Mandajuice

My most embarassing parenting moment yet

I hesitate to even write about this directly on the heels of that last post - the post about which not one single reader decided to give me the benefit of the doubt.  Instead of posting an angry rebuttal (which I've already written and saved to drafts), I've decided to just talk about what happened tonight with the hope that by giving you all a second chance, you'll redeem yourselves. 

Tonight I experienced my absolute most horrifying moment as a mother.

Earlier today I got word from the preschool that tonight was the back-to-school ice cream social where we could go and meet the teachers and some of the kids.  Plied with copious amounts of mac 'n cheese, Genoa zonked out on the way there and was perfectly delighted to sleep in her stroller for most of the event.  Alex was super excited to play with the other kids and after barely grazing his chocolate ice cream cone, he handed it to me and ran off to play tag with the big boys.

Sadly, no one's actually explained tag to him before, so he had no idea what was going on.  He thought the big kids were just running around hitting each other and of course he joined right in.  Eventually, Alex was tagged and when he went to go slug an eight-year-old, he got shoved hard and landed on the pavement, ending up with a bloody elbow and a face streaming with tears.  Dave and I saw the entire thing play out, so we knew he'd just bitten off more than he could chew and we did our best to placate him while explaining that when you play rough with the big kids, they play rough right back.  It was totally his fault.

It was also a good time to ditch the big kids and go meet his teachers.  Alex cried that his elbow hurt for most of the short walk from the parking lot to his classroom.  I knew from the outset that he was exhausted.  He was up at 6:30 this morning and even though he started getting sleepy early in the afternoon, I pushed through his nap so I could finish my errands. 

When we got to the classroom, he barely even acknowledged his teacher, which should've been an immediate red flag for me.  When he met his old teacher, Miss Virginia, he would NOT stop chatting her up and asking her about the class and the kids and the toys.  He's usually SO outgoing that when he went straight for the train table tonight without saying anything, I should've known he wasn't being himself.   Fortunately, he had met his teacher the last time we were at school (she was the one for whom he counted to 20), so I figured she'd understand that he was just tired.  In fact, at one point he looked so out of it that I commented to her about how tired he was and how it was definitely bed time already. 

After fifteen or so minutes of checking out the train table and the awesome construction bench in the classroom and then sitting there staring off into space while I completed the craft the teacher had laid out (a star with his name on it in sticker letters that was almost too difficult for ME to complete because I have no fingernails), I told him it was time to go.  He disagreed, to put it lightly, and when I asked him to pick up the tools and put them back under the tool bench, he said NO and walked over to the train table to keep playing. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, when I took him by the arm to MAKE him pick up the toys, he HIT ME, batting my arms away and I yelled "HEY!" at him in my angriest voice,  right there in front of his two preschool teachers, the very same preschool teachers who will be deciding whether or not he gets to stay in the pre-k 4 class after two weeks.  I literally forced him to pick up the toys before stomping his ass out of there and apologizing to the teacher saying, "We'll see you on Wednesday when he hopefully won't be so tired and cranky!"

But inside I died.  I can't imagine being more embarrassed by my own child.  He HIT ME in front of his teachers.  Alex NEVER hits me.  It was a lesson he learned the hard way.

The part that makes me feel the worst is that this isn't how Alex usually acts!  I'm honestly mortified by the idea that they think I allow him to behave that way.  It completely ruined my day and my night and I haven't been able to think about anything since.  Alex can be the most friendly, outgoing boy.  At his last school, he was the youngest in his class by months and yet it was obvious that he was the teacher's pet.  Everyone loved him and in the ten months he attended the school, I never received even one single behavior complaint about him.  Tonight he gave off a severe PROBLEM CHILD vibe and I only hope the teachers will forgive and forget it because that's just not who he is.

It was one of those moments I will replay over and over again in my mind wishing I could forget it ever happened.  In hindsight, he was really, really tired and when I grabbed his arm to drag him over to pick up the toys, he was probably worried about his hurt elbow and didn't want me pulling on him.  When we got home, we put him straight to bed without a story or a snack or so much as brushing his teeth and he fell asleep within about thirty seconds of his head hitting the pillow.  But still!

I am completely mortified.

Preschool placement test

Alex has one of those birthdays where he misses the Kindergarten age cut-off by less than a month.  If we wait to enroll him, he'll basically be starting Kindergarten in two MORE years, which means three years of preschool, total.  Dave and I agree he'll be ready for school before then, so we've been actively figuring out how to get around the age problem.

It took literally weeks of conflicting information from many many phone calls, but we figured out that if we send him to Kindergarten at one of the approved private schools on the Washington State Board of Education's website, he can go directly into first grade, even though he won't technically be old enough.  So that's been our plan: one more year of preschool, one year of private kindergarten, first grade at public school. 

We picked a school from the list a few weeks ago, but weren't able to get Alex in for placement testing until yesterday afternoon.  Because he's still technically three years old, they wanted to make sure he was both mature enough and academically ready for their pre-k 4 class before admitting him.  They wanted to test his number/letter recognition skills as well as his social development.  I figured he was a shoe-in, but Dave worried that we'd been letting his academics slide during the summer and that they'd end up putting him in the three-year-old class.

So yesterday he met the pre-k 3 teacher, who sat him down and did worksheets with him while Genoa and I played on the playground.  When they were done, she told me he refused to count for her (which was hilarious because while we waited for her to get the room ready, he counted to 20 for the other preschool teacher), but that obviously he knew how to count because he recognized all of the numbers she showed him.  She also said he actually remembered more letters than she thought most of his peers would.  Academically, he was more than ready for the four-year-old class.

BUT...

He has a really short attention span.  Apparently, he kept asking about the toys and she had a hard time getting him to pay attention.  She did admit that it must've been hard for him because he was only sitting two feet from all the toys and it was his first time in the classroom, but they are going to put him into the four-year-old class on a trial basis for the first two weeks of school.  If they find he can't sit still for the lessons, they'll move him back to the three-year-old class.

I explained to the teacher that at his last preschool, if he didn't feel like sitting down and participating in an activity, like art or crafts, he was allowed to just keep playing with the toys, which meant he almost never sat still for the activities.   Why would he?  He's always rather build train tracks than color.  This was one of the big reasons we were looking for a structured academic program.  I just hope it all works out!

Whatever happens, we'll be listening to the teachers with open minds.  I know they'll be doing their best to encourage him!  I think he'll do just fine.

Manic Monday list

1. Everything is set for us to close escrow on The White House by Friday.  The loan docs are done and will be over-nighted to the title company tomorrow.  Yay!
2. The Realtor called this morning to let me know I can have estimates done at the house tomorrow between 10 and 2:00.  I've frantically been making phone calls today to get painting and flooring contractors in there at the last minute.  So far, so good.  I've got two of each lined up.
3. Alex is going through another one of his spectacular poop-hold-a-thons, wherein he holds it until the last. possible. minute and then usually doesn't make it to the toilet in time.  I think it's because the toilets in the apartment keep getting plugged up and he's afraid they're going to overflow.  He refuses to flush anything on his own and is seemingly scared to death of public toilets.  This is a problem because...
4. Alex starts preschool in a week.  What if he poops his pants at school?  This isn't a daycare like his last preschool.  They aren't going to be cool with accidents.  Other than worrying about poop, I'm stoked about the school.  I think he's going to do really well there with the structure and the discipline, not to mention that he'll be the most adorable thing to ever grace a school uniform.  (Need proof?  See exhibit A).
5. I've been stressing out about paint colors and decorating (which is a sign that things in my life are going SPECTACULARLY well.  I mean, what kind of a nincompoop gets the luxury of worrying about CURTAINS!?)  Anyway, if you're an HGTV junkie (and who isn't?) you can follow my decorating fun and give me your ideas over at the Naked Ledger, which I've inadvertently converted into a design blog.
6. At The Mom Street Journal, I've been writing about how I'm too lazy to make my kids a decent breakfast and how we're going to start Alex on an allowance when he turns four.
7. Our apartment is a WRECK.  It's like a bomb went off and covered every surface in a sticky combination of happy meal toys and dirty dishes.  Again, I lament, how am I going to keep The White House clean?!  I can tell you one thing, it ain't going to be BLOGGING itself clean, that's for sure.  I wish.
8. On a final note, this state, this horrifically ugly state in which we now find ourselves, I swear!  Ugly crap like THIS is only a twenty minute drive away.  I don't know how people can stand to live here.  What a ghetto!

Dave's company picnic

Thursday was the annual picnic for Dave's new firm.  After taking Alex to his swim lesson, I spent the entire morning making the requisite pesto salad, at the last minute deciding to also bring brownies and some mac 'n parm for the kids.  Dave's office closed at noon for the party and everyone headed up to Battle Ground Lake for the fun.

Everyone except Dave.

Just as he was shutting down his computer to leave, he got a call from a client who needed him to rework a settlement at the very last minute.  He called me to tell me he'd be home as soon as he could, but by two o'clock it was apparent that he might not be able to make it to the picnic at all.  Not knowing anyone at his office yet I was nervous, but I drove the kids and my eleven hundred pounds of pasta out to Battle Ground by myself. 

Everyone at his new firm is so nice that we ended up having a great time even without the Big Man, who finally arrived around 5:00, still wearing his tie.

No one had more fun than Alex, though.  How does that saying go?  "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach him to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime?"  With Alex, it's more like, give a little boy a toy gun and by the end of the day, he'll be squirting your boss in the face with it:

Fortunately, Dave still has a job.  Meeting everyone just gave me one more big reason to love Washington.  I took a ridiculous quantity of photos, mainly because Alex was having such a spectacular hair day.  This one was my favorite because it so accurately captures what he's like these days - a giddy blur:

Amazingly, Genoa didn't scream even once the whole time we were there!
 
The full Flickr set can be found here.

Last night on the way to IKEA

I told Dave to turn the wrong direction.  He started giving me a hard time about it, which is funny because it will never cease to amaze me that Dave finds his way home from work every day, so horrible is his sense of direction.  So Dave puffs up his chest and says to Alex, "Tell Mommy men are better at directions!" 

As we're making the u-turn to head back the correct way, Alex adds, "Listen to the mans!  I'm gooder at directions!"

Sure, little buddy.  Let's just hope you got the built-in GPS gene from your mother.

Happiness is...

Laid Off Dad wrote an interesting post the other day about whether or not parenthood makes people as happy as they think it will.  My answer was that it really doesn't matter either way:

Up until having kids, I probably would've questioned "the meaning of life." But there it is: procreation. Whether it's fun and makes us happy is kind of irrelevant. We're designed by our very biology to feel incomplete without it. I definitely had this overwhelming NOW I GET IT feeling after the birth of both of my kids.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to go through life without having children. My children seem to give everything else in my life meaning. Without them, my life would just be about me and I guess that seems shallow now that I have kids.

Of course I didn't really answer the question, so now I will.  Parenthood makes me immeasurably happy.  In fact, I can't of anything I'd rather be doing right now than taking care of my family (and blogging about it).  Since I've been such a crank lately, here's a list of everything that's currently making me giddy:

1. Alex has been watching old cartoon episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  He's enjoying them almost as much as my baby brother, Tommy, used to back when they were new.  Every time I hear theme song, to which I know every word, it makes me smile thinking of my little brother.  "Heroes in a half shell!  TURTLE POWER!"
2. Ever since Alex has taken over my place in bed, Dave has been letting me sleep in.  He gets up with Alex and I get up whenever Genoa wakes up.  Yesterday I slept in until after 9AM!
3. Genoa thinks farts are HILARIOUS.  She can be screaming bloody murder, but if anyone farts, she'll scrunch up her face (like it's stinky) and giggle.
4. Alex is having fun making up words lately, particularly words to describe weaponry.  Just now he told me that one of his Power Ranger swords is a "belt shonk" because "you pull it out from your belt."  Like, DUH, Mom.
5. Genoa continues to alert me when she's about to fill up her diaper.  She exclaims, "I POO!" at top volume and then proceeds to do exactly that.  I haven't tried to start potty training her yet, but it looks like it will be easier than I anticipated.
6. The inspection reports on The White House came back with just a few minor repairs, which it looks like the sellers will be making at their own expense.
7. We finally decided on the floors!
8. I could not be happier about living in Washington.  I miss my friends immensely, but so far I'm happy with the trade-offs.  The house we're buying here would easily cost over $2 million dollars in Mountain View and would never have been obtainable for us, not even in our wildest lottery-winning dreams.  I prefer living in a place where normal everyday people can have a decent lifestyle.  No wonder everyone here is so nice!
   
9. Speaking of friends, I've made two new ones who I really enjoy.  The added perk is that they both have boys who Alex LOVES.  He's always asking about his new friends and when he can have them over to play.  I can't wait to host play dates in our big back yard!
10. Dave really seems to like this new job.  He's happier at work than I've ever seen him before.  The cases are more interesting and he comes home with great stories.
11. We finally picked a preschool for our boy and I think he's going to be very happy there.

Suffering from a lack of compartMENTALization, emphasis on the MENTAL

I have so many things to do that I'm totally feeling overwhelmed.  Who knew decorating, of all things, could be the straw that broke my sanity's back?!  I'm tired from lack of sleep, cranky from constantly bickering with Dave (we have to talk out every. single. decision. for HOURS and HOURS since neither of us was born with the "easy going" gene) and the kids are driving me crazy.  How dare they want their mother to PAY ATTENTION TO THEM?!  Don't they know I'm BUSY!?!

Anyway, I have new posts up at both my other blogs.  At the Mom Street Journal you can read how I sometimes fantasize about having a job (and all the delicious child free day time hours that would entail). 

At the Naked Ledger, you can read about my flooring dilemma.  Tomorrow I'll be posting my total furniture budget there as well.

Also - I FINALLY got some photos up at Flickr.  For some reason, I just don't take that many pictures when I'm stressed.  In fact, I bet you could chart my mental health from those monthly figures alone.  When I'm happy, I take somewhere around 3000 photos a month (I know it's crazy, but true).  This month?  I'm at a whopping 211. 

Here is Genoa REALLY enjoying our most recent trip to Home Despot:

Alex doesn't mind quite so much, except I wish he would STOP THE WHINING and just wait until I'm done looking at stuff to beg to ride the lawnmowers.

Spoiler alert: Yahoo already ruined it for me

Here I was looking forward to watching the finale of So You Think You Can Dance this morning with Genoa and Yahoo had to go and put weepy Sabra on the front page.  Um, yay, I guess.

We bought the house, etc, etc, etc...

1) We bought the house.  We signed the paperwork yesterday and pending any weird stuff popping up in the inspections, we'll be happy homeowners by month's end.  If you wish to hear why I required not one, but TWO showers yesterday, feel free to read my post at the Mom Street Journal about getting our mortgage all sorted out after the bottom fell out of the secondary mortgage market.   Good times!

2) Genoa doesn't appear to be allergic to dairy (as evidenced by the photos below).  She also doesn't appear to want to SLEEP either.  I got a lot of basically the same response to my post about her not sleeping and here's my two cents: I COULD NOT AGREE MORE.  The child is working me.  It's no secret that I'm her bitch. 

If I wasn't so afraid that the neighbors would call the police, she'd have been left to her own devices MONTHS ago.  As it is, when she wakes up screaming, it sounds like someone is removing her fingernails one-by-one with a pair of rusty pliers and I can hear her all the way down the hall through two closed doors and the white noise of two oscillating fans plus the noisy bathroom vent.  She's ridiculously loud.

As soon as we're in the house, I'll be putting her in her crib at 8PM and refusing to go back into her room until the sun comes up.  It might take a couple of weeks, but the child will eventually figure out that NIGHT TIME IS FOR SLEEPING.  Until then, I'm co-sleeping with her on an air mattress on her bedroom floor, just so I can keep my eyes open long enough to function during the day.

3) I figured out why my boobs hurt so much! I got my period on Saturday.  Woo-hoo.  It's actually not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  After almost two years without it, I was expecting a horror movie and thanks to my hormone-laden IUD, it's really more of a comedy.  I can't complain.  I just know now to expect some discomfort nursing while I'm ovulating, is all.

First dairy in a week

Well received, I'd say.