Liam, Kindergarten 2010-11

Nate, Preschool 2010-11

“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!!”

(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.

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!

So the two big boys are now in school, as seen below on each of their orientation days - getting into the car for Liam’s, and man-handling Sam’s umbrella stroller for Nate’s.

In a statement that would undoubtedly warm the hearts of all overworked preschool teachers everywhere who do it for the simple reward of shaping and influencing young minds, Liam told us that he likes his new class better “because it has different toys”. He’ll actually tell you what he’s done that day if you ask him within the first 30 seconds of picking him up. After that, his standard response is, “Um, I don’t remember that.” I’ve resorted to turning it into a game and asking him to tell me one thing that happened in preschool that’s true, and one thing that’s NOT true, then letting me guess which is which. So I get a little information and at the same time, teach him to lie convincingly.

Nate, after helping to drop Liam off all last year, is simply happy to be able to now stay. Jill used to find him trying to hang up his coat and sit down at the activity tables. She’d help him back on with it and tell him that he’d get to go to Big Boy School next year. So now it’s next year, he’s the “Biiiig THREE!” (holding up three fingers), and he gets to stay. It’s his class this time, and he has his own hook. He brought home a little class photo, framed with popsicle sticks and generously glued-on pumpkin seeds. In it, he’s definitely the happiest kid in the picture, and he’s not even the one picking his nose.

And so begins a lifetime of calendar-based adherence to a repetitive daily schedule dictated by the clock and seeded with the occasional small block of cheese.

Welcome to society, boys!

Day One: Liam

Day Two: Nate

Photo by Jill

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.”