Sunday, February 28, 2010

Weekend update

Not the best picture, but it was dark and the person with our camera was drunk
C and I had an actual date! I wore high heels and he tucked his shirt in, that's how real it was. A friend of mine watched Eli so that C and I could go see Ron White perform. He was great, and now I've learned a really dirty word that I'm just waiting to use on someone. It's like the time I was 14 and learned the word "gash." Eli LOVED being "kid sit" (because "I'm not a baby!") and charmed her entire family. He also scammed pizza and his body weight in fresh oranges, California style.

Saturday we ran errands, which included the obligatory Target trip. This is what the kid wore, the whole time. Whenever anyone said "Look! It's Spiderman!" he responded with "I'm not Spiderman! I'm Eli! It's just a costume." There's no secret identity for this kid.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

I fully acknowledge that I am crazy when I'm pregnant. In fact, I should just publicly and loudly thank my husband for not having me committed as soon as the test came up positive. I'm a professional, and I'm pretty sure he'd have a case. The best part of my crazy is that usually I know how crazy I'm acting, while I'm doing it, and yet still cannot stop myself. I just continue to rant about "How dare you have the audacity to do three loads of laundry today!" and "I said 64! The heater goes no higher than 64!" I can be gushing about how life couldn't get any better, then a breeze hits and I'm ready to declare war. I can literally see the relief wash over his face when my crazy is directed on someone else.

With this in mind, I try to take advantage of the moments of clarity to assess whether I should be making any major life decisions. Usually the answer is no. As in, "No, maybe quitting my job and moving to a yurt in Colorado, next week, is not the best idea." I also have to question when I find myself getting more and more worked up. However, sometimes it turns out that there is a legitimate issue and the pregnancy crazy is making me just uncensored enough to deal with it. Daycare has started to fall into the second category. I've talked about daycare before and described some of our issues with it. I really tried to give them the benefit of the doubt though. It's close to us. E's making friends. It doesn't seem dangerous. It's fine. But that's the problem. It's okay. And I don't think I'm okay with just okay. I have enough guilt over how long he's at school to tolerate okay. Then it got a little weird.

For the last few weeks E's brought home these packets of worksheets, around 8 pages of "P"s to trace or "Circle the things that are brown." A little peeved, I tried hard to tell myself that it was fun! he loves this stuff! it's just a game! Yeah, until you're yelling at a 3 year old that he can't leave the table until his homework's done. Until you're staying up late Thursday night to finish it by Friday. Until you're lying to the teacher about how water spilled on it and you had to throw it away (only once, but still not my finest moment). Then today we got a packet with a note attached that said "Due Tomorrow." I have at most 3 hours a night with my kid, and now we have to spend an hour tracing the letter "C" and the numbers 1-12? I wonder what they do during school, since he never brings home any projects and his "portfolio" contained about 12 sheets of paper? But I admit, I can be a little high-strung and so we tried. Twenty minutes later C and I both found ourselves sternly and loudly telling E that he needed to stop acting silly and get his homework done. And that's when I remembered. I'm the mom. What's more, I think giving 3 year olds boring, repetitive homework is stupid. So we're not doing it. Crazy or not, I don't think NOT doing the homework is going to academically stunt him. Just tonight we've talked about archeologists, hypotheses, the legal system, and how to apologize and accept an apology. He's a smart kid. He's verbal, social, and curious. The kid's creative and funny. I'm not going to kill all that and his love of learning by forcing him to trace 47 "c"s. I think this was the last straw.

There have been other issues at the school. Turns out they've been transitioning him to another class without telling us. Kids have shown us some "questionable" items they claim to have found in the sensory box. More often than not there's some kind of major fight or meltdown happening with other kids when we pick him up. Going there has started to feel like work and it's solidly just okay. So we're not doing it anymore. Starting next week we're going to start looking at new daycares. I'm hoping to find a place that feels better and is closer to how we want E to spend his time. A place that is focused more on nurturing than on "Portfolios." A place that feels more genuine. A place where the classrooms feel welcoming and accepting, rather than chaotic and overwhelming. I have to believe it's out there somewhere. If it's not, we'll have to look at other options. But I'm not going to settle for okay and I don't think that feeling that way makes me crazy or a snob. Luckily I've got the pregnancy crazy to give me the guts to remember that.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

E-Speak

E's always been an especially verbal kid. When he was about 4 months old and other babies were cooing and making sweet little baby sounds, my son emitted nothing but these feral-sounding gutteral growls. I have no idea what his first word was, because once he started talking, he never stopped. And he's always spoken "older" than kids his age. I remember when he was about 2 and his teachers laughed because he would say "I'm feeling very frustrated!" (Total shrink's kid, by the way. Pray for him.) Having a talker is usually a blessing, and I'm grateful that he's been able to tell me what he wants and how he's feeling, even though it sometimes gets us in trouble. Like the time we got the "Incident Report," generally reserved for acts of violence that result in blood or bodily injury, because E, totally appropriately and with the right emphasis, yelled "SON OF A BITCH!" during school. Yeah, totally threw his dad under the bus for that one. I would NEVER say such a thing. I was just glad that's all he said.

So yeah, the kid can talk. And for the last year or so he's also been adding words to his vocabulary that he felt were necessary and missing. I want to keep a record of these, because I think that at some point they will A) make me swoon at the precious-ness or B) become even more powerful than the picture I have of him wearing a firetruck shirt, snowboots, and no pants. So here's some of what he's come up with, with his definition. I'll add to it as I can remember them or he comes up with more.

Schoolie-When you feel like you have to poop, but nothing comes out but a fart (an SBD)

Perkin-Like camping, but you're inside (sleeping in a sleeping bag inside)

Panoonie-Mean words

Fourth Head-Forehead. You can't tell him otherwise, and sometimes he'll talk about Fifth Heads.

Tortilla-Diarrhea (gross, I know) It took a long time, longer than it should have, to figure out why E kept saying he had tortilla in his pants. This one's held out for over a year now.

Monday, February 8, 2010

What we've been up to


Over the last week the boys were busy becoming real estate tycoonsI went shopping and also received a package from a very excited Grandma (look, PINK!)
And my brother and sister-in-law came to visit for the Superbowl.

It's been a blast! To top it all off, E has been a pure angel. He was a model 3 year old all day Saturday, then played quietly in his bed until 10:00 am (that's right, double digits!) on Sunday. I'm thinking he wants something, but if it keeps going like this I'll buy him whatever he wants. Ten o'clock! In the morning!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Yoga (well, it started out as yoga-related, then went on a tangent)

In a continued effort to reduce The Crazy, and also to give Bugg a little more attention, I signed up for a weekly prenatal yoga class. I love yoga and had been missing it. I was also hoping that my body would remember and loosen up a bit. Last week was our first session and although I was excited to be around other preggos, I found it hard to transition from prison to life. I was a little aloof to say the least. It's something that I struggle with a lot, and more so the more guarded I get at work.

All day I dodge questions about how many months I am, what I'm having, when I'm due, whether I have other kids, if my feet hurt, the list goes on and on. It's important to me to keep this part of my life as protected as possible, and I as a rule don't discuss my family with inmates. It gets a little harder when staff don't understand that, but so far it's been okay. All that to say that I felt a little awkward at yoga, like the weird girl in the corner who wasn't reveling in the glory of pregnancy.

This week was a lot better. I even burst into laughter during a pretty simple pose because my brain couldn't make it work. So now I'm thinking that this class is going to have an added bonus in that it may help me to function like a normal (or normal-ish) human being.

The yoga itself is amazing. I'm always surprised how much better I feel when I didn't even know I felt bad. My legs are starting to hurt more at the end of the day and yoga's doing wonders for releasing some of that tension. I leave feeling more balanced, both physically and emotionally. I also love that there's a couple hours a week where it's just me and my daughter, in a room full of women, celebrating being women. Girl power all the way.