I am in dire need of a dental checkup (I said dental, not mental, smartass) so I called the other week to make one. I told them I was available before 11:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays (the times that all three kids are at school). They had a spot available on the 29th at 8:00. It took the girl a minute to find that and I suspected that if I turned that down there'd be a considerable wait, and since I have a tooth that's been giving me occasional pain I didn't want to put it off any longer. That left me with a little bit of a quandary. I need to be there at 7:45. I could, technically, drop both the public school kids off that early, as there's a before-school program. However, that leaves Miss Eliza at large, because preschool doesn't begin until 9. My best and, really, only option is to drop her off with Robert's dad and brother. However, I'm not entirely convinced they are equipped to deal with an insane toddler on their own, and I'm not sure how kindly E. would take to being left there with the two of them. So my solution is as follows: I will take both Eliza and Madalyn to FIL's house in the morning and leave them there. This way Madalyn can keep Eliza company and help watch her and get her breakfast. I will go ahead and drop JZ off at school since he wouldn't really add much to the scene at FIL's house; indeed, if anything he'd add to the amount of work. I should be done by 9:00 and will then deliver both girls to their respective schools slightly late. It's the best I could come up with.
Now, normally we get up at 7:15 and leave the house around 8:15. Tomorrow we need to leave around 7:30, though, and I need to shower first, so we'll be up around 6:30. I have decided JZ can eat breakfast at school and Madalyn and Eliza can eat at their grandfather's house while I'm at my appointment. The getting up early and eating elsewhere and my going to an appointment (which necessitates a real outfit as opposed to pajama pants and a t-shirt) all require, I feel, some forward planning on my part. Some people might be able to simply mentally acknowledge, "Yes, we need to leave earlier and do things a bit differently tomorrow" and then move on, but not I. These are the things I've done in advance of our altered routine:
*Ironed my shirt and the kids' school clothes (though the ironing of the kids' clothes is the usual for me).
*Hung JZ's outfit in the usual location but hung the girls' outfits on the back door, by which we exit. This is because the two girls will be going to FIL's in their pajamas so they can eat breakfast and not ruin their school outfits. Madalyn will get them both dressed after they eat.
*Located shoes and underwear for everyone and set them out where they can be easily accessed.
*Placed into a bag one box of cereal, a granola bar, Madalyn's toothbrush and paste, and two headbands (to keep the girls' hair from getting into their food while they eat).
*Grouped together in the fridge one Gogurt tube, one cup yogurt, Eliza's cup of juice and a container of strawberries, which I de-leafed and sliced. These are to be placed in the bag with the rest of the food just before leaving.
*Wrote a note excusing Madalyn's tardiness and put it in her backpack.
*Sat the older children down and explained what we will be doing tomorrow and why, and briefed Madalyn on what I need her to do and what I expect of her while she is at her grandfather's house.
*Had all three children in bed by 7:30 in respect of the fact that they will need to be up earlier than usual tomorrow.
When I look at that list it seems perfectly reasonable and rational, but it also occurs to me that it might seem a bit, oh, I don't know, excessively fussy to others. I suppose it would vary from person to person as to whether the outside observer would view this as being dreadfully control-freakish (why not let FIL and BIL get breakfast for the girls?) or very together and well-planned. I'm not even sure what I would call it, myself. My opinion fluctuates madly from day to day. All I know is, despite having spent the day packing a U-Haul, I simply could not sit down and relax until I had done every possible thing I could do to ensure that the morning would go smoothly. It boggles the mind how someone can be as lazy and procrastinating and yet so fastidious and painstaking. With such two diametrically opposing sides, it's no wonder I drive myself bloody crazy.
When your first child is advanced you have trouble fully comprehending the scope of his or her abilities. The talents of that child become your normal and, perhaps, you just don't fully grasp how unusual the child is until a much later date. This happened to me. When Madalyn was a baby and toddler, I had nothing with which to compare her. I hadn't spent much time around kids that age, I didn't spend any time with any friends who had kids the same age, and she just seemed normal to me.
Fast forward six or seven years to the present. I have subsequently had two more children; children whose verbal and cognitive skills run more toward the average, and I finally have gained some perspective. And I'm continually blown away when I realize just how advanced Madalyn was, especially when I look back at her records and compare her, side-by-side, with Eliza when Mad was Eliza's current age.
To share my perspective with you: Eliza will be 18 months old as of Saturday. She has a vocabulary in the range of 15 words, which is completely normal for this age. She has yet to put a phrase together. (JZ, at the same age, had even less words.) I feel as though there is still a lot that goes right over Eliza's head, though it's hard to know since she doesn't have the ability to articulate.
Now, let's compare that to Madalyn at the same age. This information is all factual and is taken from the calendar I kept all through her second year.
17 months, 1 week: Recites "One, two, three" consistently. Counts two chairs. Asks "Where Elmo go?" while watching "Elmo's World."
18 months, 1 day: Starts answering with 'okay' when requesting something ("Juice! Okay!")
18 months, 1 week: Pull up to bank drive-thru window and Madalyn calls out "Cheeseburger! Coke!" Saw a tiny Golden Arches logo on my water cup, pointed and said, "Cheeseburger." Placed stuffed animal and doll on a chair and says, "Wie down. Night-night."
18 months, 2 weeks: Saw miniscule PBS Kids logo mixed in amongst many other logos on a Directv commercial and said, "P-B Kid!"
Reading that, I still can't believe she was only 17/18 months at the time. I can no more imagine Eliza doing any of that right now than I can imagine her driving a car. It just goes to show how much of this stuff is innate and not the work of the parents, loathe as I am to admit it. Who wouldn't like to take credit for turning out an extra-bright child? But if it was our superior parenting skills, we'd have three kids with calendar entries like that. (This is not to say JZ and Eliza aren't bright, either; don't get me wrong. They just don't posess the verbal skills Madalyn has always had.)
Hmm....we can't take credit for their intelligence or their good looks (both of which, apparently, are owed to the genetic crap shoot)....surely there must be something for which we can congratulate ourselves. Must give this more thought.
Okay, not really, as it's not that serious. But we have decided to take the Van from Hell to Norman today. We simply couldn't warm up to the idea of patronizing the Dodge dealership here after they gave us the big middle finger during the Great Computer Fiasco. The stupid thing has been running fine for chunks of time so we hope it will make it all the way to Norman (65 miles). If it dies, it will often reset itself if you sit for a while and then it will run a bit more after that. Failing that, we have AAA. Anyway, we're going to drop the thing off, have lunch, and come home. Because it's not like there's anything else we need to be doing right now, right? We totally can spare four hours to leave town.
On the plus side, I really love these guys to whom we're taking it and they are the ones who, in January, had it fixed in one business day after local mechanics had been unable or unwilling to fix it for THREE MONTHS. So I do at least feel as though we'll have it back by next weekend, fixed (until something else goes wrong two or three months down the road).
Anyway, cross your fingers for us that we make it and that, if we don't, I don't completely lose my mind and injure myself leaping from FIL's car to try to kick the van's ass.
I was putting some laundry in the wash and JZ was in the bathroom. Eliza was in there with him -- she likes to stand on the step stool, run the water in the sink and "brush her teeth" (suck water out of the brush is more like it). I finished what I was doing and went to find Eliza and, to my horror, there was what appeared to be a mushroom cloud in the bathroom that smelled suspiciously like the Lysol NeutraAir spray I keep in there. And then I saw it: JZ brushing Eliza's hair. Eliza's hair, which was wet and plastered to her skull as she coughed and cried. I swooped in, hollering, and tossed her into the tub, clothes, shoes and all, and started spraying water on her face. Long story short, she appears to be fine, though still smelling vaguely of air freshener.
I, personally, am gobsmacked. My kids do NOT do this kind of stuff. They aren't the kind of kids who, if you leave them alone for a few moments, will have an entire bag of flour strewn about the kitchen, or paintings on the walls done in a fetching shade of red lipstick. They just don't do insane crap like that. It never, in a million years, would've occurred to me that JZ might decide to use a can of Lysol as hairspray. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I can't imagine what he was thinking. Isn't five old enough to know better than that?
On the plus side, I don't think he'll try anything like that again. Never let anyone say that overreacting is entirely bad. I doubt he'll forget that I was really really really displeased anytime soon.
I've been putting off detailing this for a while because I'm of the "Denial Works Wonders" school of thought, but, for the sake of accuracy and thoroughness I need to get it all down in print. This has also been added to my original list "Stuff That's Wrong with My Van."
Week of August 25th: Van dies two different times as it's idling in the driveway. For reasons you may be able to understand, I choose to convince myself it was a fluke and there's really nothing wrong. It runs fine for a few days after that but then, on August 30th, it dies twice as I'm driving down the road. It took me a few tries to get it started again. We then drove it on Sunday and it was fine all day. Monday I looked into taking it to a mechanic but they couldn't get it in until Thursday, September 4th. I took it in on Thursday to the garage (heretofore after known as Incompetent Garage #8,456). They dinked around with it until Friday afternoon and decided all it needed was a simple $250 tune-up and it would be fine. "Um...okayyyy" was my thought, but who am I to argue with the "professionals"? So we picked the thing up and it was fine....for two days. On Monday it commenced again with the croaking. Most inconvenient when one is driving down the road.
So, off it went, back to Incompetent Garage #8,456. They had it for three days before handing down the proclamation that we should put some new gas in it and run a gas cleaner through the tank. Okay. Righty-o. Because that has happened to SO MANY PEOPLE I know. Cars dying on the road right and left, and all because the owner is lacking the miracle cure of a bottle of gas tank cleaner. Oh, and their excuse? "We couldn't get the problem to duplicate when we drove it." Sound eerily reminiscent to anyone else?
Now we have the van back and Robert decides to use it on Saturday to take some stuff to our new house because, by the way, we are moving and need the g*ddamned van to help with that. He leaves the house and, as I know for a fact he's only going there and coming straight back, I expect him back within thirty minutes. An hour-and-a-half later I decided I'd better go look for him. Turns out, he'd made it to the new house, but not until the van had died about twenty times on the way there. Once it took about twenty minutes before it would start again. By the time I got to the house, it had deteriorated to the point that it won't even run for more than a minute or so. You turn it on, and idles and then it's like someone flips a switch and it just shuts off.
And that's where we leave off today, September 15th. The van is in the driveway of our new house, awaiting our next move. I can most assuredly tell you it will NOT be to Incompetent Garage #8,456. No, we are toying with the idea of taking it back to the Dodge garage here in town. Yes, the same place where I made a scene back in January because they refused to even attempt to fix the vehicle. I simply don't feel we have a choice, at this point. Two independent garages have been unable to fix several different issues with it. I'd strongly prefer to take it to the guys in Norman but problem 1 = we can't drive it up there and problem 2 = it would cost the annual budget of a small Third World country to have it towed up there (70 miles). So I'm feeling a bit backed into a corner on this issue. If we do take it over there, Robert will be dealing with them entirely. I refuse to go over there and deal with those people. He is home today so he can go explain the problem to them and give them his phone number for a contact. If I pretend it isn't happening then it isn't, right? *sigh* At least they won't be able to claim they can't replicate the problem, because it's now doing it every sixty seconds or so. Still....I really despise those people and it positively galls me to think of giving them any business.
Update when available.
Earlier this evening Madalyn came waltzing out to me and said, "Barack Obama is the first African-American to run for President" and then proceeded to regale me with Obama's life story. She knew his wife's name, the two kids' names, where he grew up, that his mom is white and his dad black, etc. Then I thought, okay, smartypants, let's see how much you really know. So I asked her where he'd been Senator and she knew that, too! Apparently that was the focus of their study this week in ILO (her gifted & talented class). I asked her if they were going to study McCain next week and she said yes, but then she also said, "He was taken prisoner by some mean guys in a war" so they apparently already touched on him a bit. (I'm very pleased with the class, in general, incidentally. This is definitely over and beyond what they study in her regular class.)
I'm just waiting for her to ask me for whom I'm voting so the brainwashing can begin. Surely they make Obama '08 shirts in junior sizes.
Note to my husband:
When you mention the name of a female work associate and I ask you, "Is she hot?" I am just kidding, and the correct answer is NOT, "Yes, she's pretty." There are ONLY two acceptable answers in this situation. They are:
1) "No, she's a real woofer."
OR
2) "I dunno. I haven't noticed."
Please remember this in the future. I have enough issues already.
Yesterday was Offspring v. 3.0's first day at preschool; the same preschool at which her sister and brother began when they were also one year old. (Yes, they have a class for one-year-olds; yes, they try to teach them things using a loose, flexible lesson plan; no, they don't force them to sit at tiny desks and study. It's a great deal of fun for the kids. If it wasn't, mine wouldn't go there.) 1.0 went there for three years (would've gone four, but she skipped ahead a year) and 2.0 went the full four, graduating last May.
I was expecting, from Eliza, a reaction that fell somewhere in the middle of the other two's. Madalyn, on her first day, barely glanced at us when we said goodbye and walked out the door. John-Zachary, on the other hand, melted down quite spectacularly and it took two-and-a-half years before he quit crying every time we dropped him off. Eliza has cried when I've left her on occasion but then, other times, she hasn't shed a tear. When I worked VBS this year she stayed in the nursery all week. The first day she cried but the second day I opened the nursery door, she walked in, and was fine the rest of the time. Therefore I was expecting a brief period of minor adjustment and then all would be well.
We were first to show up at the classroom yesterday morning. I carried E. in and set her down. She was immediately dazzled by all the toys and started playing right away. The other babies started to arrive soon after that. Usually she is obsessively fascinated by other babies but, for the moment, she was too busy with the toys to give them more than a cursory glance.
I stayed for fifteen or twenty minutes and then got up to go. I fully expected some tears at that point. Eliza had ceased to pay attention to me at that point so I called her name (I don't do the whole 'sneaking out' thing - just a personal choice) and I said, "Bye-bye!" and waved. She stared at me for a beat and then turned and went back to what she'd been doing. I slipped out the door and down the hall, and that was that. The teachers report that she did beautifully - no tears whatsoever for the entire two-and-a-half hours. One teacher also said that Eliza was trying to take care of all the other kids all day. She had to walk away quickly to tend to one of the kids right after she said it, so I didn't get her to elaborate on what exactly Eliza had been doing, but it doesn't surprise me. E. already has a maternal streak and has been baby-oriented since she was old enough to be aware.
So, thus ended our last first day of preschool. I suppose she could unpleasantly surprise me next week and do a one-eighty and protest being left, but I don't see that happening. Thus far, with my kids, what's happened on the first day has set the tone for the entire year. I couldn't be more pleased, of course. Apparently my girls are both going to turn out to be fairly reasonable in this situation. It figures that The Boy would be the odd one to cause a ruckus.
In closing, how about a picture of our newest school kid? I couldn't pry her pacifier away from her but I figured it was a fair exchange for her not losing her ever-loving mind.
One last bit of trivia: Eliza's outfit loosely coordinates with the outfit Madalyn wore on her first day of preschool. Madalyn's top was the same color as the bottom band on Eliza's shirt, and both girls had the same shade of denim on the bottom (though Madalyn's were shorts and Eliza's was a skirt). Is that weird? I mean, that I did it on purpose? On second thought, don't answer that.
We. are. moving.
! ! ! !
Long story short: The other week Robert and I were talking and we came to the decision that buying our current house just might not have been the best decision for us. Directly on the heels of that realization came the news that the financing deal was dead, anyhow. We took it as a sign. A lovely house had recently been offered for rental after its owners were unable to sell it in a timely manner. We jumped on the opportunity and, within a matter of a few days, it was settled: we're moving. We gave our thirty days' notice of intent to vacate this place and we already have the keys to the new place. The moving will be an ongoing project over the entire month of September. We don't have an exact date for when we'll actually be sleeping in the other place but I think we're going to shoot for mid-month to get all the utilities (plus the cable and satellite) turned on/transferred over. Once that happens we'll shift our base of operations to there, even if we haven't gotten everything out of this house.
As for the new place, it's just wonderful. It's across town from where we are now, near(ish) the big city park. It's five years old, a two-story red brick affair with a great, fenced back yard (something we don't have here, which curtails the kids' playing outside). Downstairs is the master suite with Australian closet, half-bath, living room, kitchen with breakfast nook, dining room, and finished basement. Upstairs each kid has his/her own bedroom, plus there's a family room, a play room and another bathroom. Closet space abounds. Seriously, I think we own a LOT of stuff but it will probably only fill half of the storage space there. There are minor cosmetic issues I'd fix, if given the chance, but I could see us being happy there for as long as we can stay. We hope to rent for about a year while we iron some things out and then we'll definitely be interested in buying the place, providing Robert's job situation doesn't take us away from the area. (Incidentally, this move won't affect the kids' schooling at all, as the schools here are divided by grade, not by location of residence.)
More info to follow later, as well as photos, as I start getting the rooms fixed up the way I want them. For now: Crap! I need to start packing!