“Mum-Mum! There are no seat buckles on my bus!”

Why is that, exactly? People FREAK OUT about kids’ safety in automobiles…if a baby’s car seat isn’t perfectly level, if you migrate from a five-point-harness to a belt-positioning-booster a month or a pound before the recommended time, or a hundred other nuanced issues regarding how you strap your kid down in the car. But, start kindergarten and board a giant, yellow, tin can driven by a stranger, add 30 of your closest friends, and all of a sudden it’s Thunderdome on your 7:30 a.m. jaunt to school.

Here is Liam’s run-skip exit off of the bus and into his Primary School on the first day. Ours was not one of the weepy on the first day of kindergarten. He was revved up and vibrating with excitement and energy, and, amazingly, it has remained so for two plus months!

Nate and Sam weren’t quite sure what to do with their hours and hours of free time each day. They were like the oppressed citizens of a country whose ruthless, yet familiar and therefore reassuring, dictator had been overthrown. Without Czar Liam making them dance, they wandered the house and yard aimlessly for two or three days, experienced civil unrest and in-fighting, but finally found their feet by the end of the week. Sam was especially discombobulated when Nate started his two-and-a-half hour, five-day, pre-K classes in the following weeks. He was without an older brother for the first time in his life. And, hey! Did you know that Sam is really REALLY demanding of my time when he is without an older brother for the first time in his life?

“Mum-Mum…watch I do! Watch I do! MUM-MUM! Watch dis! MUUUUUMM-MUUUUUUMMMMM! You turn your face back dis way!”

He. is. relentless.

Next year he’ll begin preschool and for the first time in nearly seven years I will have two and a half hours a day where I can do whatever I want, without interruption! But won’t you be sad that your baby is in preschool? NO! HELL, NO! I don’t like to sound cold-hearted or unsentimental, but I honestly don’t get all of the “my baby’s growing up!” moaning that people do. Yes. Exactly. That’s what’s supposed to happen if you’re lucky. I’m glad! I’m happy! Grow, explore, think, evolve, move up, move on, be fearless, find your fire! I can’t wait to see what they do, who they love, what makes them laugh. I’ll be a tenacious wing-mom for as long as they want, but my proudest moment will be when they shrug away from me.

“Hey, Mum! Turn your face this way and watch what I do!!”

I’m a soccer Mom. I keep expecting a minivan to come screaming down our block, its stereo’s bass thumping out a Celine Dion ballad, carrying a troupe of sensibly-shod Moms who kidnap and haze me during a crazy night fueled by high-waisted, tapered jeans, bad rom-coms, and a bottomless glass of white zinfandel! WOOT!

I’m drying off from my weekly shower. The big boys are still quietly conquering Xbox Lego Batman in the TV room, and Sam has stayed put in the toy room, per my implicit instructions. I can hear him talking to himself, making vrooooming engine noises and psshhhhhhhhhhh crashing noises as he creates magnificent wrecks on the sunny carpet.

I pad into our bedroom, dress, sit at my vanity, and begin sectioning my hair to dry it. I hear the metal of the baby gate strain and click against its frame as Sam presses himself, belly first, into it.

“Muuuuuuuuum-Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!”

“Hey Sam!”

“I haf-ta poop!”

“Awesome! Let’s get to the potty!”

I jump up and prepare to give him a lights-n-sirens escort to the bathroom.

I thought Sam was going to be our gifted and talented student when it came to potty-training, but what began as a strong, promising stream of a start a year ago, has morphed into a big bait-n-switch joke. If Sam is wearing anything on his lower body, he treats it like a diaper. It makes no difference if that thing is absorbent or not…meant to hold human waste, or not. He is just as happy to make a poop sling out of his big-boy underpants as he is his Pull-Ups, as he is his diaper. I’ve gone so far as to run some baby PSYOPS, trying to make him empathize with Woody and Buzz, who have the unfortunate housing assignment on the back of Sam’s underpants. Oh, how SAD Woody and Buzz would be if you peed or pooped on them! Poor Woody and Buzz! Sam cares not a lick for the comfort or sanitary state of Woody and Buzz.

However, if we leave him pantsless, that seems to serve as an effective cue to use the potty when he has to go. It’s not very practical for anywhere but in the house and it’s a bit awkward if he runs to the door and gives the UPS dude the glass-pressed weenie treatment, but it’s the best we have right now.

When I reach Sam at the gate, there is no urgency about him. No pigeon-toed dancing around…no hand cupped behind his bum. And the devil is looking at me through his crystal blue eyes.

“I have a poop,” he repeats.

“You HAVE a poop or you HAVE TO poop?” I ask for clarification, because, big difference. Absent is the trademark Michelin-plant-ablaze smell that accompanies Sam’s offerings, so I’m not worried.

He holds out his hand to me and I can see a plastic, toy hamburger that came with a play food set that the boys got for Christmas one year peeking out from between his fingers. I play along.

“Oh! Is that your poop?” I hold out my hand. He grins, pleased that I’m playing with him, and dumps the hamburger into my palm. And the plastic hamburger is unnaturally warm. And sticky. And round instead of flat. And HOLY GOD!

I cannot convey in words how strong the human reflex is to get rid of a handful of warm feces. Somehow, I don’t scream or drop it or throw it or throw up. I grab Sam’s non-shitted-up hand with my non-shitted-up hand and drag him, lights-n-sirens, to the bathroom.

“DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!!! JESUS, SAM!!!”

We scrub our hands until they are shiny-pink and soft, me hunched over him from behind at the sink, controlling his hands like a puppeteer with OCD who just found her little marionette showering in a truck-stop urinal. Him, looking up at me, nodding solemnly as I describe the evils of playing with poo.

Then, I put a diaper on Sam and put him back in the toy room…and I take another shower.

This year, I took the boys out, and let them shop for their own Mother’s Day presents for Jill. This resulted in her receiving the following:

• 1 Battle Force Strike Team (3 Pack) - Poseable Figures and Weapons
• 1 Pack Glitter Girl Rings (9 Styles)
• 1 Pack Velvet Art (with 5 colored pens)
• 1 Rubber Snake
• 1 Monster Truck
• 1 Glitter Girl Nail Set
• 1 Spider Man Light-up Yo-Yo
• 1 Neon Folder (to hold boys’ artwork)
• 1 Birthday Card with subsequent Mother’s Day crayon modifications
• 1 Whoopee Cushion

In our house, the start of the school year also means the start of the plague-of-the-month club. And, as the boys are taught to do in preschool, they share! With everyone! After a week of preschool, Liam came home and collapsed onto the couch with his blanket and half-mast eyes. Bean’s eyes are his tell when he’s sick, puffy with smoky half-moons underneath.

“I’m so sleepy, Mum-Mum.”

He drifted off and awoke an hour later in a sobbing rage, furious at the fever that had snuck up on him. I dosed him with Tylenol and wrestled his fiery little body into bed, rubbing his ears until he gave in to sleep again. He was out of school the next day. Although the high fever from the night before was gone, he off-handedly complained that his cheek hurt. I immediately made an appointment with the doctor because I know that that little comment…the one I used to ignore and not act on?…that means I have about 12 hours to get amoxicillin into him before he has a full-on sinus and ear infection. The doctor confirmed as much and faxed in a prescription to the Giant Eagle pharmacy.

For not feeling well, Liam was being unusually agreeable to being poked and prodded and driven all over town. We waited at the Giant Eagle pharmacy. Waited and waited…and, waited.

“Well, sometimes the faxes take a while to come in.”

“But, it would have been 30 minutes ago that he faxed it…”

“Maybe you should call and have them talk to us.”

Liam and I made our way to the front of the store so that my phone could get a signal and parked ourselves next to a giant pyramid of cases of bottled water. The front office was nice the first time I called. Sure! We’ll call that right in for you! Thanks! I’m at Giant Eagle on 40! OK! No problem! Thanks! No, thank you! 15 minutes later, nothin’. Back to the plastic water mountain. Now, the front office was irritated with me.

“Ma’am, I called it in 10 minutes ago and spoke with Elvin.”

“Lady, they do not have the prescription and there is no one named Elvin!”

“Well, I called it in to Giant on route 40 and…”

In lieu of screaming into my phone in the middle of the grocery store, I hissed through my gritted teeth at the doctor’s receptionist.

“I’m at GIANT EAGLE…not, GIANT!”

Liam licked the plastic around a case of water, daring me to do anything about it.

“Oh! Well that would be the problem, wouldn’t it!”

“That would be one of the problems.”

So, after an hour of faxing and calling our amoxicillin prescription in to the wrong pharmacy, she finally got it right. We wander back to the pharmacy and waited in line. Again.

Liam kept his shit together fairly well, especially given how long we’d had to wait and that he was sick. He leaned into me, hugging an arm around my thigh for support. I combed my fingers through his thick, glossy hair, marveling that mine used to be that exact color before it got darker…and lighter with all the gray. He popped his thumb into his mouth, got quiet, and began studying the faces around us.

I immediately went on high alert because, while Liam would never say anything intentionally mean spirited or hurtful to a stranger, he sometimes loudly questions things he doesn’t understand or makes loud comments about a person’s appearance. I’ve explained that that can hurt someone’s feelings, even though he wouldn’t mean to and that it would be better to save those kinds of questions until we’re alone.

I followed his gaze, trying to guess what he might be thinking and desperately seeking some sort of distraction. Just as I was about to start up a quiet game of ‘I spy,’ I saw his eyes settle on two men about ten feet from us. They were middle-aged and stylish. They stood hip to designer hip at the counter, one man rubbing the other’s back in comfort, as he seemed to be feeling under the weather. Just then, Liam’s thumb was pushed out of his mouth by an urgent question. His face tilted up to mine in concern and I braced, thinking more about how I would apologize to the men, rather than how I would answer his question.

With a nod to the gay couple in front of us my little master of the obvious, minus volume control said, “Mum-Mum! Why hasn’t that man’s hair come in yet?”

Well done, Liam! Not the observation I was expecting, yet still mortifying!

My Dad had a sign in his home office when I was growing up that said, “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.” I always liked it because it seemed like it applied to anything, not just to his sales career. Right now for us, it applies to preschools. (Note to preschools in the greater Frederick area: YOU ARE NOT 4-YEAR INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING! Therefore, you should not carry a comparable price tag. My kid is not going to learn to levitate or be able to write a kick-ass critical essay of Finnegans Wake when you’re done with him! You play with blocks with a bunch of four-year-olds. Get over yourselves.) 

With the ‘pick two’ mantra firmly in place, Bill and I let go of some of the restrictions we had placed on choosing a school and chose one that was ’good enough.’ We moved quickly once we made that decision and chose a school, visited, enrolled Liam, and got his first day under his belt all within three or four days.

Today was that first day. Sam, Nate, Liam, and I all held hands while we lumbered awkwardly across the parking lot to Liam’s school. There were kids and parents crammed into every nook of the main hallway and I wasn’t sure which classroom was Liam’s. After spinning in a circle for a minute, one of the parents helped us find our way, and then Liam was just gone…swept up by Mrs. Dent and her calm, reassuring nature and her impossibly cheery, yellow room where I could see a dozen other three and four-year-olds bumping around, falling into their little chairs. Mrs. Dent whisked Liam inside, showed him the hook on the wall with L-i-a-m spelled out above it for his jacket and new Batman backpack. (The first backpack that caught his eye was this one. I steered him away from it, thinking a solid ass-kicking by his new little buddies was not the best way to begin his school career.) 

Everything happened so quickly and amidst so much confusion, there was no time for tears, tantrums, or for his face to split in half whilst hurling fireballs from his chubby little fists at my back as I left. When we picked him up two and a half hours later, Mrs. Dent called out to me that Liam had ‘done great.’ But, as we walked back to the car, he tugged defiantly on my hand. “No Mum-Mum! Stop! Walk when *I* say!” And, then in the car, on our way to a celebratory lap through the Chik-Fil-A drive through for an ice cream cone, he wouldn’t talk about his day. He’d only give up that they had had a snack of donuts balls and juice…and that somebody had eaten the last one. Probably it was his way of regaining some contol over his little world that had been in Mrs. Dent’s control for the last few hours. 

Tonight when I tucked him in, I asked him again about his first day at school. He was more chatty this time, realizing that I longed to hear him string together words into sentences and would stay for as long as he felt like talking. 

“Are you excited to go back to school, Bean?”

“When do I go back?”

“Monday…same day Daddy goes back to work.”

“Yes. I excited. Do you stay with me, Mum-Mum?”

“No…remember, we said that I had to come home so that Sam could have his nap, but that when Sam woke up, we’d be back to pick you up?”

“Yes…” 

“What did you do today? Did you make any new friends?”

*a string of jabbering that I can’t quite follow…something about a music cd, sitting on a circle, coloring some paper orange and cutting circles instead of squares, and story time about a car* Then, “”I pwayed wif bwoks and I pwayed wif a truck. ‘Nother guy pwayed wif truck too.”

“Oh yeah? You both had a truck?”

“Yes. Two trucks…”

“What was the other boy’s name?”

“Ummm…I don’t know. He had some brown hair…and some black hair…and a ponytail. Mum-mum, I think he’s a girl.”