Late, Late, Late

I hate being late. Before I had kids, I was almost never late. In fact, I was almost always early, probably to the annoyance of more than one hostess.

A baby changes everything. That’s saying, right? Well, Alyssa was five days old when my family threw us a baby shower. We were a half hour late to our own baby shower. I was near tears from the stress/trauma of it all.

I’ve lightened up a bit over the years. I’ve also learned a bit of time management. A bit, I said.

This morning, though, I didn’t manage very well. The alarm went off at the usual time of 5:50am. I almost got up then, but instead, hit the snooze. Olivia woke up three minutes later and as I picked her up I asked her if she wanted to just go in and take a bath or if she wanted to snuggle with me in my bed for a few minutes.

She buried her face in my neck and muttered, “Snuggle.”

So snuggle we did, through two more snoozes. We snuggled so thoroughly that she fell back to sleep and I slipped out of bed at 6:12 to shower.

Two minutes later, she was in the bathroom, looking all bed-headed and still sleepy. I took off her pull-up and she sat in front of the heat. I turned on the shower and she declared, “I want to take a bath.”

I’d told her the day before when she asked at a ridiculously late time that she could take one this morning. So I turned off my shower and started filling the tub for her. When her tub had enough water, I showered. By this point, I knew we were a little behind the schedule, but nothing we couldn’t make up.

Alyssa got up at 6:40 and joined Olivia in the tub. At 6:55, I declared they had to get out of the tub right this minute because we were on the verge of being late enough that we wouldn’t be able to make up the time.

I dried O’s hair while A got dressed. I then towel dried A’s hair and pulled it into a braid, hoping to fool Tom into thinking we were further ahead in our morning prep than we actually were.

We got downstairs for breakfast by 7:10. We’re usually down there by 6:50. Olivia was sucking her thumb and tugging her hair at this point, a great indication that she’s on the verge of starvation. She plowed through her blueberry waffle and Alyssa nibbled at her decrusted toast.

I packed Alyssa’s lunch while Tom kept watch over the breakfast. He was just getting up to toast O another waffle at 7:20 when I went upstairs to finish my own morning routine. I returned at 7:25 to the realization that I had forgotten to pack my own lunch as I was packing A’s. She was brushing her teach and Olivia was eating her second waffle heartily.

I gathered O’s coat, backpack, shoes and hat in front of the door and made sure A knew where all her things were and I left for work only three minutes behind schedule.

Then I got behind a m-f’ing semi truck that took five freaking miles to get up to the speed of a mere 40 miles per hour. It took him another five miles to gather enough momentum to drive 50 miles.

No, I wasn’t late to work but it was a close call.

Tom informed me that for all my own frustrations with running late this morning, he bore the brunt of it. The girls’ bus comes anytime between 7:35 and 7:45. This morning? She was on the early side, pulling up in front of the house at 7:36. Olivia had just finished her waffle, got her shoes, coat and backpack on when they saw the bus at the corner. No tooth brushing for her this morning.

Sigh.

I told Tom we would be sure to brush her teeth even more strenuously tonight before bed to make up for it.

I also told him that hey, at least we know she wasn’t heading off to school hungry.

I don’t think he appreciated my bright and sunny outlook on this morning’s festivities. And he calls himself a morning person.

Protective Rivalry

Alyssa is a typical big sister. She can get outrageously annoyed by Olivia simply sitting her car seat humming, looking out her own window but in the next breath, she can be telling Olivia how much she loves her.

Olivia, too, is pretty typical when it comes to her little sister duties.

She takes her duty as a hero worshipper pretty seriously. For the first four and three quarters years of her life, Olivia has been content to let Alyssa call the shots.

And Alyssa’s been perfectly happy with that.

Imagine the level of annoyance Alyssa lives with these days as Olivia realizes that she has opinions and she has ways of sharing those opinions. And, worse yet, sometimes Olivia’s opinions differ from Alyssa’s.

Most importantly, Olivia doesn’t always agree with what Alyssa wants to watch on television. Ohh, the drama that ensues.

Alyssa can be bossy. See, in her own mind, she’s ruled our household since the day she was born. And yes, Tom and I are pretty indulgent. So now that she’s having to share tv time and egads, even some of her toys, she’s not enjoying it at all.

And yet, in the midst of all this, Olivia is fiercely protective of her big sister.

Some evenings at my mom’s when I’m trying to wrangle the girls and their stuff into a manageable pile so we can go home, I’ll get Olivia into her coat and hat and boots, with her backpack over my shoulder before Alyssa even has her shoes on. At that point, I’ll take O’s hand and say, “Let’s go, Livie. Lyssie can walk home.”

And then we’ll head out the door.

Alyssa doesn’t give a fig for what I’m saying. She knows darned well that I won’t leave without her.

Olivia, on the other hand, is very concerned that I might be serious. She drags her feet as I pull her out the door, calling out the entire time, “No, we’re not going to leave without Lyssie.”

And because I’m mean, I’ll tell her, “Yes, if we can get out there fast enough, we are going to leave without Lyssie.”

Then I try to move even faster toward the car. By this point, Alyssa has joined us outside, but she has to go the long way off my mom’s deck, because she’s evil. And so she continues to dawdle as I continue to tease Olivia.

By the time I get O into her car seat, A has joined us at the car, but she’s still in no hurry to actually get in the car. So I pretend to hurry, hoping we can still leave without her.

All this time, O is insisting that we aren’t leaving without her sister.

I’ve told Olivia on several occasions that I’d never really leave Lyssie. But she still gets so concerned and protective.

I hope she realizes, deep down, that it’s a game and that she’s just playing her part.

But I do sort of love the protectiveness that rises to the surface when Olivia feels like it’s them against me. I’m absolutely okay with them having a united front when faced with mean parents. That’s sort of the whole point of siblings, isn’t it?

My Big Girl

This weekend, Olivia told me she had to potty. This is actually nothing new these days. She has fewer accidents than she does successes as far as the potty goes. So yay!

So off we headed to the bathroom and obviously one of the other three people in the household had used that bathroom since the last time Olivia had because her Cushie Tushie (the padded ring that goes over the toilet seat to make it smaller and softer for tiny butts) was no longer sitting on the toilet.

She declared, “I don’t need my Cushie Tushie. I’m a big girl.” Then she pulled down her pants, climbed onto the toilet sans the Cushie Tushie. She also didn’t have to use her step stool to position herself on the toilet.

She went, wiped, climbed down, flushed and washed her hands, all without any prompting from me.

Big girl indeed.

This morning was a rarity for me. The alarm went off at 5:50 (not the rare part) and I woke to realize that Olivia hadn’t woken in the night and joined me in my bed where she usually proceeds to push and nudge and kick and elbow her way into owning two thirds of the bed. It was quite refreshing to have the bed to myself.

I got up and managed to be in the shower before anyone joined me in the bathroom. I called out, “Good morning!” to the intruder because that’s just how I am in the morning. Ha! Okay, not so much. But I did call out to her (knowing it had to be A or O.)

I got no response. I called out again. Again, nothing.

I opened the shower door and peeked out. I found a tiny naked butt staring back at me. Olivia had walked into the bathroom, taken off her pull-up, peed in the toilet and was preparing to flush when I looked out at her.

Oh yes, she’s definitely big.

Once I was out of the shower, I handed O her underwear. She always wears underwear on Mondays when she’s off to Gram’s house. She put them on without assistance.

I then tossed her socks at her and they were donned again, without fuss. I did help her with her pants because, well, I was dressed by then and yes, she’s a very easy child to baby.

But her independence streak is getting wider and wider and I couldn’t be prouder of the things my big girl is figuring out all by herself.

Death By Water

A couple of summers ago I was on my way home from work and, as was the habit back when we were making a commute of 65 miles one way, I tried to call Tom on my way to let him know when to expect me.

Each call I attempted to make went unanswered.

I was relieved when I pulled into the driveway and found him in the garage. He was surprised to see me since I hadn't called to let him know I was on my way.

I informed him that I had called, over and over and over again.

He went on a treasure hunt, the treasure being his phone.

It was nowhere to be found.

Tom traced his steps and eventually found the charred remains of his phone in the burn barrel. When he'd leaned over to put something in there, his phone had fallen out of his shirt pocket and into the fire. It was beyond repair.

Last night he was again looking for his phone. I used my phone to call him. It went to his voice mail before any of us could even hear the ring in order to track it down.

He muttered something about it maybe being in his pants pocket.

The pants that had gone into the washing machine not ten minutes before.

I raced to the basement, opened the washer which was in the agitate cycle and drove my hand into the water, digging through clothes to the very bottom (of course) to find the pants he'd been wearing earlier in the day.

There it was.

I pulled the phone out of the pants' pocket, took it upstairs where Tom took it from me, took the battery and the sim card out and began the drying out process.

This morning, the phone did turn on and when he tried to call me, the call went through, but the little screen fogged up.

The phone, with the battery back out of it, is sitting by one of our registers. We're hoping this time it's salvagable. It could happen.

It appears, in this case anyway, that fire is more destructive than water. I wonder though if the phone had been allowed to go through the spin cycle if we'd be so lucky.

And yes, I did promise to check pockets from this point on when I'm doing laundry. Sigh.

Then the Tree Fell Down

On the bright side, we get to decorate the Christmas tree for a second time this season. At least according to Alyssa, that's the bright side.

Yesterday evening when the girls and I got home, we were so glad that Friday evening had finally come. We all stomped in from the garage, ready for our weekend to start. I'm sure Tom is always so glad to hear the commotion of his family coming home from a long day.

I went upstairs for something. I don't remember what at this point because it doesn't matter.

While I was up there, I heard a bit of a crash and Tom asked loudly, "What were you doing?"

As I started down the stairs, Alyssa was heading up them.

Tom was attempting to pick up the fallen Christmas tree and Olivia was watching the entire spectacle in awe.

I asked them what happened.

Tom didn't know. He said that Alyssa was looking out the window behind the tree, the tree fell and she took off faster than...well, something really fast.

Alyssa shrugged. She said, "I touched one of the bulbs and then it fell."

Tom and I tried to put the leg of the tree stand back on but I announced it was broken. As in, not going to go back together.

We took all of the ornaments off the tree as it leaned against a corner, looking for all the world like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree before the love of the Christmas Spirit brightened it.

This morning, Tom called me and told me to price Christmas trees at Walmart. Then he called about a half hour later and announced that he'd fixed the tree stand. We can wait until the trees go on clearance to get a new one.

Whew!

I have since put another strand of lights on the tree and we'll be putting the ornaments back on this evening.

And better still? Jaxon will be here for the evening so his dad can go on a date. The girls love having that boy around and it will be that much more fun to have a third child to help put the ornaments on the tree. Maybe he'll pick one side and Olivia will pick another and we can have a bunch of ornaments on the lower third of the tree but this time, not just one one side.

See? There is a bright side to every story.

December Rules

Before I start this post, I want to thank Statia and Crazy Incognito for their thoughtful comments on my last post. I really appreciate your points of view and I am grateful that you both commented. I also want to say that I think that the school and the teachers make a HUGE difference when it comes to good versus bad experiences with preschool.

Olivia’s first experience with preschool, when she was three years old, was tough. She was small for her age, she was thrown into a class with larger, older kids who were very, very aggressive and there wasn’t a very good teacher to student ratio in that class. My mom was gracious enough to volunteer as the class Grammy so she could be in the class each day that Olivia was. If that hadn’t been possible, I’m not sure we’d have been comfortable sending Olivia to that class.

Her current class, though? Is so, so different. There are fewer kids, the kids themselves are much less aggressive and the ratio of teachers to students is so much more acceptable.

And Olivia loves school these days. She’s older, more mature and absolutely more willing to walk away from me and Tom and my mom and go off to class by herself. This is what she did on Tuesday, when I took her to school because I had to take in the snacks (which included a gallon of milk.) She showed me to her locker, put her backpack in there, got her folder out, hung up her coat, kissed me goodbye and walked away. It was awesome! So different from her class two years ago. We like this class so much we’ve decided that O is going to attend it another year before heading off to kindergarten.

I definitely agree with Statia in her thoughts that it’s much less fair to kids with special needs to thrust them into kindergarten without any sort of preschool to prepare them.

And little J? She absolutely doesn’t seem to be suffering during her time in preschool.

And back to our regularly scheduled programming:
November was kind of a wash when it comes to weight loss. I’ve decided to count it as a good month, though, even though I only lost one pound for the entire months because, well, that’s still a loss and a loss of one pound is better than a gain of one pound.

So I’m trying to be positive here.

I’m facing down December, the month of parties and festivities and celebrations and gifts and giving and love and joy and I’m seeing a lot of fattening foods to go along with all that joy.

But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing for my scale.

I’ve made up some new rules for myself for December.

On days when we have a party or a celebration of some kind, I am going to allow myself to enjoy the food being offered. I am not going to feel guilty for this either. I will eat chocolate and cake and pie. I will also enjoy some spinach dip with sweet bread, thank you very much.

But on regular days, days like today? I will be good. I will eat my breakfast bar, drink my water, have my salad for lunch and my turkey lettuce wraps for dinner. I will not obsess over those indulgent days but I also won’t allow those days to leak into every day of this month.

For now, it’s the best I can do.

Picky

O’s preschool class is on a rotating schedule for snacks. Each child (parent!) receives a letter every eight weeks or so as a reminder that the following week is their turn to bring snacks. Our letter states that while there are ten kids in the class, only nine of them eat.

I guess it was a lucky coincidence that our snack week happened to fall in the same week I planned to take cupcakes for O’s birthday.

While there, I got to watch most of the kids devour their cupcakes. One little girl, though, had a cup of pudding. She was happily eating her pudding when Mrs. F. offered her a taste of the frosting from one of the cupcakes.

Poor little J, who can’t be much older than three years old, was not amused by the offer. She refused.

Mrs. F. tried to hide the yellow frosting in the vanilla pudding. J wasn’t fooled at all. Mrs. F tried to explain to J that her mommy wants her to try new things but J wasn’t impressed with that reasoning either.

I have a picky eater myself. Alyssa likes bologna, hotdogs, macaroni and cheese, corn, raw carrots and that’s about it unless you’re talking about snacks like chips and candy. Ugh!! It’s extremely frustrating. And now that she’s on the verge of nine years old, my patience is wearing thin with her dietary restrictions.

I told my mom about J’s refusal to even try the frosting and my mom wondered why a three year old has to be in school anyway. I pointed out that J has Down Syndrome and so she’s probably in school for therapies.

And it made me wonder. Why do the early intervention programs stop in-home therapies at three years old? This pushes the littlest and often most fragile of our kids out into the school atmosphere so early. We did send O to preschool when she turned three but my mom went with her. At the time, given the school she was attending, we weren’t comfortable sending her alone when she was so very little.

Most of the kids in that class were so much bigger than she was and more aggressive. At three years old, O had only been walking for seven months, so she was still a little wobbly.

These days, two whole years later, Olivia climbs on that bus all by herself and she can definitely hold her own with the kids in her class. She’s still not the biggest kid in the class but she’s not afraid of those who are bigger.

I realize that the social benefits of preschool are one of the driving points for getting kids in the classroom as young as three but I also think that parents need to be the ones who decide when their littlest ones are ready. I know that O wasn’t. Maybe J’s mom feels like J is ready for preschool and if so, I’m glad it’s available. But if she’s like I was two years ago and is only sending J because she knows she needs the therapies that are only available through the school system, it makes me sad.

It makes me think there needs to be some changes made in the early intervention programs that will allow parents a little more say in where their kids receive therapies once they hit three years old. Of course, I’m lazy, so I probably won’t do more than post my thoughts right here. If only I were a woman of action…