we have a sad little trend happening here in the wreke house: kids terrified that their mom (read: moi) is going to die.
my kids have been through an emotional mill. they remember a time when i went to the emergency room and didn’t emerge for a few days. they visited and saw a mom who was covered, head to toe, in purple blotches, with needles in her arms. (the perfect visual: my BFF jaxx came in, took one look at me, and announced: you look like a crack whore.) then, a day after i was released, i was back in the hospital for over a week. my recovery from ITP took months (and i’m still in remission — yay, me!), and during that time, i learned how each handles this stress.
while i was in the hospital, BC (ever her mother’s daughter) apparently cried every single day at school. her first grade teachers and the guidance counselor were absolutely amazing — they took her under their wings, they gave her TLC, and they let her know that they were in her corner. once i came home, she settled down a bit.
jools, on the other hand, a sturdy almost-three-year old at the time, was fine at school. once i returned from the hospital, though, he wanted to be with me at all times. at night, he didn’t want to go to bed for fear i would not be there in the morning.
the hardest thing about being a parent with a serious illness may very well be coping with, and for, your children. that peaceful, calm moment of childhood is ripped away from your children suddenly; and in it’s stead lies a terrifying potential reality of extreme loss. it never really leaves, either: my mother’s first bout with breast cancer happened when i was 15. she’s always very up-front with me about things, and yet, i still get nervous every time she goes to a doctor. and i’m a grown-up.
it stands to reason, then, that every time something seriously medical is on the horizon, my kids prepare for the worst. and, in short, i have to get my gallbladder out. and suddenly, everyone is afraid. BC isn’t sleeping; her upset makes her coughing so much worse. jools is randomly noting things, such as: “when you die, i want to give you my star (that he made in his kindergarten class earlier in the week.)” it is enough to make me wonder whether they know something i do not.
but, to paraphrase mark twain, the rumors of my impending death are greatly exaggerated.
sure, any operation is a little riskier for us CVID folks, as any infection is not something we need. but this is my gallbladder. it’s not brain surgery. it will go well; i’m not too terribly concerned. but it doesn’t matter how many times i tell my kids that so many of their loved ones have had this very same operation. girlfriend and mr. man are on the alert.
i have to get past my own angst here and do whatever i can to make them feel more comfortable. short of constantly reassuring them, though, i don’t know what else to do.
it crushes me to know that i am the reason they’re so distressed.
it’s after midnight. and for over a week now, girlfriend awakes in this time, starts barking and coughing her head off, and generally gets hysterical. with her coughing history, we are never sure whether it’s allergies, reflux, an actual infection, a virus, or none of the above. a good friend’s twins also has this and was told it’s viral, which of course means we just have to suck it up and deal.
but it’s hard to suck it up and deal when no one is getting any sleep around here.
girlfriend already missed two days of school last week because she felt so incredibly awful. of course, this week is the week that her class is in mandated swim lessons. today, she told me she could barely make it through the laps she was required to swim; it was difficult to breathe. between the nasonex, albuterol, allegra (interspersed at times with benedryl, which gave her scary dreams last night when she was sleeping), and the z-pack, i just don’t know what the hell to do.
girlfriend gets hysterical because she knows she’s waking everyone up. getting hysterical, as we all know, doesn’t help. no one is mad at her because she’s coughing. we people of the adult variety may seem a little stiff and gruff at this hour only because we, too, are feeling the effects of negligible sleep; but no one is mad at the girl. we want to help her. we just feel completely helpless at the moment.
my magic wand is broken at the moment, so i can’t seem to wave it and make things all better. it just so figures it would fail me at this moment.
plenty has been written about what happened on 9/11. people especially focus on what happened in NYC, as the sheer number of lives and the immense destruction of the twin towers is just overwhelming. but on this anniversary of one of the worst days we have ever known, i thought i’d share a glimpse of what life was like for a mom and her small child directly in the flight path toward the pentagon and DC. it’s something i perpetually need to exorcise.
tuesday morning, 9/11/01, started like any other tuesday. most tuesdays, BC, then almost 3, stayed home from her preschool in BS’s office building. i had negotiated that in my last job — tuesdays were my mommy and me days, and i ended up leaving that last job when my then-boss, a seriously unhappy person who had inherited me from my previous angel-of-a-boss, just didn’t like that i didn’t sit at my desk 80 hours/week.
anyway, like all tuesdays, we were off to our co-op at a local community center. BS had a meeting way up in Maryland that day, so he wasn’t going to be able to take BC in to school, anyway, so it was just as well she was home with me. i did what i always did at about 8:50 am — i plopped her on the couch, turned on the Today Show, and started to put on her shoes and socks. only that day, i was instantly transfixed by one of the Twin Towers on fire. my aunt told me once that she occasionally helped a friend in the office downtown. i wondered immediately if she was there. i couldn’t move, though. just couldn’t. then, as i finally started to dial the phone, i saw, live on TV, a second plane. my heart immediately flipped into my throat: where’s my aunt?
i looked down at BC, who was messing about with something on the couch. oh my G-d, she musn’t see this, i thought. quickly, i clicked the TV off and ran back to the phone to call my aunt. no one was answering the phone. okay, okay, okay. don’t panic. don’t panic. i decided normalcy should be the order of the day. i quickly put BC’s shoes on, packed her into the car, and went off to the community center.
once we arrived, i saw moms huddled around a small television set. BC was the oldest in the co-op group (and has always been spookily emotionally astute), so i prayed she would get busy in the dress-up corner. but just as we seemed to be finally calming ourselves down, we heard the worst: a plane had hit the pentagon. as in, the building just down the road apiece.
and to add ridiculous insult to injury, the rumors began to fly that there was another plane in the air; that a plane had hit rosslyn, the state department, the Capitol; that the water was going to be contaminated. and there we were, right in the middle of the national airport and dulles airport flight paths. everyone began to sob. mama, BC asked, why are all the mommies sad?
sucking in all the air i could, i replied: they’re just feeling very sad today, sweetheart. how on earth do you tell a 2.5 year old girl that the world is imploding all around and nothing feels safe? you can’t. you’re a parent: your job is to maintain their world of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, happy cartoons, and teddy bears. you keep a straight face, a stiff upper lip, locked knees, and a stout heart. accepting my answer, she toddled back to the other little kids, who were pretty much oblivious in that way that only toddlers can be.
this left me free to quietly freak out. i tried to call BS’s cell phone. first, he didn’t answer. then, the lines were all beeping dementedly. decision time, and its all down to me.
i decided to take my baby girl home.
once we arrived home, i declared it an ALL BARNEY DAY! little girl could not. believe. her. luck. i stacked the videos of the VJE (Vile Jurassic Entity) in our family room and prepared to play them, one by one. and then, if we ran out, i’d play them all again. she was only under three — at that age, they love to watch things repeatedly.
i then moved out to the sun room. i set the TV up to the news and began to field the calls, first from my mother (my aunt — her sister — was later found at her significant other’s apartment, safe and sound. but at that point, neither of us could find her, and we scared each other), then from my mother in law, then from a local friend who told me that i needed to fill up my bathtub in case they attacked the water company. (i dutifully filled up the bathtub, then locked the door so that little BC didn’t toddle in and drown.) no, i had no idea where my husband was. no, i didn’t know whether the planes were continuing to fall here, but i had heard they might. as we live in the flight path, i listened for any sounds of planes overhead; all i heard was an eerie silence.
i continued to watch the TV. i watched as my town’s firefighters, police, etc, swarmed at the pentagon, the first on the scene as it happened. i hoped that my husband would come home, and soon. (he didn’t come home for hours: he had volunteered to drive three other people home, a drive on panic-riddled roads literally to the other side of maryland, then back again to virginia.) i prayed the carnage would end.
i was grateful that BC was home with me that day. on any other day, she would have been downtown. she would have been stranded, as BS was not at the office, left with the other children, children who had no food delivered to their daycare/preschool because the federal building was shutting things down due to the emergency. (the parents in the building banded together, bought all the pizza they could from the cafeteria, and brought it to the children.) with traffic snarled all around the city, i do not actually know how i would have gotten to her. i made a mental note to call my girlfriend, who worked with BS: should this ever happen again, please, please… take my child wherever you go.
and i sat, all alone, panic-striken, frozen, terrified i would jump out of my skin. but then, i’d see this little girl, her little blondey-boop-a-doop pony tail bopping around to there are seven days in the week. i had to keep her wrapped in cotton wool. there would be time later to talk about the truth (in her case, when she was eight), but for now, i had to be the strongest, most dependable mom on planet earth.
i tried my best; i really, really did. and i don’t think i have ever been so close to a nervous breakdown in my entire life. it took hours for BS to come home, and he told me how he had driven past the pentagon mere moments before the plane hit. later, i would learn that the wife of a colleague of mine was on that plane. later, i would volunteer my yard to house one of the 184 trees in my county planted to memorialize the Pentagon victims. later, i would drive by the burnt-out Pentagon and catch my breath; later still, i would drive by the Pentagon and have to catch my breath again when i saw the incredible rebuilding progress.
it would take me years before i stopped looking up at the sky, wondering whether the plane would stay suspended in the air or whether it would fall on my home, ending everthing in an instant. it would take me years before i would feel comfortable sending my children back to school in a federal building, especially one so close to the Capitol. it would take me years before i would get used to seeing SWAT teams occasionally atop places like the Dept of Justice or FBI (mercifully, no longer) or occasional armed army guys in the Metro. it would take me years to get used to concrete barricades around my children’s playgrounds; it would take longer still for me to grasp the contingency plans we’d have to make in case something threatened the FBI building catty-corner to the playground –things like shrapnel, pieces of building falling into the place where kids on slides might be. it would take me years before i felt okay living so close to the Nation’s Capitol.
it would take me years before i would feel safe and sound.
that tear in my eye isn’t because my car currently smells like the sour milk sea (thanks to jools’ spilling an entire bottle of nestle quik nearly two weeks ago). it’s not because my poor BS is suffering from a horrible sore throat (which does sadden me, of course, to a point.) nope.
kindergarten starts today.
my little boy is starting kindergarten. he was initially skeptical of the event, belligerently fighting against any attempts to introduce him to the place. but one of the silver linings of last week’s vacation misadventure was the fact that we returned home in time for the school’s meet your teacher event. jools complained at first bitterly about having to attend this; but with some coaxing from BC (school is SO FUN! she cooed to her brother. boy, i owe her big time), he went.
at first, mister man was not interested in his lovely teacher or teaching assistant. we walked around the room, admiring the displays, finding the little tiny bathroom, and picking up important mountains of paperwork. BC then became antsy to meet her teacher, so i left jools and BS in kindergarten, hoping for the best.
when i returned, the boys were sitting in the reading corner. jools doesn’t read yet, but he loves books. and when he saw an entire collection of early reader I Spy books in the reading nook, well, love comes to everyone, you know? the boy would. not. leave. in fact, we closed the place.
i LIKE kindergarten, the boy announced. when does school start???
[insert hallelujah chorus here.]
for me, while this means both kids are in school together, it also means that i am now a full-time, stay at home mom. i have to go full-tilt in homework land. i’ll probably be volunteering a bit more. and i have those kids otherwise, 24/7. i’ll need to hone my skills in time management, project management, people management. and the mom mobile, which currently smells foul, will probably smell even worse after all sorts of things, edible or otherwise, have been dropped, forgotten, or left for dead on the floor.
i’m excited. i’m nervous. i’m thinking about ear plugs.
i suspect the TV and the computer will need to be regulated a bit more now. i suspect the two kids who fight over air will fight that. much. more. i wonder when i’ll resort to charts for keeping track of everything. it wasn’t where i saw myself 10 years ago, but it’s my reality now, a reality i know some might actually give their eye-teeth for. (note to self: must look up the word eye-teeth before hellboy decides to attempt to somehow develop a new, realistic concept of the term on his own, with potentially violent — or vile — results.) i’m so used to having only one kid 24/7 at a time. now, it’s time to do the two-kid shuffle. if my mom worked and juggled three kids, surely i can hack two, right?
i just hope i remember to stop, take a breath sometimes, and enjoy it.
but part two of the salvage-the-doomed-disney-vacation-debacle is a little happier than part one is. mostly.
we decided to go downee oshun hon. (translated for those of you who can’t talk like a baltimoron, we went to ocean city, md.) we had only been to ocean city once before, in a post-baby-birth haze that took us to a giant hotel with an ice skating rink (sans zamboni) inside of it. i don’t remember a lot of it (jools was maybe four months old, so my eyes didn’t exactly yet follow motion at this stage) beyond taking BC on the lumpy ice rink and attempting a beach moment while jools was stashed in a little baby tent. the rest is a blur.
what the hell, we figured. let’s give it another try.
BS put it best: ocean city is like atlantic city before the casinos (and with less poverty and presumably less governmental corruption, i would add.) the boardwalk is small. the clientele is not exactly the most upwardly-mobile. the restaurants are overpriced, mostly continental food joints where you have to wait upwards of an hour to get yer damn dinner (and when you get it, like i did one night, you wonder whether the lettuce in your $9.99 salad was vintage 2007.)
still, we had our moments. we played a ton of mini golf. we swam in the indoor/outdoor pool. (jools especially loved the sandy hot tub, which i avoided like the plague.) and, of course, we hit the beach.
ah, the beach.
since most maryland kids are back in school, the beach was not terribly crowded, though there were plenty of new yorkers and new jerseyans, driving like maniacs along coastal highway. all the while, i was scratching my head: there are beaches far closer, and possibly nicer, than ocean city: why the hell are these people driving several hours to come here?
but we had fun. the tides created a massive shelf on the beach, which was a little bizarre and which caused me to slightly injure my formerly operated-on knee. we jumped in the waves. we played in the sand. we got to see the sandcastle jesus (at night, his stigmata lights up, prompting BC to yell his hands are on fire!!!!!) we did all that beachy stuff, plus BS got to chase a little redneck toddler off our blanket when we found him rummaging through our stuff while his mama, his grandma, and a man (who i assume was his baby-daddy) casually watched.
truth be told, we are beach snobs, more used to the more upscale, laid-back, outer banks of duck, nc. when BC suggested we eat at a thai restaurant, BS and i laughed: the most exotic cuisine we could find in ocean city was either mexican or chinese. (this, of course, does not include the zillion and one pizza restaurants, which i suppose counts for italian.) in duck and the surrounding areas, there are caribbean restaurants, there are upscale restaurants, there’s something for everyone with a remotely worldly palate.
not in ocean city, hon.
one night, we went to what we thought might be a fairly nice restaurant. only, too bad for us: most of the people on vacation in ocean city went there, too. we were to wait an hour in the sandy playground area. only, once again, too bad for us: jools became a little too restless and was throwing sand. we left in a huff, which is how we ended up at that $9.99 salad wiltfest.
one thought we had: at least they don’t have brew thrus in ocean city. we couldn’t imagine the mayhem that would cause, considering the classy level of folks we mostly encountered.
ah well. we were away. and we were together. and we were in once piece.
school is about to start, and i’m wrestling with my kids’ lunchtime situations, both from a nutritional and an environmental perspective. you can experience my angst on this topic over at the green parent, where i’m guest blogging today. go check it out and share your solutions, people.
i sure need them.
and to those of you who’ve gotten here via the awesome green parent blog, welcome. i promise not to curse in this post.
after that, all bets are off. (if you read back at my ongoing, so-called vacation from h-e-double-toothpicks, you may understand why.)
(hell yeah, i’m quoting billy ocean. whatcha gonna do about it?)
so part one of salvage the vacation quest was a bit of a bust. we took a drive to york, pa, stopping in towson, md along the way to hit the rainforest cafe for dinner. (i have finally come to terms with rainforest, if only because this is now the closest one, so i am not constantly hearing pullllease mama, can we go to rainforest??? pullllllease???) it was kids eat for $1.99 night — whee! there was a guy making balloon animals, and in general, it was a nice meal until jools felt like he was going to throw up. oh, the joys of hanging out in a restaurant bathroom, waiting for your son to blow chunks. which, i would note, he never did. he was simply tired. i want to go to sleep, he announced. so off we went. in total, that trip took a harrowing six hours, which includes rush hour in both washington AND baltimore plus one hour at dinner.
full day one we drove to hersheypark (losing I-83 temporarily somewhere around harrisburg, but getting back on track eventually.) i love hersheypark. it’s everything six flags is not: clean, friendly, full of helpful employees. there’s even a kosher restaurant there. i’m not kosher, but it was a revelation to me that someone would actually put something like that there. it also probably accounted for the several busloads of orthodox members of my tribe who were there on the sweltering day, girls dressed in long denim skirts and long sleeved shirts.
oh, and there’s chocolate. so it isn’t fancy chocolate — i was raised on hershey’s milk chocolate, and to me, it tastes like my childhood. we hit chocolate world twice, as they were giving out new hershey bliss bars as you exited. of course, when you ride something like that with a smartass like me, well, the bliss is all mine. first, we read about how childless milton hershey started a school for orphan boys, a noble pursuit which still runs today, though i believe it is for girls, too, now. but i looked at BS and said, how nice, he opened a school for boys. but what about the girls? what were they going to do in life? then, of course, you learn about the chocolate. and here i go, spoiling all the fun: i bet it isn’t free trade chocolate, is it? so is hershey doing anything to not exploit people in developing nations?
yeah, i’m fun like that.
anyway, the park was pretty crowded and it was pretty hot. we did get on some rides, most notably jools’ first time on a real roller coaster (both the comet and the sidewinder), so we did have fun. but it was impossible again to hit the waterpark, and, as i said before, the lines were a bit insane. and by the time we got to eat dinner, it was after 8pm, BS’s brand new cell phone’s touch screen was shattered by his time on the comet rollercoaster, and people were pretty exhausted. we drove back to york in the dark on fumes, a tired, cranky crew.
day two. dutch wonderland. DW is a lot of fun for kids under the age of about 7. it, too, is pretty clean and friendly, just like hershey. it also has a kosher restaurant, just like hershey. (in fact, BC asked whether there was a corporate relationship between the two parks. she’s smart like that.) it was also pretty crowded and pretty hot. BS, being exhausted from the previous day and pretty stressed from the fact that we almost got killed on I-83 that morning while merging (no exaggeration this time, i’m afraid), basically became ill. he sat out in the car for a little while, while the kids and i explored the park some more. unfortunately for me, the only place without a long line for lunch was…the kosher mart. but too bad for me: i was wearing my mini purse, which i pack with only the barest of necessities, especially since BS has other stuff in his wallet. only, too bad for me: BS was in the car, trying to revive his stomach. all i had was $20 in my pocket and an Amex. they don’t take Amex, and $20 didn’t cover lunch. little by little, i was telling the very , very sweet person at the kosher mart to remove this item or that item until i hit $17.
then i sat my kids down at the bird-poop-covered table to eat. and i cried. i was tired, i was hungry, i had a sore throat, and i really just wanted to leave.
eventually, BS returned to the park, and the kids and we went on a few gentle rides before leaving. we were going to dinner at the house of my best friend from grad school, Kip, when we hit first a major accident on Route 30 (read: the only road between here and there), then a lane closure. by the time we were near our hotel, BS told me to drop him off and i could take the kids to Kip’s. which i did. he was really looking green around the gills, so i knew better than to press my luck.
we had a great time at Kip’s — this was probably way more my speed for the day — eating dinner and letting the kids run around in their massive yard. she had found a DVD game of Family Feud at a yard sale for $1, which we played twice. (Kip, btw, is a master of finding finds at yard sales, etc.) and we returned at 10 pm, only to find that the electronic lock on our room had been changed. fortunately, BS woke up and let us in.
there’s so much more fun to report, like our miserable ride back yesterday (which included an entire bottle of nestle quik spilled all over the inside of the car), but i’ll spare you. suffice to say that by the time we got home, we had shell-shocked kids, a mom on the brink of tears, and a dad on the brink of reenacting a scene from the Exorcist.
first, amtrak never actually contacted us to tell us. if i hadn’t been a person who follows everything on the web, i would actually be travelling to lorton right now, getting ready to board a train on a track to nowhere. then, when we called amtrak the first time, they told us that they were canceling both legs of our train trip. if i wanted my return trip, i would need to rebook — at a higher price. at that point in time, we were contemplating driving down and taking the train back, so to say we were pissed about that would be the understatement of the century. i wrote a nastygram to amtrak. to their credit, an agent called me last night at 10:30 p.m. to tell me that they’d hang on to my return trip if i let them know by 4 p.m. wednesday.
in reality, we are not in the right mind to drive two days for our trip. i think there’s a certain level of mental prep that one does for such an experience, and we were simply not there. and, as the next train down with available seating doesn’t leave until monday, this dog wasn’t huntin’.
meanwhile, The Mouse doesn’t care that i have no way of coming to disney; they want $200 cancellation fee, thank-you-very-much. unless there is a hurricane warning declared, disney is open and expects your ass on the monorail.
oh. and there’s the little matter of two children who were completely pumped for their trip to disneyworld. they have been trying to be little troopers, especially since we told them we’re going to reschedule this trip if it’s the last thing we do; but jeez louise, this situation continues to go from dumb to dumber. only one or two highlights, as there were actually so many from which to choose:
a) when we call to officially cancel the amtrak train, an extremely nasty, sharp-tongued ticket agent informed BS that he was getting $400 back. uh, come again? those tix cost WAY more than $400. he asked her why, and she began yelling a barrage of nastiness at him. (she should thank her lucky stars that i was not on the phone. at that point, i was in no mood for anyone messing with me, my family, or anybody.) when BS asked for a supervisor, she clearly put on her colleague. nevermind; the colleague was nice and even honored the old price for the rescheduled trip.
b) when rescheduling disney, the confirmation came back — with DIFFERENT DATES AT THE WRONG HOTEL. he got on the phone, and something apparently had gone kerflooey. someone went into the database and fixed things; we’re waiting for the emailed confirmation to show that things have been put right.
there’s so much more i could write, but suffice to say, i am extremely disappointed with Amtrak and Disney. i am shocked at how we’ve been treated. things better be better the next time or else i guess our days of patronizing either enterprise are limited.
lessons learned:
sometimes travel insurance (which we had) is completely irrelevant
never travel to florida in august
we are actually capable of making lemonade out of lemons
re: the last bit: we will make our own fun. just closer to home. i’ll keep blogging; i’ll just be a little sporadic, as my buddy maren likes to say. see, i have these three other people here, and i think i’m supposed to pay attention to them. so talk amongst yourselves. i’ll still give a guilty pleasure monday next week; how could i not? and maybe i’ll type another thing or two.
but in short: i need a break from all this vacation crap.
BC has been at a trip camp for the past week. fortunately, she is having a much better time at this camp than at the last one. she has made a friend or two, and what is there not to like when every day, you hit a waterpark or a zoo or some other venue of fun? (next summer, i want a summer camp for grownups.) but i suspect making a friend has made all the difference with miss thang, who is quite the social chick.
that’s why i was struck by something she said yesterday as i picked her up. mama, she said, so-and-so has an mp3 player like mine.
she brought an mp3 player to camp? i asked.
oh mama, everyone on the bus has mp3 players or nintendos, game boys, cell phones. that sort of thing.
time for the maternal head scratch. aren’t people supposed to actually talk to each other on the bus? interact?
we do talk, mama.
yeah. the social ones. or the ones like mine, whose mama doesn’t allow her to bring any electronics to camp. mean, mean mama.
what is up with people these days? why do our children have to be entertained every. single. blessed. second. of. the. day? i mean, i understand if you’re going on a four-hour drive listening to books on tape or watching DVDs. but a hop across town? a bus ride at camp?
not to mention the fact that my kids would probably lose the few expensive electronics they possess if i let them take them anywhere.
but i digress. per usual.
it reminds me of the time when we were on our first (and last) carnival cruise. the award-winning children’s program had two full hours of kids playing on gameboys. even girlfriend, who was about seven at the time, knew that was lame.
don’t get me wrong. we have our serious couch potato tendencies around here. we are all computer addicts. we probably watch too much television. we all could do with more exercise. but i ensure there are times in my kids’ lives when they are bored. bored, bored, bored. because you know what? life can be boring. and that’s okay. take a boring moment and figure out how to handle it. play? read? clean? run? call a friend? so many options.
i didn’t realize how easy i had it with one child until i had a second.
and i would never, ever trade either of them in for all the tea in china (though there are days when i might give them away, especially on days when they fight about the most picayune things. like who is taking up more space on the planet.)
but this week, while BC is at sleepaway camp with the Girl Scouts for the first time, i am feeling a little blue. i haven’t gotten any boohooey phone calls begging me to drive out to boofoothe middle of nowhere camp to come and pick her up. i’m pleasantly surprised by that fact, as i intentionally picked the camp closest to home in case i got the call at some ungodly hour and had to schlep my ass out, half-asleep, and collect the child. after all, when girlfriend found out that there was no electricity in the cabins, that they had to pee in latrines, that they would have to CLEAN aforementioned latrines, and that there were bugs in them there woods… well, we were not amused.
but she’s still there.
it is giving me the opportunity to really focus on jools, my little big man, who will be hitting elementary school soon (and probably hard.) we play toss the dog with his webkinz. we watch the magic schoolbus, especially the one where they all turn into bats. i want to be a bat, he tells me, because i want to eat bugs. (charmed, i’m sure.) but it’s leaps and bounds better than his current favorite, ben ten: alien force. (yep. the interest in aliens is completely BS’s contribution to the gene pool. but the fact that he rewinds it multiple times to hear the theme song, which he loves — all mine.)
i love the fact that it’s all about him, as it never really is on most days. that’s part of the fun of not being the first child; although when you’re the youngest, you eventually get your turn… of course, you get it as a teenager, when you really don’t want all that much one-on-one time with your folks. typically speaking, anyway.
still, the house is so quiet. i don’t miss people fighting.
but i miss my girl.
i don’t want to tell her, though. she’s the type who will never leave my side if she thinks i’m sad. and part of being a mom — maybe the toughest part about being a mom — is letting go.
if this is just a week, i can’t imagine what’s in store for me later.
