriver
frisbee
cookie cutters
flashlight
book
tennis ball
clearly i'm going to need a bigger bag.
the last two days paul has insisted that we eat supper, which he defines as the meal between lunch and dinner. yesterday supper took the form of a picnic (watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, mini lemon cupcakes and edamame) in the backyard. today paul said we should have a tea party, but upon being told that we were not going to drink tea because it was too hot, he conceded that oreos and milk would be a fine substitute. i was all set to eat peach cobbler, but he didn't like it. nola, as usual, had no opinion either way.
on weekdays we have settled into a routine: cam gets up for work, showers, eats breakfast and gets paul up so he can wave goodbye. if paul can't wake up, cam drops him off into our room, where nola and i are usually still asleep. if paul can wake up, he waves goodbye from the window and then heads over to our room to crawl into bed. paul and i usually get up a few hours later - maybe around 9ish. we eat breakfast and then play, watch tv, etc. until nola gets up. sometimes nola wakes when we do, but lately she's been a litle lie-abed.
this morning, paul AND nola refused to go back to sleep. since i couldn't sleep until after one and nola woke me up at 2:30, and then i was up again by 5:30, i was pretty tired. nola fell asleep again around 7:30 and i started crashing shortly thereafter - paul tried to get me to stay awake, but i couldn't do it. he hung out with my mom while nola and i napped. just before ten, we got up and rejoined our boy. i was still exhausted (couldn't speak for nola), but i didn't want to let him down again.
the last two days we've been playing "airplane," which involves sitting on paul's loft bed and talking about how we're in a plane. today we were a medical crew. nola needed to be airlifted to a hospital because she had a rare pooping condition that required excessive diaper changes. while en route, paul decided that there was "a baby growing" in the seat next to me.
me: growing?
me: you mean like nola?
paul: it's not born yet.
me: there's a pregnant woman on this plane?
paul: look, there's another one over there!
it took some time, but i finally got out of paul that these babies were growing in peapods. the pods expanded as the babies grew and then eventually split open -- leaving you with a tiny full-grown baby. at one point i think we had at least fifty babies on board.
a bunch of little throw pillows served as the "electrical" system. they were moved around and rearranged as paul deemed necessary.
i spent a lot of time buckling imaginary babies (and paul) into their seats.
he insisted we needed to wear pilots' hats and pulled out two freebie hats that looked like cycling caps. pointing at the large "pepsi" on the brim, paul told me it said "pilot." then he smirked.
like any good traveler, he wanted snacks. after i told him that we couldn't eat in his bed, he decided we should move to the living room. funny how five pillows and a couple of imaginary five-point harnesses can transform a plain sectional into a sectional plane.
paul wants to know if the bed will fall apart if we all sit on it. (the loft has a 400 lb weight limit.)
me: it won't break right now.
paul: what if daddy sits on it?
me: with us?
paul: yes.
me: um, let me think... if daddy, you and me sit on it, we're okay.
me: but if nola came up here, it would break.
he found this very amusing.
i realized about a month and a half ago i could do this two-kid thing when i found myself carrying paul while standing on one foot and rocking nola in her carseat on the ground with the other foot. it's funny how multitasking has really become multitasking since nola was born.
at bedtime this evening i was reading selections from wonders of nature to paul. this particular book was published by parents magazine back in 1974 and it is utterly bizarre. (my mother said it was my book because it was published in 1974. i myself was published in 1975, so i was amused that she quite possibly bought me a book before i was born.) tonight we read about insects and marine life. what astonished me the most was the book's repeated assertion that animals are really important because people eat them:
"Fish are good to eat. They are full of vitamins and minerals, which help make us big and strong."
"Crab meat is good to eat... Market Crabs have much meat and are an important food for man."
"Shrimp make tasty food."
"Most of the Tuna's meat is put into cans and sent all over the world for us to eat."
"Sea Bass usually weigh about two to five pounds and are very good to eat."
"Catfish are very hardy and can live out of water longer than most fish. Many people like to eat Catfish."
"Even though [Sunfish] are small, they make a tasty meal."
eeesh. i guess back in 1974, the only good fish was the one on your plate. (don't even get me started on the entry for crocodiles -- apparently the importance of crocodiles to humanity can be measured in leather goods and perfume.)
today paul announced that he wanted to go to the aquarium -- specifically the "close" one (cabrillo) because he didn't want to "see the movie" (the aquarium of the pacific in long beach turns off the lights and projects short films onto the walls several times each day. i don't know why, but this always freaks the boy out in a major way.). being that cabrillo closes at 5 pm on sundays and it was already half past three, i was astonished when cam agreed. nola and i almost didn't go with them, but cam decided at the last minute that we should.
there had been a preschool field trip a few months back, so paul and cam were there recently, but the last time for me was back in elementary school. cam had been paired with my best friend susan, and my partner was cam's best friend paul. (funny, huh?) but paul was a goof and seemed to really like embarrassing me, so i stuck close to cam and susan. (at least that's the way i remember it.)
the place looked unfamiliar from the outside, but the main hall struck me as having a lot of really old science fair-looking exhibits that very well could have been there 20 years ago. whatever it was, there was definitely a sense of deja vu for me.
after touring the aquarium complex, cam and paul decided to walk on the beach. as i was carrying a baby wrapped in a blanket and my splurge-y leather diaper bag, i was less than pleased. couldn't even sit down because i was afraid of getting sand into the bag (or damaging the bag). at least i was wearing shorts and flipflops. i amused myself by people-watching. when nola fell asleep, i tucked her into a sling to give my arms a break. paul had no desire to step into the water, so they spent the majority of their time playing in the sand. we left after about half an hour.
unpleasantly, it took us about another half hour to get out of the parking lot.
as we were driving away, i saw a "tsunami evacuation route" sign. who knew? thank goodness i live on a hill.
it wasn't the greatest afternoon, but it was all right, i suppose. at least paul was happy and nola was quiet.
on a whim i entered paul into a catalog model contest this evening. my mother's friend had recently taken a bunch of pictures of the boy that looked amusingly like headshots, so i sent one in. i don't want him to win the grand prize, but the first prize (of which there are ten) is a $100 gift certificate for that catalog. we could always use free money.
the other day i was cleaning up a plant arrangement paul gave me for mother's day. (my mother pointed out that most of the plants in the planter had different needs and therefore had no business being lumped together -- she apparently was right because some of the plants are now dying.) paul objected to my attempts to remove a big pink bow from the front of the planter. he also thought i should leave in the pink plastic sign included in the arrangement.
paul: number one mom.
paul: that's you.
what a sweetie.
paul has been obsessed with spiders and insects for the past few weeks. i could deal with the constant chatter about tornadoes, but creepy crawly things just gross me out. it's times like this that i am really glad to not be a single mom. cam, bless you for going on all of those damned bug hunts.
with the help of the other adults living in this house, i've been slowly revamping paul's room.
*picked out two fabrics (a turquoise with leaves and a red with spiderwebs) and my mother covered a bunch of mismatched throw pillows with them. these pillows now live under paul's loft bed.
*took down paul's navy blue tabtop curtains and replaced them with white rod-pocket roman shades. they were too heavy for the thin wooden curtain rods we had in there, so i replaced them with cafe rods. much nicer. also sewed a line of red rickrack to the shades to dress them up a little.
*cam bought a homasote alternative from home depot so i could make giant (and cheap) bulletin boards. found a cheap neutral linen fabric and covered three 2' x 4' boards with it. (god, how i love a staple gun.) tacked a line of red rickrack to top for color. came up with this idea after realizing that painters tape can be unkind to construction paper preschool art projects.
*moved paul's growing collection of books to another room so that i could stash more toys in there.
eventually i'll paint the room a pale turquoise (will have to do so before i return to work), but until i can do that, i think these mini projects are freshening up the space quite nicely.
paul and i sometimes sing instead of talk. when we're in that mood, we sing anything and everything -- we'll sing about the baby pooping, we'll sing about shoes and food and getting dressed. today we sang about my exercise bike, a tiny spider i found in the diaper drawer and some new onesies that my mom bought. it's a little bit "wonder pets" and "trapped in the closet."
we spent an amusing amount of time today refining our miis. gave my mii a new hairstyle that more closely resembles my newly short hair. nola has a mii of her very own -- she looks just like paul but with longer hair (black instead of brown) and gray eyes. i set her up just so that she could hang out at our pokemon ranch with us, but it's somewhat surreal to have her walking around there when right now the child can't even hold her head up. we also adjusted our heights -- it was a little weird to have three out of the four people in this family be exactly the same height.
(set up a mii for my mom, too, so i can try to shame her into trying wii fit. don't see it happening, though.)
paul: i want to be a bugologist.
me: wouldn't that be an entomologist?
paul: i want to be that, too.
paul: but i really want to be a spiderologist.
we've been trying to wean paul of "ginormous," but it's not really working. (still don't know where he picked that one up.) instead he keeps coming up with new and stranger variations.
paul: i looked up "pimormous" on the internet.
paul: it says it's a real word.
me: does it?
paul: [satisfied] yes.
he was pleased enough by his cleverness that he decided that it would be a good idea to once again cite the internet as his own personal knowledge bank.
paul: this is how you count:
paul: one nine eight seven six five four three two ten!
me: what?
me: that's not right!
paul: i looked it up on the internet and it says that's right.
me: don't believe everything you read.
me: just because you saw it on the internet doesn't mean that it's the truth.
paul: yes, it is true!
god give me strength.
today i irritated my boy by shooing him away from the tv because he was disrupting my game of "defend your castle" (while i was breastfeeding, how about that?) but i think i made up for it by getting him a silver medal in fishing via wii play. then i amused him by taking pictures of his grandfather's mii dancing at our pokemon ranch. i'm not sure that this is the mom that i'd thought i'd be, but at least nobody actually sees this stuff going on but my mom and the kids.
(for the record, paul and i also pretended to cook the fish we caught, created a lego factory out of legos, set cricket/rat/roach traps as directed by the baby and hunted for imaginary spiders. i also baked vegan cupcakes. so... i didn't spend the entire day sitting on my ass.)
paul: i'm calling 911.
paul: hello?
paul: my baby has a monkey stuck to her stomach.
cut to nola, oblivious, with a tiny stuffed monkey sitting on her stomach.
"my stomach bug," says paul, "is a spider."
now both children are vomiting today. poor things. i think we should all just go back to bed. (of course, paul will have none of it, but nola goes where i make her go.)
after much internal debate, i bought this necklace for myself. i wanted a little something for myself to commemorate our little family, so it has all four names on it. (the sample is hilarious -- apparently we should have named our kids jack and jayden.) i ordered it at the same time i bought cam's keychain. i like to wear it with my kinda-sorta "push present" -- a necklace from cam. i do NOT wear it with the other necklace he bought at the same time.
(just an aside: paul finds the white trash charm necklaces equally amusing, but he thinks the dude one is more appropriate for a boy. oddly enough, this is from a child who happily sported the trophy wife one around the house and would have worn it in public if i didn't take it from him.)
a few weeks ago paul wanted strawberries with powdered sugar. to my surprise, he wasn't interested in the sugar, said he couldn't really taste it. the next day i realized i gave him CORNSTARCH (i have them next to each other in identical containers). good grief. i told him and he wasn't mad at mad, but i did have to endure some ribbing for the next few days... guess i got off easy.
paul was telling me about a cereal that has more vitamins and minerals than daddy's favorite bran flakes.
paul: you know what it's called?
me: no, what?
paul: total.
me: oh!
paul: like colgate total.
paul: the second part.
paul: just total.
am sitting on the bed, the laptop on a pillow on my feet. the baby is sleeping on the boppy on my lap. paul is sleeping next to me, clutching my knee. it's nice to see them so peaceful -- and QUIET. is it a crime that i like them best when they are sleeping?
(i'd go to sleep, too, but i want to keep an eye on paul in case he starts throwing up again.)
one child is fussy, the other is vomiting. cam decided to work from home today. (thank you, thank you.) this could be the start to a very long day.
today my mother and i offended paul by laughing. we tried to explain that we weren't laughing at him, but he didn't care.
but how else were we supposed to react when he pointed out that tracy turnblad's mom obviously had a man's voice? i didn't even think he was paying attention. good ears, little one.
paul: i'm a jumping spider.
paul: bzzz.
paul: there's a bee!
paul: i'm going to jump on it.
paul: you're a black widow.
me: oh, thanks.
paul: we have to protect nola.
paul: she's a little daddy-long-legs spider.
me: okay.
nola: [blank face]
paul: now i'm an ant-mimic spider.
me: i'm a nursery web spider.
paul: with young.
me: yes.
paul: now what kind of spider am i?
me: an orb weaver?
paul: no, just a dimorphic jumping spider.
paul: you're going through mommy's stuff!
my mom: [defensively] oh, sorry.
lately i've been challenging my mother -- okay, baiting -- about reading my mail, but i hadn't really thought about paul taking notice.
oops.
that said, it was still an absolutely freaking hilarious moment.
dear paul,
its hard to believe that this school year is almost over. you have done really well and we are all so proud of you. hope your next-to-last day of school is a fun one. enjoy your day and we'll see you this afternoon. we love you.
love,
mommy and nola
got a call from the elementary school principal. paul had been accepted into the advanced studies program -- did we want to accept the spot? damn straight.
back to school sales and uniforms, here we come!
breastfeeding a newborn while playing wario ware to amuse a preschooler is not easy. those two-handed forms jiggle the newborn just a little too much.
call us stupid.
back before paul was born, we did excessive research. (surprise!) bought what we believed to be the very best mattress for his crib -- the colgate classica I.
he never liked sleeping in his crib, so we didn't force it. instead we became reluctant co-sleepers -- it was super-convenient for middle-of-the-night nursing, so i was fine with it, and when i went back to work i enjoyed having that extra cuddle time, but truth be told, we would have been thrilled if he had slept in his crib every once in a while, especially when he reached the age when perpendicular became the position of choice (head on cam, feet on me, or the other way around).
damn, that was a long sentence.
he slept with us for a long time. as he got taller and taller, the bed seemed to shrink. his nursery was kind of a waste -- it was just a place for diaper changes and to keep clothes and toys. why did we decorate the room? why did we spend $300+ on a crib?
we were determined that nola would not sleep with us. yeah, well, we failed in that regard. she would sleep in the crib for an hour or two during the day, but at night she never lasted more than a half hour at a stretch. in the beginning, i would take her to the living room and we'd sleep on the couch (me sitting up with her in my arms). after a few weeks, we ended up sleeping in the bed together.
a lightbulb went off the other day. what if, god forbid, it was the MATTRESS that was the problem? what if a softer crib mattress (concrete would be softer than the classica I) would make nola a happy crib sleeper?
we went to babies'r'us last sunday and picked one out, but couldn't buy it because it wouldn't fit in the car if we had any kids with us (and nola was with us). today cam left us all at home so he could buy it.
nola has been asleep in her crib for about two hours now. jesu cristo. how very rueful i feel.
cam: wow, it's almost like a real mattress.
cam: we kept feeling the [old one] and saying, "it's so hard."
me: and doing nothing about it.
cam: yeah.
to think i could have spent paul's early toddlerhood in so much more comfort is a little irksome, but oh well, it's nice to know that quite possibly we might get our money's worth out of the crib.
cam: you hit me in the head.
paul: i apologize.
cam: [wry look]
me: [muffled laughter]
paul: did mochi win?
me: no.
paul: bleah!
paul: i don't like what you said.
set the scene: we're trying to get paul into an elementary school other than our neighborhood one. we missed the magnet application deadline, so that left us with two options to get into that school -- apply for (1) a childcare permit (because this school is actually in cam's parents' neighborhood and cam's dad is going to be responsible for getting paul to and from school while we're at work) or (2) admission into the school's advanced studies program. when cam went to the school's office to pick up the applications, he was told to complete the second one first because that one had a deadline that was coming up soon. (the first one would be more of a last resort, anyway.)
with this in mind, we decided to move ahead on the second one. there was a brief application and paul's preschool teacher had to write a letter of recommendation. today we had an interview with a teacher and the school's principal and provide some samples of paul's work. (for a public school KINDERGARTEN. yeah, it blows my mind, too. maybe this is common, but this is my first kid in school, you know.)
nola was bawling all the way to school, so i was almost positive that i wouldn't be able to attend the interview -- a thought that had me almost in tears, too, because i feel like i've absolutely failed paul as a parent when it comes to school stuff. but the little girl came through for us and we had a great little interview.
paul dealt with the teacher while cam and i spoke to the principal. it was a little weird because i was trying to listen to paul while trying to tune him out at the same time so i could give the principal my full attention. i'm sure i smiled at weird times during the principal's spiel, but oh well. during the interview, she said something about my old old elementary school (the one i attended before the one where cam and i met) in passing to the teacher, which i filed away in my head but didn't think about too closely. i was busy trying to remember if the teacher was cam's parents' next door neighbor (turns out she is).
but then things took a very strange turn. if you've been reading this site for a while, you know that paul's last name is gracelastname-camlastname. (if you haven't, well, now you know.) the principal asked which one of us was camlastname -- cam said it was him. then she turned to me and said my name and said that i seemed really familiar to her and did i have a relative in education. nope, i said, smiling because i get "you look familiar" ALL THE TIME. (hello there, generic asian!) offhandedly, i thought to say that i went to such-and-such elementary school.
silence. i wondered if maybe i had heard wrong earlier and that she had no ties to that school.
the principal asked me when. i told her the years. and then it came out that she knew my brother. it was so weird. i told her that i thought her name was familiar, but i couldn't place it. (in talking to my mom -- who recognized the name instantly -- i learned that the principal had been my brother's 5th and 6th grade teacher.) i then was in the very unhappy spot of having to inform her that he had died 15 years ago. she said she was going to have to call another teacher (whose name i did recognize) to tell him.
who would have expected this from a kindergarten interview? welling-up tears, even. i've told lots of people about the ultimate fate of the original paul, but this time was especially hard because i was having to tell a former teacher who remembered a 10-, 11-year-old boy from 28 years ago and wanted to know how he was doing. "he had a very round face. i can see him." sometimes i forget that he had a life outside of us -- that he touched other people's lives and that people outside the family might actually remember him. i'm so used to inhabiting this world where i have to remind my mother of things he said and did.
i think the interview went well. from a proud mommy point of view, paul certainly showed his stuff (talking about tornadoes and his newfound love of spiders). from a cynical point of view, well, if paul doesn't get in now, maybe i should have worked my angle a bit harder.
paul,
i hope you are having a good time in school today. i will see you in about 40 minutes.
love,
dad
word of the day: assemble - to put together
a few minutes ago paul told me he was going to my mom's house.
his reason? his sister had an "evil cry," he said very seriously.
evil? congrats on mastering that concept so young, nola. it took me many years to get to that point.
dear paul,
there is a funny oreo in your snack today. (what is different about it?) please eat more pear slices -- at least 5. when you come home, do you want to bake a cake? have a good day. we love you.
love,
mommy and nola
two little girls from paul's school have invited him to birthday parties. both times cam talked to their mothers to find out what sort of things the girls would like for a gift. one liked hello kitty and hannah montana. the other enjoyed "running a pet store." today i wondered how i'd answer if someone asked me about a possible present for paul: "oh, he's interested in science -- particularly meteorology -- and medieval weaponry." makes me glad his birthday has already passed.
paul has been singing a lot lately. right now i hear this from the living room:
oh my darling
oh my darling
oh my darling clementine
you are gone and lost forever
dreadful sorry, clementine.
(am not so fond of the other song he sings with this tune ("found a peanut, found a peanut").)
he is just pipingly high (and off-key) enough to be ridiculously cute.
when i was little i thought i had an excellent singing voice and made sure my family knew about it. thank goodness for my highly developed sense of public shame and my parents' justified lack of enthusiasm for my "talent" or i could have ended up on star search or something equally cringey. hope paul isn't going that route.
paul is playing (is that the right word?) wii fit. apparently he needs more exercise, it tells him. duh, this is a preschooler who is more interested in science and tv than active play.
cam: now let me try so it can tell me i'm obese.
since you can password-protect your profile, i am so going to use this thing. i'll set a weight goal with my going-back-to-work date as my target. wonder how well it'll work?
dear paul,
hope you enjoy your snack today. it looked very good when i was making it. nola says, "squeak!" have a good time at school and at grandpa's house. smile for your class picture. i love you.
love,
mommy
this morning i was making paul's snack for preschool (in the past few weeks, i've noticed that i've upgraded his snack from snack-sized to lunch-sized -- must be the collateral damage from that whole nesting thing) when nola started shrieking bloody murder. as a result of feeling rather faint (early morning coffee on an empty stomach), i had just quickly inhaled a slice of cold pizza and was in the process of drinking a cup of milk. since i was feeling a little better, i latched her on and continued to put paul's snack together. hurray for multitasking.
paul came into the kitchen and spied a box of cheerios on a shelf. he had already eaten his breakfast, so he was only interested in the speed racer turbo car that was included with the cereal. he had been whining all morning, so i wasn't exactly feeling all that receptive.
paul: please get the car.
me: no.
paul: [whine]
me: no, i'm sorry.
paul: [whine]
me: [frustrated] call your father.
me: if he says yes, i'll get it for you.
bad move. he ran for the phone and called cam, who told him to give the phone to me.
cam: is that what you said?
me: yep.
cam: okay, give the phone to him.
cam told him yes.
me: thanks a lot.
cam: was i supposed to say no?
i sent paul to the living room with promises to get the car for him. i drank my milk and tried not to think about ulcers.
paul: [calling from the living room] i'm ready for my car now!
me: [quietly] shit.
i pulled the bag of cereal out of the box and shook it. didn't see a car. twisted the bag this way and that way. no car. sighing, i took a big bowl and poured all of the cheerios out into the bowl. no car. i called cam.
me: did you already get the car out of the cheerios?
cam: no.
me: i poured out the whole bag -- there's no car in there.
me: ugh... i better tell paul.
paul predictably began to cry and accused me of not looking hard enough. as i put the cheerios back into the bag/box and then put the box back on the shelf, i noticed a little plastic-wrapped white thing on the table. apparently the car had been wrapped separately from the cereal and must have fallen out of the box when i pulled out the cereal. paul was delighted. nola, still latched on, couldn't care less.
me: yeah well, the car was there.
cam: when we were kids, the toy was ALWAYS mixed in with the cereal.
me: yeah.
cereal manufacturers must have figured out that it's more sanitary and less stressful if we don't have to empty the goddamned box of cereal in order to find the prize. wish i got the memo.
i still can't believe i gave in.
breathe in, breathe out...
hi paul,
today your snack is a chicken sandwich, wheat thins and strawberries. for a special treat, you also have powdered sugar for dipping. we hope you have fun at school and with grandpa. we love you.
love,
mommy and nola
paul,
by now i am back from the post office and am sitting in the car. i hope you are having a good day. i love you.
love,
dad
p.s. nola says "squeak"
dear paul,
we hope you have a great day at school today. don't forget to give the cards to ms. raquel. we think she will like the birth announcement. see you later!
love,
mommy and nola
paul has been complaining of some pain lately, so cam took paul to the dentist again today. his gums are a little red. she did some cleaning and reminded cam to floss paul regularly.
cam feels really guilty about the state of paul's teeth because he's in charge of his oral health (i merely provide insurance). when paul was a baby, i couldn't stand using the finger brush on him because of his iron jaws, so cam took over.
as paul gets ready to go to school fulltime, i feel like all of our parenting flaws are being put on display. the teeth, the clinginess, the whining, the distaste for sharing, etc. etc. etc.... i'm so sorry, baby. we could have done better by you.
paul,
have a good day and come home soon. i love you.
love,
nola
paul,
i hope you are having a good time at school. i am looking forward to seeing your craft.
love,
dad
cam took paul to the dentist to have his cavities treated today -- and cam was in tears. one cavity was filled and the other afflicted tooth received a stainless steel crown. it wasn't the work that bothered cam so much as the system of restraints in place to ensure paul didn't run away or, you know, move. cam said it reminded him of "a clockwork orange."
pediatric dentistry appears to have changed a lot since i was a kid. i was looking over the paperwork the dentist's office sent home with cam and was startled by all the choices available for behavior management. cam had opted for the "papoose board," which ended up being essentially a straitjacket and head restraints. his other options were nothing, varying levels of conscious sedation (which the dentist recommended), pain relief via gas mask, and general anesthesia. good lord. is this all supposed to reduce one's fear of the dentist?
for the record, paul was a champ. he's my brave boy. he had a freakout period while the lidocaine was wearing off (he feared he was having an allergic reaction and cried for benadryl), but apparently was otherwise unscarred. cam, on the other hand...
no hate mail, please -- but my son just saw the dentist for the very first time today. he has two cavities, both of which will be dealt with during a follow-up appointment for later this week. poor thing. i know he should have gone to the dentist, what, THREE YEARS AGO, but i, shamefully, have placed dental health somewhere only slightly above a formal religious education.
(if you know me, don't snort.)
at some point in the early morning, cam brought paul over to our bed. i didn't realize it until a couple of hours later -- cam had already gotten out of bed and started work for the day when paul woke me up.
paul: mommy?
me: hm?
paul: daddy already got up.
me: okay.
paul: i have to get closer to you because i want some warmness.
me: okay, let's snuggle.
tomorrow is my due date, but i don't expect to spend it in the hospital. nope, we'll save that for friday.
tomorrow paul and i are going to spend the day together while cam works from home (his last day before a two-week vacation). i am not sure what we're going to do. we've talked about a walk, i've thought about baking a cake, but chances are just as good that we'll sit on the couch and watch a variety of tivo'd shows about tornadoes. i'm not really sure how the day will go, but i am determined to not take up the day with housework and nesting-type crap when this is the last day that paul will be an only child. it will be a good day, goddammit.
today cam and i talked a little about stuff we'll do once the baby arrives. we'll come along to preschool, i declare bravely, we'll go for picnics, all four of us. we'll fly a kite, cam says, making a mental note to buy a new one because god only knows where the old one went. we smile, but there's a hint of nervous desperation behind it because we know that very soon things will NEVER BE THE SAME. may paul forgive us for what we are about to do to his world.
dear paul,
today your snack is a blueberry bar and funny little turkey rolls. don't worry, i didn't put any special mayo in it. i hope you have a great day at school. (if you don't want to play outside, you can sit on a bench.) i love you.
love,
mommy
me: paul, how old are you?
paul: four.
me: four, not forty?
paul: four years old.
me: what do you do when you're four?
paul: supposedly eat all day.
paul: [grinning] couch.
me: sit on the couch?
paul: and do nothing.
paul: crumbs!
paul: crumbs on the couch!
went to paul's preschool today. he's doing so well. he's so adorable. cam's right -- everyone likes paul. he is really destined to be a man coddled by women.
low point: a little girl asked me if i was going to have a baby -- because the teacher was talking to them, i was too afraid to say anything for fear it would be disruptive. she must have thought i was dumb. (i chuckled to (and at) myself later.)
high point: paul's strut. that boy can walk. that will be useful when he grows up.
dear paul,
i hope you are having a good day at school! today your snack is a little different -- hope you eat at least some of it! (your gummies are packed with the oreos.) have fun and i will see you later. i love you.
love,
mommy
i brought home the decorations from the baby shower. one of them was a centerpiece -- a heart-shaped "baby" sign mounted on a lavender honeycomb tissue thing. (sorry, i don't know how else to describe it.) paul found it very amusing -- and quickly found a bizarre use for it.
paul: [holding it up] when i put this in front of you, i'm going to marry you, mommy.
what?
cam: you can't marry mommy, that's my job.
paul then spent about 15-20 minutes chasing me around the house to put the centerpiece at my feet. he seemed to have shed his oedipal moment, though, and kept telling cam that it was time to marry me.
today paul tumbled off the edge of the couch and hit the coffee table. the wailing began instantly. i got off the couch and asked him if he was okay. then i picked him up and dusted him off. he continued to wail for another minute, then declared quickly (and sniffily), "i do my own stunts."
alrighty then. guess he was fine.
paul,
i gave you the bonus oreo we talked about yesterday. i hope you liked them pre-twisted because i did it again today. have a good day. i love you. see you tonight.
love,
dad
paul,
you have two oreos with your snack today. but i want you to eat your blueberry bar and oranges first. i pre-opened your oreos. have fun on the playground. i will see you tonight.
love,
dad
ate at coco's for dinner tonight. paul was a fabulous eater (and it is always hilarious to hear him order). while he was distracted by something else, i tried to feed him a dark green leaf from his salad. he looked at it and demurred. cam said authoritatively, "he only likes crunchy parts," and guided the fork to a piece of anemic-looking romaine. i raised an eyebrow.
dude. whoever said that mealtimes were only about the things you like?
as i head into the final weeks of my pregnancy, cam has declared that he will get up with our little poor sleeper. he's been really good about it, too. if i hear whimpers in the night, i wake up cam and off he goes.
last night, however, cam was less than willing.
cam: [mumbling] can you go?
so i got my giant self out of bed and hobbled to paul's room.
paul: [crying] my eyelashes are too long.
me: your eyelashes are too long?
paul: can you cut them?
paul: my eyebrows, too.
me: [thinking] baby, you barely have any eyebrows as it is.
me: we'll see what we can do.
i ended up taking him out of bed and cuddling with him in the chair in his room. comforted, he passed out again. i quickly followed suit. about an hour and a half later, i woke up and put him back into his bed (not an easy feat since i'm under 5' without shoes, 37 weeks pregnant and he sleeps in a loft bed). then i staggered back to bed myself.
poor baby. BUT I WILL NOT CUT THOSE BEAUTIFUL EYELASHES. (what kind of dreams do you have?) so there.
dear paul,
i hope you have a great field trip today to the cabrillo aquarium. i haven't been there since i was a little girl. you will have to tell me all about it. have fun. i love you.
love,
mommy
dear paul,
happy wednesday! isn't it amazing how fast time is moving? soon it will be summer. this year we will have to play more outside -- we'll definitely need to inflate the little swimming pool! have fun at school today. i love you.
love,
mommy
paul: what did you do?
me: i had to tell daddy to record something on tv.
paul: what is it?
me: oh, just csi: ciami. [i can't believe we still call it that.]
me: you don't watch that.
paul: yes, i do.
me: you do?
paul: [loftily] i watch various things.
me: that you do.
dear paul,
today is the first day of a new month. because it's april, today is known as april fool's day -- it's a day for playing tricks on people! be nice, though -- people may play tricks on you! have a good day. i love you.
love,
mommy
paul: the funnel cloud moves over the texas panhandle...
dear paul,
i hope you and daddy have a great time on the field trip today to the railroad museum! i've never been there, so you'll have to tell me all about it tonight. you will also have to tell me if your new backpack is a good size for school. have fun today. i love you.
love,
mommy
dear paul,
today your snack is all apples -- an apple cereal bar and applesauce. (i also gave you some pretzels just in case you get sick of apples.) hope you have a good day. i love you!
love,
mommy
no matter what paul says, i think "spring" oreos (the kind with yellow filling) taste just like regular oreos. (the bag even says so: "same great taste!" or some nonsense like that.)
paul: no, it's a little bit different.
maybe he's more discerning than i am -- can he taste a food coloring? -- but i'm the mommy and goddammit, i'm tired of giving in on EVERYTHING. give me this tiny victory, please?
we got new computers at work, so the firm decided to offer the old computers at greatly reduced prices ($175 for laptops, $60 for desktops) to employees. cam said to buy two laptops, one for paul and one for one of his coworkers. i dutifully put in my request... and waited several months to be told i could only have one.
well.
i picked up a laptop yesterday afternoon -- a dell d400. i had actually asked for a d600 (i think?), but after waiting half an hour or so in line (doesn't sound like much, but i'm prone to overheating and lightheadedness these days) and seeing nothing but dinged-up and scratched ones, i pointed at a cute little d400 in some desperation and said, "how about that one?"
me: this is actually for a four-year-old.
it guy: then this is perfect.
i don't think the folks here who actually used these computers would be so pleased to hear that.
on the way back to my desk, i ran into someone from my department. "i just bought a computer for my son," i told her. she sighed at me. guess she didn't consider it a wise purchase.
cam has been setting it up and i think it's going to work really well. paul seems to like having his own computer, and honestly, the idea of NOT sharing mine anymore is a very pleasant thought. $175 is a small price to pay for "mommy's computer" to really be mommy's again. i can't count the times i've settled down to use my laptop only to have a boy commandeer it for playhouse disney.
we spent part of yesterday afternoon at home depot, trying to get paint for the kitchen (touch-ups) and for the crib (i'll talk about this later). while we waited for cam, paul showed me some mickey mouse-shaped paint chips he had picked.
paul: [pointing] this is for me...
me: oh, have you picked your own colors?
me: i've already been thinking about colors for your room.
paul: [confused look] this isn't for my room.
paul: [pointing] that one is for my bed, that one is for the crib and that one is for your bed.
me: wait, wait, hold on.
me: your bed is already painted. [it's whitewashed.]
paul: not really.
paul: when you paint it, it will be beautiful.
how do you argue with that? but then again, how can you paint a BRAND NEW and EXPENSIVE bed? sigh. we brought his paint chips home, but i think maybe i ought to hide them.
last night paul was flipping through a geography pop-up book.
paul: look, it says "amazon."
me: [reading something else] yes, there's a river with that name.
paul: but i was thinking about the store.