Here they are: Harry Potter and Charlie Leopard, begging candy from my mother-in-law.
And, for no good reason except that it made me laugh, here is a funny picture that Wade drew, at Charlie’s request. It’s a crocodile and a flamingo, sharing a hamburger with pickles and fries with catchup. Charlie was adamant about the pickles and the catchup.
That is all.
I had a great system going: I woke up at 5:00 every morning and read and wrote for an hour or so, and then had a quick shower; the boys got up around 6:45 and we ate breakfast and started our day. I’ve been doing this for a while, and it has been lovely.
But yesterday and today, thanks to the time change and two head colds, the kids have been up early. Like 5:15 am early. Coughing and sneezing and READY TO START THE DAY. I feel fortunate to have washed my face today, forget any reading or writing. Thank god I’ve committed to write a NOVEL in the next 30 days. THAT should be totally doable if this keeps up, yes?
So both kids are home with me today (even though it is Monday, my ONLY child-free day), because they are tired and snotty and I want them to rest and recover so that they can go back to school and LEAVE ME ALONE for pete’s sake. We have been watching Playhouse Disney all morning, but I think I’m going to have to turn it off here soon and actually DO something with my sick children before their brains start to ooze out of their ears (which would go nicely with all the snot, I suppose).
The saddest part is that I had a lunch date today with my lovely friend Caroline, who I used to see three or four times a week, before she went back to work full-time. Caroline is about to have a baby, so her lunch date days are limited, and we lost this one to the colds. I am starting to fear that this baby will be in kindergarden before we’re ever able to get together.
I am even more sad about this as I had a fabulous Mommy lunch yesterday with the very very lovely Crayonz. She was my first blog friend, and it was funny to ‘meet’ her in person at last when I already feel like I know her so well. Sadly, she’s at home today with her sick baby, too. Crayonz, we could ditch all these sick kids and go shopping . . . I have a discount coupon at Old Navy . . . think about it . . .
Koala Brothers is over. Time to go play with pirates! Dear god, isn’t it nap time yet?
And no, it wasn’t because of the toilet episode (which was fairly tame, actually–a quick plunge and all was well. Although it was awfully early, and I am pretty sure I was having the Bradley Whitford dream again when Henry woke me up).
I don’t exactly know how it happened, but yesterday I signed myself up for the National Novel Writing Month project. Yes, between midnight on November 1 and midnight November 30, I am going to (try to) write a 50,000 word novel. See what I mean? I’ve lost my mind!
I decided to run this past Wade yesterday, before I actually commited to anything, to see if it sounded as insane when I said it out loud as it did in my head, and he said, ‘Good for you! Do it!’ which I took as a good sign. Then he said, ‘You know, writing a novel isn’t something I ever wanted to do,’ and I said, ‘Me either!’ and I signed up anyway. BECAUSE I HAVE LOST MY MIND.
But I have been wanting, for a while, to write about something other than my children, and I think this will force me to do it. So I’m going to write a novel! Now if you will excuse me, I have two days to figure out what my novel is going to be about. I think I need a drink.
‘Mom! Mom! The water from the potty is going all over the yellow bathroom!’
I have never been the type to lament how quickly my children are growing up. I loved the snuggly baby phase, I loved the toddler gibberish phase, but now we’re in to playdough and HotWheels and Harry Potter, and I’m loving that, too. My friend Molly once said that when her sons were very small, she found herself repeatedly announcing, ‘THIS is my FAVORITE phase!’ Two weeks, or two months later, she would find herself saying, ‘No, I think THIS is my FAVORITE phase.’ And so on. For the most part, I feel that way, too.
But recently I have started to notice that Henry is in yet another new phase, one I can only call Big Kid. When I take him to school in the morning, he heads straight for the door, with nary a backward look, while the other kids in his class hug their mommies and ask, ‘When are you coming back?’ I am not complaining about this–I had two years of him crying and hanging on my leg when I dropped him at school; this sprint toward the door and his day is SO MUCH BETTER than that ever was. But yesterday morning, I missed the (very small) window, as he was scrambling out of the car, to ask for a kiss (which he always gives me). And he was gone. And I was a little surprised by how sad I felt, watching my baby high-five his teacher and run down the hall. Because he’s not that baby any more.
Henry was my first baby and he was a tough baby, from the very beginning. There was NO phase that came easily for him; he was premature, he never learned to latch on, he had terrible reflux, he was a bad sleeper, he crawled late, walked late, talked late . . . and on and on and on. When he was not quite a year old, he had an almost paralysing case of separation anxiety. We would visit my parents and he would cry inconsolably every time he lost sight of me, even if I had just stepped around a corner. He was a mess, and so was I.
So every successful separation from me has been a triumph, for both of us. I agonized about how Henry would adjust to preschool (and then to a NEW preschool), but he has done just fine. And now that I think about it, I can see other ways in which he is becoming more independent, more grown up. Until recently, when he woke up in the night (which is often, as he is still a terrible sleeper) he would come in our room and beg me to lay down with him and ’snuggle’. Now, if I hear him get up, he will say politely, ‘I just needed a Kleenex. You don’t have to come lay down with me.’ He will still hug and kiss me, but unlike Charlie, who wants to sit in my lap and burry his head in my shoulder, Henry will give me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and then say, ‘Gotta go, Mom!’
This Big Kid phase is also a little startling because, in so many ways, Henry still needs to be coached to do normal five-year-old things. He still confuses what is real and what is pretend; he still has a difficult time understanding how his actions affect other people; he still has epic meltdowns. So I find myself doing a funny little dance, hopping forward to help him or calm him and then hopping away to give him room to learn. More and more I find that I can stand back and watch as he finds his way through his own life.
And while I am daily delighted by how much he is growing and learning, and by how independent and charming Big Kid Henry is, I miss the little smooshy baby. Today, for whatever reason, I find myself pining for the real Baby Henry, for my fat little Peapod.
I cooked tonight. Yeah, you heard me: I COOKED DINNER. And all it did was remind me why–and how much–I hate to cook.
I honestly do know people who like to cook, who love to cook. For me, cooking is essentially stressful. I can’t explain why, it just is. Tonight I made Shepherd’s Pie, which is about the most idiotically simple thing you can imagine–brown beef, add tomato soup and canned peas. Make mashed potatos; spoon over meat mixture and heat in oven. Serve. Ta da! By the time I had gotten to the potato part, I was begging Wade to stop at the liquor store, it was that stressful. And then! It didn’t turn out right and most of it went in the trash. But still, I cooked!
Part of the problem, I will acknowledge, is timing: five o’clock is a TERRIBLE time to try to prepare a meal. My children are all out of nice by five o’clock. I am all out of nice by five o’clock. And the actual preparation of the meal is hellish (there is the cooking itself, plus all the refereeing, and the occasional triage). My mother once suggested that I try to pull dinner together in the morning or during the boys’ rest time. But morning at my house is almost as chaotic as dinner time (but with a lot more nice) and nap time–oh, nap time . . .
For a while, when Charlie was a baby, I actually DID use the afternoon nap to make casseroles and whatnot. Of course, BOTH boys were still napping for a good two hours at that point, and even I can’t make assembling a casserole take more than an hour (I’m not THAT bad a cook). But now that Henry can tell time, ‘rest hour’ is over at PRECISELY 2:00, and I have (on a GOOD day) 75 minutes to myself. And I will be honest with you: I am too damn selfish to give up that hour to a beef stew. Or anything else that I fundamentally don’t give a damn about.
Which leaves me wondering about my mother’s generation. When I think back to my childhood, I swear we ALWAYS had a good meal on the table at the end of the day, one that included some protein and a vegetable and a starch. Not elaborate five-course meals, but certainly not the half-assed things I pass off on this family. What changed between my childhood and my mommyhood? Are we busier than our parents were? Or are we just more selfish?
While I am not enamored by the selfish option, I do feel like I am fighting to hold on to some non-mommy part of me, and that hour in the afternoon, when I read or answer e-mail or write, is crucial to that. And it seems to mean, at my house at least, that we are trading delicious casseroles for Mommy’s sanity, which is a complicated kind of deal with the Devil. I am certainly a better parent, a better wife, a better person, when I have time to myself; but if it means my children are eating grilled cheese and chicken nuggets all the time, is it really worth it?
And at my house that’s the kind of thinking that ends with a trash can full of Shepherd’s Pie.
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