My current earworm:
Because, yes, today my Monkey is (sing it with me!) 1 2 3 4 5, 6 7 8 9 10 11 12! (Remember when they only ever counted up to 12 on Sesame Street? It was like numbers higher than that just didn’t matter, or even exist.) (more…)
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The continuing saga of pestilence
Thank you all for the well-wishes for my mother-in-law. She had surgery and they were able to insert a rod into the bone to repair it, and it is around about this point in the story when Monkey puts his hands over his ears and says “YOU CAN STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW” because it weirds him out to think about operations and people being fitted with rods. Because we are excellent parents, we assured him that Grammy is just fine, and we will all love her just as much now that she’s a cyborg as we did before.
In the meantime, my poor brother-in-law Nearly Nickless wasn’t feeling so hot, and the LAST time we were at their house, you know, he got a stomach bug which I ended up getting (which landed me in the ER), so I immediately started spritzing myself with hand sanitizer and giving him an extremely wide berth.
It turned out that he had strep throat. Because of course he did! As the excellent house guests we are, we clucked sympathetically, asked him if we could get him anything, and then promptly packed up all of our stuff and left. (more…)
Guess who is my favorite right now?
Without compromising the privacy of the underlings in my household, I can tell you that the three little ones ’round here have VERY different reactions to impending travel.
It’s funny, really, to watch them all exhibit such different behavior. An interesting anthropological study, you might say. Because there’s that whole nature/nurture thing, plus two of the three share DNA, yet they could not be more striking in the various reactions they have.
And I, of course, just have to deal with it all. With a smile. When I can manage it. So, yes: The kids head off for vacation with their dad, today, and here is what my morning wrought: (more…)
It’s… educational!
You guys. I… I can’t even. Because words fail.
A couple of weeks ago someone posted this on Facebook, and I watched it with a mix of horror and delight. Because LOOK:
And I made Otto watch it, too. And Otto said, “No. YOU ARE NOT WATCHING THAT WHEN IT COMES ON TV.” And I argued, and he kept saying no, and then last night I was channel-surfing and it was on and he was upstairs, so I watched it. With Chickadee. (more…)
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid (or not)
Monkey went to a birthday party this weekend. Now, on the one hand: Monkey went to a birthday party this weekend. In fact, Monkey has received no less than four birthday party invitations since beginning his time at Hippie School, and if you’re a longtime reader I probably don’t have to spell this out (but I will, anyway, because saying it out loud makes me marvel all over again), but four birthday party invitations is… oh… roughly FOUR MORE than he received in the previous couple of years combined.
Hippie School is terribly tolerant and inclusive, and I love and cherish that so much, even if it means we get an invitation to a 5-year-old’s party and Monkey’s response is “Why would I want to go to THAT?” (Answer: Because you’re all one big happy family now, DAMMIT.) Of course, this opens up a whole new avenue for us, because now instead of him always being left out we actually have to PICK and CHOOSE from the MANY party opportunities. Which is weird. And wonderful.
Parties can be a little overwhelming for him, so we’ve turned down several invitations. But this weekend was Luigi’s party, so off we went. (more…)
Moral of the story
You get one day to stay home from school when you tell me you don’t feel well, even if you don’t necessarily have a fever. I’m willing to suspend disbelief for one day.
When you refuse to go to school on the second day, I will inform you that in the absence of fever or vomiting a second day home must indicate pernicious, invisible illness which needs to be diagnosed RIGHT AWAY, and therefore I will be scheduling a visit to the doctor.
What I may have forgotten to mention until shortly before said appointment is that there are now two options: Either the doctor agrees that you are quite sickly, or the doctor says you look absolutely fine… and then you will be getting your flu shot. I mean, as long as we’re there, and have paid our co-pay, and I’ve lost half my work day. Because I wouldn’t want you to be any SICKER, you know. (INSERT MEANINGFUL EYEBROWS.)
In short, Day 1 is a Mental Health Day, but Day 2 is Mama Don’t Play That Day.
(P.S. I suspect tomorrow will be Miraculous Recovery Day.)
Thursday at home with Monkey
I kept Monkey home from school yesterday because they were having one of their fantastic hippie field trips where they spend the entire day in the woods connecting to nature
These field trips are great, but even when Monkey’s doing okay, we have determined that I need to go with him as he pretty much requires one-on-one support for them, because if he decides to melt down in the middle of the wilderness that’s kind of a pickle for the teachers there who are dealing with other kids, too.
And right now, Monkey is maybe coming down with a cold. Maybe! I mean, who knows? How would we know? He looks a little “off,” but he’s also the kid who never knows when he’s sick, he just starts being a jerk and we’re left to puzzle it together. So. I dunno, but the day BEFORE yesterday was kind of a disaster, so I kept him home, and he was MAD. (more…)
The update that isn’t an update
I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to give you an update on the incident at school because I just knew that the triumphant day would come when the parents of the boy involved would either call or show up on our doorstep to talk to us.
Because if my child did what this kid did—or anything even remotely like it—the first thing I would do would be to rain down a fiery wrath unlike any seen before in our house, and the second thing would be to march said child over to the house of the family that was affected by my child’s unspeakable behavior so that apologies could be issued. And yes, that’s apologIES, plural, because the first apology would be to the other kid, and the second one would be to the parents.
I was waiting to tell you about that. The vindication. The relief of knowing that yes, kids do stupid things, but it’s Been Handled and this kid has learned from what he did. But it’s never going to happen. (more…)
I see, said the blind mom
All (long) weekend long, I listened to folks on Twitter and Facebook bemoaning the school vacation and lack of structure and general driving-batshit-ness of having the kids home for this break. And lo, I creased my brow with wonder and consternation, because I was quite ENJOYING having my offspring home and not having to drag anyone out of bed and getting to work quietly in the mornings without packing lunches or breaking up squabbles.
Plus, I was kind of enjoying my children. I know, it’s crazy, right? They’re older now and not quite so needy and OH HA HA HA, THOSE OF YOU WHO GET SICK OF YOUR KIDS! NOT ME!
Hubris: It’s what’s for dinner on the last day of vacation.
We had a nice break. We really did. Right up until yesterday, when everyone lost their damn mind and started acting like rabid wolverines. I don’t know what it was, but yesterday I would’ve cheerfully sold you both children in exchange for a pocketful of the rotten tomatoes we found Licorice eating in the yard. (more…)
Black Friday at Casa Mir
Today’s the day that I get up early and spend my entire day as a slave to Want Not, and the children are informed ahead of time that I will be essentially unavailable for the day and they should fend for themselves.
So I’ve been working for the last, oh, seven and a half hours already (ZOMG), and the kids are giving me pretty wide berth, but they just swarmed the kitchen—which is right off of my office—to forage for leftovers for lunch.
And that’s why one of the first things I said that didn’t involve shopping, bargains, or Amazon today was, “PLEASE DO NOT RUB LEFTOVER ROLLS ON YOUR FACE.”
True story.
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