So we stopped just short of actually killing Santa on this year’s card. Happy Holidays!

(To be visited by the Cards of Christmas Past, click here and here).

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Liam, Kindergarten 2010-11

Nate, Preschool 2010-11

I think you move me.

ISO Bedtime.

“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!

(Much love and admiration to Bill for continuing to unwaveringly document our life, from behind a gaggle of lenses and straps, despite my clucking and occasional eye-rolling. You were right. I will thank-you one day for these. Thank-you.)

Liam has always freaked me out a little. I think most of that feeling stemmed from him being our first baby and us not knowing exactly what to expect…us not knowing at all what to expect. You know in general. Generally, there will be dirty diapers and cracked nipples. Generally, there will be cooing and 4:00 a.m. feedings that leave you clawing for the magical, reanimating coffee pot at 7:00 a.m. Generally, you will feel a crushing love for this wrinkly little person who just kicked the leg out from under the card table holding your half-done, jigsaw puzzle life. But, when it came to specific milestones, every article or book I ever read ended with the equivalent of a condescending pat on the head. ”Don’t worry, anxious, obsessive Mommy! All children develop and learn differently and at their own speed!” Also, true, yet not particularly helpful or comforting. Especially when you’re watching your non-walking 18-month-old from under knitted brow on tilted head tell you the letters of the alphabet and the sound each makes.

When Liam turned 18 months old, he had only been walking for two weeks. Prior to that, he would scoot himself around on the floor sideways in a half crawl, half monkey-knuckle-walk. We called it crabbing. Proper motivation for walking erect arrived in the form of baby-Nate when Liam was 17 1/2 months old. He decided he’d better bring it if he was going to properly battle the new guy. The first time Liam strung together multiple footfalls was in my hospital recovery room when Bill brought him to meet his baby brother. I excused myself to pee for the 30th time that day, and Liam chose that moment to take ten steps across the antiseptic floor. I heard the muffled cheers from my cousin, Jessica, and Bill through the bathroom door.

The potty-training milestone also vexed us. Liam started preschool at the end of October 2008, a few days after his fourth birthday, because we were still trying to get him to consistently use the potty. I know. At the parent-teacher conference a few months later, his teacher laughed and remarked that he had an amazing memory. She had been making up a song one day about the stages of life of a butterfly. When she taught it to the class in the following weeks, she inadvertantly skipped a part. Liam rocketed his little hand up. ”You forgot the part about the chrysalis, Mrs. Dent!” And then he regurgitated the two-week old line from the song that he had heard once in passing. 

And then, he was reading. Not because we consciously taught him to read, but just because he could. We’d be playing Xbox and he’d casually ask, “Why does that say ’press A to continue’?”. “Can you read that, buddy!?” We weren’t sure if he was memorizing or actually reading. He’d laugh and refuse to throw us any more word crumbs until he was good and ready. His Pre-K teacher in 2009 sent home with him classroom books that had interested him in school. She attached pink post-it note explanations like, ”Liam spent all of his free time reading these today. I thought he might want to borrow them.”

When a thank-you card came in the mail from that same teacher at the end of the year, I told Liam it was addressed to him, so he should read it. And, he did. All except the word, ‘Delphinium.’ He resisted reading the card for me on video because he stumbled over that one word and he didn’t want his mistake to be recorded. He made me remind him what the word was so that he could read ALL of the words.    

Liam’s first day of kindergarten is tomorrow. And, none of this was to blarg, blarg, blarg, my-child-is-so-special blarg!!! Liam certainly isn’t the first kid in the world to enter kindergarten reading. But, I do think he’s a bit ahead of the curve. While I’m wildly proud of him, he also worries me. I’m worried because his teachers might not see it and he might get bored. I’m worried because, in his kindergarten orientation pack, the summer activities they asked us to focus on were learning the numbers from one to ten and recognizing the difference between upper case and lower case letters. I’m worried that he’s going to think it’s MUCH more challenging and fun to find ways to piss off his teacher and torture his classmates.

My worry is diluted by the fact that Liam is not worried at all! Our anxious, high-strung little boy is very ‘meh’ and seems bored by all the hoo-ha surrounding kindergarten. I would prefer to see a little more enthusiasm, but I’ll take cool detachment over debilitating fear any day. It occurs to me only now, though, that what I might be reading as ‘meh,’ ‘bored,’ and ‘detached’ is actually confidence. He might be further ahead of the curve than I thought.

We’ll be sure to follow up with pictures and reports of the first day, especially given that this is such a big milestone and we have our own personal Dadarazzi to document it for us.