The First Steps Into a Larger World

Hey look! I'm LIKEABLE, dammit! Likeable! I'm having a hard time refraining from typing a riff on Sally Fields' Oscar speech that includes the word "cocksuckers." But you're all probably imagining it now anyway. So there. I'm done here, let's move on!

So. Noah. Costumes. Playing dress-up. Not at all a thing he enjoys. We successfully got him into a costume last Halloween at the 11th hour when he suddenly realized that Mommy and Daddy weren't playing: There was free candy to be had if you wore one. Okay Earthlings, I will indulge you this time in your strange fun-sized candy-procuring middle-man ritual. THIS TIME.

Afterwards, though, whenever I mentioned next Halloween, he would do some kind of dramatic fainting-couch thing and announce that he was NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN. NO. NOT EVEN. 

Time went by, and he seemed a bit more open to the idea -- probably because in the wake of us cracking down with a righteous vengeance on food dyes in his diet, he's figured out that Halloween is his once-a-year window to fuck up his nervous system with all the Red 40 and Yellow 5 he wants because CHILDHOOD IS AWESOMMMMMME -- but he said he would only wear the same blue monster costume from last year. Which was actually purchased (and rejected) the year BEFORE, and was already a size too small when he wore it. 

If I told him that I was sorry, that costume doesn't fit, we'll need to find another one or something different...back to the fainting couch he went. 

Over the summer, there were a number of little girls at his camp who loved to play dress-up, and the classroom had a wide variety of fairy wings and tutus and tiaras that they favored, but seeing them dressed up would send Noah into total meltdown mode, with screaming and sobbing and...well. He really, really didn't like it, to put it mildly.

So you can imagine my shock when one day this past weekend, out of the blue, Noah donned Ezra's bathrobe, declared it a "cate" (cape) and started calling himself Obi-Wan Kenobi:

 

 

He wears it everywhere and all the time -- except right after bathtime, when Ezra starts shrieking MINE MINE MINE because it is, in fact, a size 24-months and HIS HIS HIS -- I've even caught him wearing it to bed a couple nights, sweating profusely but sleeping peacefully, with a lightsaber fashioned out a Tinker Toy tucked in his hands, under his chin.

 

I've always listened to other parents' stories about the wacky things their children insisted on wearing day after day or the crazy outfits they proudly assembled for themselves and felt a little twinge because Noah has never been that kid. His clothing preferences begin and end with what I pull out of the closet every morning, provided I conceal the fact that anything might be "new" by ripping off tags and hiding shopping bags. We buy him Star Wars shirts because we think he'll like them, but I'm not sure he really notices them all that much. Part personality, part other issues, who knows, but oh, I love the sight of other kids who think rainboots and pirate hats and bumblebee wings are perfectly sensible day-to-day ensemble.

I let him wear his cate to OT yesterday, because why the hell not, and his therapist's confusion quickly melted into laughter when she realized just what he was wearing, and then to a triumphant fistbump with me when it dawned on her that he wasn't just wearing a bathrobe, he was wearing a costume. That he'd come up with all by himself. We got a couple WTF looks from other parents in the waiting room, but I honestly could not have been more proud, as I watched my kid run around with his Baby Gap microfleece freak flag high.

"I love Thursdays," she laughed.

 

Me too. 

First Day Baby Blues

Honestly, I was almost shockingly non-emotional about back-to-school this year. With all of Noah's assorted stir-crazy regressions that started almost immediately after he was set loose in my unstructured care, I was downright looking forward to getting him back to school. Besides, he's still not starting kindergarden, he's simply going back for his THIRD YEAR of preschool. 

We've been calling it pre-K all summer to soothe Noah's hurt feelings over not going to kindergarden, like many of his friends from the private school, which was a mixed-age classroom. And to distract him from the fact that he won't be going to the private school again. (Cliff Notes to That Whole Thing: both private and public options for this year were in the afternoon, so we had to pick one. We went with 1) free, 2) close, 3) where he'll be attending kindergarden anyway, and 4) 5) 6) freeeeee.) But I knew better: same old, same old. 

I got him a haircut and a new backpack. That was the extent of our back-to-school shopping. 

It didn't hit me until yesterday, when we stood outside waiting for the school bus. I lifted the camera to my face and looked through the viewfinder and whoa. Whoa. WHOA. 

I don't want to alarm anyone, but somebody needs to get over here and pick up their kid. And bring back that toddler I just had the other day. 

 

 

 

And I think someone pulled a similar trick with the little one.

 

The bus was late, very late, and Noah grew impatient while I suddenly had a belated attack of the DON'TGOILOVEYOUS.

 

But then it came. And he went.

 

No big deal. Same old, same old. Right? RIGHT?

 

(Don't even think about it yet, you.) 

For compare/contrast purposes: the first day of school last year, and the year before.

Mellencampy

I woke up yesterday morning completely incensed at John Cougar Mellencamp. That asshole had the nerve to get MAD at me after I called him "John Cougar Mellencamp" in my dream, because I simply forgot that he dropped the "Cougar" part, like who can keep it all straight all the time, and even after I apologized he yanked my wine glass out of my hand and and said "this is going to kill you one day, young lady" and then I woke up and was like, don't you judge me, John Cougar Mellencamp. For HOURS. Possibly even still now, a little bit.

God. He was just so fucking CONDESCENDING about it. 

Anyway, after I woke up and had a whole imaginary defensive conversation about my imaginary intervention with an imaginary John Cougar Mellencamp, I had to start frantically cleaning the house for our Labor Day party, to which I had invited the local Mamapop contingent -- Sarah, Laurie, Jodi, Tracey, Charlie -- to come over and start drinking before noon.

The party was a great success, if I do say so myself, judging by the two (2) recycling bins we done filled up with wine and beer bottles (STOP JUDGING ME, MELLENCAMP), and the staggering amount of food we all managed to consume. Including grits cakes with tomato-basil marmalade, courtesy of Charlie, grilled lamb with tzatziki, courtesy of Jason and an entire Crock Pot's worth of nacho Velveeta dip, courtesy of me. 

"Bless your little white trash heart," Charlie said to me about that, while we were all practically eating our seventh helping with the little itty-bitty broken corners of chips because GET IN MAH MOUTH, PASTEURIZED CHEESE PRODUCT, but I think he meant in a nice way and not like YOU-KNOW-WHO. FUCK, MAN. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. 

The party also included a very enthusiastic Miley Cyrus lip-syncing performance in my backyard, during which I improvised a hairography Ode to Britney Spears' Weave of Busted. It was videotaped. It will...probably be made public embarrassingly soon in a Mamapop Roundtable. So I should go gird my loins for that indignity. With more wine, probably.

But first, I must go put Noah on the school bus for his first day of school. (OH HI THERE, EMOTIONS. GULP. SOB.) I have about 15 more minutes to convince him that he really, really needs to take off Ezra's little red fleece bathrobe, which he's been wearing for about 18 straight hours now and demanding that we all call him Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Go knock 'em dead, kid. You are just too awesome for color TV.

 

(We also took them peach picking this weekend. So lay off with the attitude about a couple imaginary glasses of white wine consumed at some kind of imaginary Hoarders meets Antiques Roadshow party we were all inexplicably attending in an abandoned warehouse down in the city and I was completely and thoroughly overdressed for with like, a tiara and everything, and thus nervous and prone to social faux-pas like including "Cougar" in the name of 80s rockers who have since dropped it due to label disputes or WHATEVER, WE ARE TOTALLY A WHOLESOME SORT OF ALL-AMERICAN COW-PETTING FAMILY.)

Bunkmates

So, this has been happening:

 

Every night, they try to convince us to let them have a sleepover.

 

Noah promises me that they'll sleep. Ezra closes his eyes and pretends to snore.

 

 

Ezra cries when we take him back to his room and calls for NONA, NONA. Noah wails that he wants his little brother back because he looooooves him.

Add in the fact that Ezra's figured out how to escape his crib already, and I think you can see exactly what crazy arrangement we are seriously (AND CRAZILY) considering.

 

A big boy bed is imminent, as I really don't see this one being happy with a crib tent. So where to put it?

 

Because I have a feeling this is where he'll end up anyway, at least once he masters the doorknob. I know for a fact that this is where he'll be happiest, because it's really only sort of about THE BED, if you know what I mean. 

 

They go to bed and wake up at the same times. Ezra takes a nap in the afternoon, but Noah never spends that time in his room anyway because his toys are all elsewhere. 

 

But this room is really too small for two beds, and Noah's a year away from the recommended top-bunk age. 

On the other hand, this room is waaaay past due for a makeover anyway. (I MEAN COME ON.) And I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't mind putting Ezra's room to use as an office. Or maybe a nursery again, while we're on the subject of HAREBRAINED CRAZY. 

 

I shared a room with my sister when I was this age. We got our own rooms eventually, but I distinctly remember loving the arrangement when I was little. I liked the company. 

And I love that my boys love each other so much. Though I don't know if room-sharing will foster that bond or...have the opposite effect of HE'S TOUCHING ME HE'S BREATHING ON ME HE'S IRRITATING ME WITH HIS MERE EXISTENCE. 

So I'm wondering. Should we give this arrangement a test drive? Should we really possibly even be kidding ourselves about having them share a room, especially since there's no reason they "have" to? And maybe even a bed, and thus kidding ourselves that the end result will be anything other than no sleep and lots of all-night clobbering sessions? Should we look into something like this (only cheaper, my lands) and have Noah move to the top bunk when he's old enough? Figure out how to cram two beds in there, maybe using something like this for Noah and our old toddler bed? Or...you know...wait for them to get completely sick of each other and back requesting their OWN ROOMS and OWN SPACE within a week or so?

P.S. No, Noah doesn't usually sleep in a wifebeater. It was just all I could find because I forgot to take his laundry out of the washer and had to run the load again because it smelled all funny. Which I now realize probably doesn't really make the wifebeater situation any classier. 

My Natural Born Talent, Part Two

(Please read Part One, from yesterday, to find the much-needed WHAT THE HELL IS THIS background.)

At some point, while working very, very hard on my very, very important coloring book, I obviously decided that I was done with writing stand-alone stories about each of the pictures (either that or I simply didn't know how to tie the rest of them to JESUS GOD SON and/or the lovly Indians). Instead I tried to create a cast of recurring characters:

 

Translation:

Hi. we are best
friends. we play together 
all (triple underline!!!1!) the time.
(we're also brothers and
sisters!) our m names  
are; Kate, Jenny,
Sarah, Johnny, Minnie
and Flora. Sometimes
we fight, but we make up! Jenny
Let's us ride her
mule, Senny. Which we
like.

The
End

By this point in my young life, most (if not all) of my much-older half-siblings were graduating from high school and moving out of the house. So I was far too busy constructing elaborate wish-fulfillment scenarios about lots! of sisters! who would play with me! all the time! to ever notice or write any reasons why Kate, Jenny and Minnie HAD NO FUCKING EYEBALLS OR FACIAL FEATURES.

 

You see what I did there? That little "I'm Sarah" that totally ties the characters together and makes it all circular and connected and stuff? Oh, yes. And I would do it for PAGES and PAGES more. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW BOOKS ARE WRITTEN. FACT.

Translation:

Giddyup! Oh,
Hi! I'm just
playing cowboy.
I'm Johnny.
I like to pretend 
I'm a cowboy
rescuing a pretty
girl from bad
guys. I win always.
Opps, gotta go now.
Its dinner time

The
End  

Here we have a pretty good glimpse into the psyche of a little girl who knew next to nothing about little boys, thus dooming herself to give birth to an entire baseball team of 'em later in life. 

   

The year is probably 1985 or '86, and I have already developed the cursive handwriting of a serial killer. 

His horse is called "Wild Texaco. Named after Wild Tex in a movie and a gas station." You guys, I think this was me trying to be FUNNY. 

 

I honestly have NO IDEA what I was going for here, but am pretty sure that Ming Ming from the Wonder Pets owes me some money for copyright violations. 

Seriously. What the HELL. Why couldn't I have just scanned some embarrassing prom pictures like a NORMAL blogger?  

 

Translation:

Oh! I can't belive
it! US! Kate, and
Flora! get to
see the beutiful
shooting rainbow
stars! right
by us! our
brothers and
sisters will
never belive
us! if they do
they might be jealous!

The
End

Translation to the translation: 

My older brother and sister just went to see Ghostbusters without me so I'm just gonna sit here and color beutiful shooting rainbow stars and then cry about it, probably.

 

 

There are seven sets of parentheses on this page. SEVEN. 

 

Translation: 

I am rapidly losing interest in this undertaking.
Fuck this.

Yo, Kate, Jenny, Sarah, Flora here. Whaddup. We're OUT. PEACE. 

 *DROPS MIKE*

I don't remember presenting this book to my parents -- whether I wrapped it or made a big deal about it or was just like, "here, I have no money, Merry Christmas." However, if you perhaps are looking for the perfect gift for someone, I would like to point out that this exact book is STILL AVAILABLE online, for $2.50, which is probably what my parents paid for it in 1983. (Shipping will cost ya seven bucks though. Inflation!) I can certain attest to the fact it indeed did bring me years and years of enjoyment, right up until this moment right now. Give the gift of DREAM HORSES today!