Roles

Recently an old colleague contacted me for a job reference. I was pleasantly surprised to hear professional words roll off my tongue when the woman from the HR department called because I spend all day with a not-very-verbal toddler. I miss talking about literacy to adults, although I have the very rewarding experience of delivering early literacy instruction to my children.

Max has really challenged me lately. He still doesn't talk much, and he's in a stage where he just can't be reasoned with, or bribed, to be quiet or to wait. I made the mistake of trying to go to a zoning commission hearing a few weeks ago. I took some jelly beans with me, thinking that would keep him chewing and therefore quiet. Nope. He just shouted "Bean!!" the whole time. They asked us to leave. This week, I thought I would drop off a present for our cousin's new baby, who arrived early and is mostly healthy but spending a few days in Children's Hospital until he gets the hang of feeding. Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking. Max started screaming as soon as we got into the room. He either has a serious phobia of hospitals or is scared of little tiny sleeping babies.

I have to get the grocery shopping done in 20 minutes or less (thank you, Aldi). He takes his shoes off and tries to throw them out the car window pretty much every time we go anywhere. If I try and put him in a back carry in the Ergo, he pulls at my hair and claws at my neck.

I shouldn't be surprised. I did name him after Maurice Sendak's character.

I was working full time when Laurel and Marko were this age, and was thus spared from the full immersion in Young Toddler Life. Sometimes I feel like he gets dragged along, sometimes it feels like he rules the roost. I suppose both are probably true. Last night, he woke up with a nightmare or something and crawled into our bed, pulled the covers up and rolled over and went back to sleep. He slept until 6am (very late for Max). This was the first time he did that, but both the other kids spent a year or more terrified of the dark and sleeping in our bed.

I say all this to remind myself that this current role is challenging but it is finite.

Solstice, 2017 version

Summer solstice means early sunrise. Max calling my name. Day! Birds! Mama! I toy with the idea of making him stay in his crib until 6, but I think he would just get bored and try to climb out. That should be a rule though. He peed on everything, the crib is soaked, he is soaked. The room stinks of urine. He's cheerful nonetheless. Change him, do a load of laundry. Give him a banana. He wants to watch tv. I don't want to turn the tv on because it makes the big kids wake up and come downstairs like zombies and they were up late last night. I give him a funnel and a cup and a bunch of little cut up straw pieces. He pours the straw pieces through the funnel and then dumps them back out and does it again. This is fun! He loves it. It buys me enough time to make a cup of coffee. When he gets tired of this we stack couch cushions and then knock them over. He asks for cheerios. He asks for a banana. He eats most of it, and only dumps a few things on the floor before I catch him and snatch his bowl away. Kids get up, eggs and toast for them. More coffee for me. We set up a fort in the back yard and everyone plays happily together for a while. Max sits in his play yard with a tupperware container full of water and a scoop. He pours from this container to that. I scrape the paint off another section of my porch. It's going to take me ten thousand years to finish this project. The man from the air conditioning company shows up to do a final piece of work on our unit. The police show up at a house behind ours, and it looks like rain so we go inside. We watch Alison Krauss videos, sing along. I feed them banana bread for lunch, sliced up apples, cups of cold milk. Then we make limeade for dessert. It takes a very long time for them to juice the limes.

Naptime. I am desperate for a nap. I don't understand why the children don't appreciate this gift we have, of the potential for a midday rest. It takes some coaxing but Laurel reads books quietly, Max goes to sleep after yelling for a while. Marko refuses, even after I lay with him. I give up on a nap for myself and do dishes. I panic about not having a plan for dinner. I make a plan to order pizza. I google "do people really need 3 meals a day." I look up recipes for pancakes. I change the laundry again and check the chest freezer downstairs.

Naptime ends and there are more demands for water, snacks, milk. The big kids want to play at the neighbors but I don't want to go over there and watch them. I'm not sure if it is ok for them to just go over and play without me. I put Max in his high chair and feed him some watermelon. There is so much day left.

Eventually, I wait too long to order pizza so I make blueberry pancakes. The kids eat all 12 pancakes. We pack up to go to the park and lay a trail for Running Club. One loop marked with pink ribbons, one marked with blue. We go back up to the field and wait to see if anyone will come. Five families come, so there are plenty of kids to play Sharks and Minnows. Dragons and Knights. All variations of freeze tag. Some kids run the trails many times. Others lay on their backs in the field, in the freshly cut grass and stare at the clouds. This is not a very formal youth sports operation....pretty much anything goes.

When we get home, M and I scavenge for dinner options, as the pancakes have all been eaten. Showers, tick checks, stories, lights out, except the sun is still up. I sit in my dining room and watch the light fade and think about how the sunrise will drift back towards the south over the next 6 months.

One Day Left

Tomorrow is the last day of school! Laurel grew and changed a lot this year. When I think of "first graders" in a general sense, they seem very young to me. Ramona Quimby comes to mind. But when I look at Laurel, she seems so grown up. Last year we started a tradition of cake for breakfast on the last day of school. It was sort of accidental, but the kids loved it so much they have been talking about it for the last month. Marlene, our neighbor who walks Laurel to school every day, will join us.

Laurel lost all of her teeth and new ones grew in to fill the gaps. She outgrew her school uniforms and got a lot better on her bike and shifted from reading out loud to reading chapter books, silently and obsessively. We have to check on her at night and make her go to sleep because she sneaks them under her covers with a flashlight. She has a lot of artistic talent, especially with conveying emotion with the figures she draws. Her Girl Scout troop moved from Daisies to Brownies, and she's going to 2 short camp sessions this summer, where hopefully she'll have good experiences with horses. She's been begging for horse riding lessons for years.

Laurel attends a fabulous school and her teachers do a great job of treating the kids as kids, while still challenging them with lots of creative and in-depth projects. During each unit of the year they produced something very tangible. For instance, they wrote a book about the school for incoming kindergarten students. They also built a miniature city, complete with transportation and water systems! They visited an apiary and the PWSA reservoir. They have lots of outdoor time and art time. I don't feel like I have to jam in a lot of "fun" learning activities for her during the summer. If anything, she just wants free time.

This summer, we're keeping it pretty simple and close to home. Library, spray park, hike, repeat. I babysit a few other kids, so we have some built in playmates. We have a microscope and some test kits to examine the water in our neighborhood. We will watch The Kid Should See This and then probably do some of the things we watch. We're all going to learn to play the piano and I set up some accounts for them to play chess online with each other and with bots.

The last day of school feels totally different as a stay-at-home mom compared to when I was a teacher! I'm not dreading it, but it definitely has more of a "game on!" feel than the "phew, we made it."