Tag Archives: First Day of School

The not so Simple…

Posted on August 26, 2012 | 16 comments

Yesterday was a SuperMom day. I went to bed in a freshly painted bedroom. I had two happy children. MQD and I squabbled in the morning but as per usual the conversation we had following was productive. I felt good.

The feeling carried over to this morning. I had coffee with Amy. The kids were good. I bought a mitre box and started a new project. I am framing out the mirror in our bathroom before I paint.  I scheduled a post for this afternoon about how perfect the last day of the Summer with your family can be.

I considered posting about my bedroom makeover but I feared it would sound like I was blowing sunshine up my own ass to compensate. For what? I didn’t know. But I worry when my posts tend towards the “Look at me!! Everything is peachy!!” too awful much.

So if you read and make clucking sounds and think “Damn, that chick must be so full of shit. No one is that happy” then pour yourself a drink!! Kick back!! This post is for you.

Lucy will not stop crying. Neither can I. I cut a perfect rectangle of molding to frame out the mirror in our bathroom. But the glue won’t hold and neither will the tape that is supposed to hold it until it is glued. I painted around the perimeter of the mirror with the color I have chosen for the bathroom and I am not sure I don’t hate it.

I want to open a bottle of wine and drink the whole damn thing but I can’t because somehow I managed to totally forget to buy anything to pack for Emily’s lunch tomorrow. And before you think “what the hell, can’t MQD go to the store?” he already offered but I’m such a control freak I want to go myself. God forbid I don’t pick out my own cheese sticks.

I called my mother when the third piece of molding from the mirror fell in to the paint and what came out of my mouth between the sobbing was not  “oh damn my mirror project looks like shit.”

It’s more embarrassing than that.

I don’t want to be home all alone with Lucy.

I love her with all of my heart. I want to feed her and sleep beside her. I want to console her when she is cuttng teeth. I want to see her take her first steps.

But I don’t necessarily want to hear the song that fucking singing glow worm makes again. I am not really that in to playing with stacking cups. Or putting the tupperware back in the cabinet 87 times a day.

With Emily home I had a plan. Get up. Exercise. Do a project. Eat lunch. Pool. Shower. Dad’s home. Dinner. All the while I am with my big girl. The girl that makes me laugh like no other. It was like a sleepover all day, for weeks on end with my favorite pal.

And I’m a little bit scared of the new routine. Wake up. Make breakfast. Kiss Em and Mike goodbye. Nurse Lucy. Change Lucy. Rock Lucy. Play with Lucy. Repeat ad infinitum until the bus gets here and my sidekick returns.

Who’s going to laugh with me?

I can certainly take care of a baby by myself. I’m not afraid to do that. But I’m a little afraid I’ll be bored. To be honest I’m a lot afraid of being bored.

You can save the well meaning advice about mommy and me activities, all the friends I’ll make, volunteering in Emily’s classroom, the walks in the fall leaves, how quickly the time will pass. Or the snarky comments about how I’m getting exactly what I’d wished for. Because I know all of this.

But right now I’m going to pout. It’s the last day of Summer vacation. Since the second day of break I’ve joked that I didn’t know what I was going to do when Em went back to school.

Well the joke’s on me. Turns out I wasn’t kidding. I’m gonna miss the hell out of that kid.

In the time it took to write this on my phone I have stopped crying. So has Lucy. I don’t give a good god damn if the molding holds on the mirror. I sent MQD a text “Get pizza for dinner.” I am sitting here.

My house  looks like this.

I have a tendency towards being a Perfectionist in the Mom category. Pizza for dinner and a blown up house and a half-ass DIY project do not Perfection make. I am gonna call this Progress.  Nobody likes a Perfectionist.

Fuck it. MQD can go to the grocery store. This is Progress, right? No one likes a control freak. Just one glass of wine. One big glass.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting

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Simple

Posted on August 26, 2012 | 2 comments

Some days are easy. And Time stands still. And the hours last for days and you just roll around on the floor on the last day of summer vacation. You laugh and you laugh.

I am so proud of my big girl. But the days will stand still while she is gone. I am not the only one that will be missing her. Someone else will be waiting by the door, too,

I suspect.

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Posted in Parenting

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Ups and Downs

Posted on August 23, 2012 | 3 comments

It has been a long time since I sat in the driveway thinking “How in the fuck did I manage to do that?” Perhaps you remember the morning I put my car in the ditch.   Maybe you even remember that I couldn’t figure what to do while I waited for AAA because it was so cold outside.  My patient husband suggested I go INSIDE the house.

So, today while I sat in the driveway wondering how in the hell I managed to lock myself and two kids out of the house I kept thinking fuck it, we can just go inside and wait.   Yeah.  No, I can’t.

We cleaned out the car.  We organized my purse, suspiciously devoid of keys.  We took funny pictures.  And we waited for Dad.

Eventually the funny picture taking began to wear thin and I started to sweat.  I do not care so much for sweating unless that is an activity I have planned on.  I love to get sweaty.  Exercise and get sweaty.  Go to the beach and get sweaty.  Get it on and get sweaty.  Sweaty is an integral part of many activities I love.  Sit in the driveway and get sweaty.  It wasn’t doing it for me.

I started to get annoyed.  “Emily, today might be a shitty day.  I might swear a lot today.  A lot, like more than normal.  I need you to just hang tough.”

Eventually we got our keys.  We headed to the museum for the afternoon.  We ate ice cream BEFORE our lunch.  I was trying to rally.  Really, I was.  But I had showered.  I had on cute shoes.  And now I was fucking sweaty.

We ran our errands.  We checked the teacher lists at school.  Em got a haircut and the teacher she wanted. Things were looking up.  But it’s not easy for me to turn a day around.

So when the nice woman with the baby said “How old is she?” I could  feel myself start to sigh inside.  I can be aloof.  I know it is hard to imagine but I can.  “Just shy of seven months.” I thought I was making the “Don’t talk to me, I was fucking sweating today, god dammit!!” face.  But I must have misfired.

“He is, too.  And she is six months and she is eight.”  I have no idea how it happened.  Have you ever walked in to a bar with a royal hangover  in your flannel pants just to get your credit card that you left there the night before and forty minutes later you are smashed and getting hit on and it is the middle of the day?  No?  That was just me?

All of a sudden I was sitting on the floor with one, two, three other mothers and FOUR babies and it was … fun.  And one of them took my phone number!! And we were Facebook friends within twenty minutes of her leaving.  These people had ruined my bad mood.

And I don’t think I ever said anything about “my job.”  The job I don’t really have anymore.   I just said “Yeah, I will have tons of time when Em starts school next week.”  And I didn’t apologize.  Or explain that I am terribly busy Mod Podging my shoes (I am still so in love with my freakin’ shoes!!!!) and making homemade granola bars and becoming Queen of the PTA.  I just said “Yeah, here’s my number.”

And it felt good.

So, today kind of Sucked.  But then it turned Awesome.

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

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Monday’s Lesson

Posted on August 29, 2011 | 1 comment

Sunday afternoon I took Em aside and apologized for having a bit of meltdown.  There had been a lot of tears in our house and she deserved some kind of explanation.  “The worst part about being pregnant Em is that you are so tired all of the time.  And you know how when you are tired you kind of cry a lot?  About mostly nothing?  Thanks for cheering me up, kiddo, but it really isn’t your responsibility to deal with me being a big baby.”

She thoughtfully explained how when you’re tired your eyes just make tons of tears and it isn’t your fault.  “You’re not a big, fat baby, Mom, don’t even call yourself a big, fat baby.”  In the spirit of melodrama only she and I can muster she had a few tears in the corners of her eyes for emphasis as she said it the second time.

“Hold up,” I stopped her.  “I didn’t say I was a big, FAT , baby!!”

And we laughed. By then we were at the pool.  She jumped out of the backseat grabbing her towel and said “I’ll carry this stuff, Mom”  and she hugged me.  “No matter what we always have a good time.”

Monday morning I was standing in the bathroom feeling just like my own mother when I said “Please return that hairbrush when you are finished.  It is the only one I have left.”

It was Em’s first day of kindergarten but it could have just as easily been her first day of middle school.  In the last few months she likes to get completely dressed, including doing her own hair in her room with the door closed so that there can be a satisfying and momentous reveal of her full ensemble.  It is a moment I relish.

She took the hairbrush and went in to her room, closing the door.  “Getting ready” can take any where from five to thirty minutes so I reminded her that she had a bus to catch this morning.  As if it could possibly have slipped her mind.

I brushed my hair, put on make up, lamented the fact that my thighs rub together when I am pregnant, applied baby powder to said thighs.  Paused, reflected on whether or not I might be ready to throw up, brushed my teeth.  Put on my make up.  She flung her door open.

She looked cute.  And had on a new, to her, hair-do.  A low side ponytail.  “See this, mom?  How it is like… down here?  This is how you can make a side ponytail a little bit less… rock star, ya know?”

“Really? You know who wears her hair like that a lot?”  She smiled and just laughed… “Are you trying to say I am NOT a rock star AND I am a big, fat baby?” I said.

She giggled all the way down the stairs until I couldn’t see her.  But I know she was shaking her head.  “You ARE a little bit of a rock star, Mom.”

Exhibit A: The side ponytail of a woman that is NOT a big, fat baby but only a little bit of a rockstar.

Exhibit B: The side ponytail of MY baby, and no matter how she wears her hair, a TOTAL rock star.

1 Comment

Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

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How do you measure…

Posted on August 26, 2011 | 1 comment

“Rent” asks the question  how do you measure a year?  They suggest you measure it in “in daylight, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.”

That sounds satisfactory to me.  But how do you measure two years?  On August 27, 2009 Emily started preschool.  She was excited.  And maybe a little nervous.

This morning, she jumped out of the car triumphantly. Headed in for her “Last Day” party!  Lucky for me she did not roll her eyes when I said “Go stand by the sign so I can take your picture.” Almost two years ago to the day.

That’s how I’d measure two years.  Two years = two bricks had she been standing up straight.

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Posted in Family, Parenting

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My Big Girl

Posted on August 25, 2011 | 1 comment

“Good night, kiddo.  Sleep tight.  I love you, and I am so proud of you. ”  I kissed her on the forehead last night.

“Good night, Mom.  I love you, too.  And I am really proud of myself!”

I was going to let her sleep in a few extra minutes this morning.  But as I walked upstairs to her bedroom and saw her light on, I smiled.  There she was.  Dressed.  Hair done.  She was ready.

She was ready.  And off she went.

 

 

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Posted in Family, Parenting

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