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All of my friends are talking about the
beginning of summer. And I'm reading blog post after blog post about
graduations. Preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, and
college. We are talking about Father's day. July 4th merchandise is
arriving in stores. Pools are open. After-school classes are ending.
But it is not summer for my family. My son's preschool runs on
an 11 month calendar. So he doesn't end until JULY. His preschool
graduation is not until July. So when people ask me if I have decided about kindergarten yet, and I say no, it is because I still have not had my end of the year conference. School isn't over for us yet.
In
some ways, it is a really nice schedule. As a working mom, I only have
to struggle with summer care for a month. And the school runs a camp,
and only closes for 3 days for turnover, so it is almost a year round
schedule. I see the benefit of year round school. Less daycare
struggle for working parents. And lets be honest, for a lot of
parents, school is their daycare plan. And kids don't lose as much
knowledge without a long summer break. But on the other hand I
am exhausted by the hustle and bustle of school. I'm ready for the
lazy hazy days of summer. I want to have pictures to post of my own
son's preschool graduation. (Although his school does a "stepping up"
ceremony.) And if I'm exhausted by it I can't even imagine how he must
feel. I'm not even sure he will notice a difference between school and
camp. It is in the same building and practically the same thing. I
call it preschool with a bathing suit. So here we are, the third
week of June and still in school. Although he has a professional day
this week and I'm taking off of work. I am thinking of taking him to
the movies in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. Why not, right?
It is the summer.
I was recently in a local bagel place
when a child, who I believe had special needs, not that that makes a
difference to this story, had a temper tantrum. A full on temper
tantrum. On the floor, kicking and screaming, and wailing. And a
woman, a few tables over, SHUSHED THE CHILD. The mother looked at her
mortified. I almost yelled at that woman, but I kept my mouth shut. And then I read an article
on CNN about a woman who assaulted a three year old who was kicking her
seat on a plane. She grabbed the child and said "you’re not going to
be kicking my seat all the way to Las Vegas” and then slammed the boy
back down onto his seat. And the comments to the article for the most
part agreed with these actions. Did I miss when we stopped turning
around and asking the parent of the child to have the child stop
kicking the seat? The answer is now to ASSAULT CHILDREN?
My friend Amy recently wrote a post
about being followed around a mall by a man who thought her special
needs son was too old to be in a stroller. I'm not exactly sure why
this was his business. Look, I get the whole it takes a village
to raise a child thing. And in my group of friends we will certainly
step in when there is an issue. In fact, my playgroup has an unspoken
rule. Any of us can discipline anyone else's child. It is not
uncommon to hear another mom say "no" to my own son or to break up an
argument between two children. But these are people he has known since
he was six weeks old. When a parent leaves their child at my
house for a play date I'm sure they would expect me to step in if there
was an issue. And I would expect another parent to step in if my son
needed discipline and I was not around. Or if a child is clearly in
danger, like running into a street, then yes, it is appropriate for a
stranger to interfere. But look, that mom whose child is having a
temper tantrum in the busy restaurant, she is mortified enough. She
doesn't need your SHUSH. And it is never okay to put your hands on
someone else's child, or follow someone around a mall. It takes a village only goes so far.
Like most women, I have been incredibly
loyal to my hairdresser. But after my last couple of cuts, I have
walked out feeling less than happy. And I have been unable to
articulate exactly why I am not happy, I just end up going home,
styling my hair, and feeling, not so thrilled with it. And then I live
with it for 8 weeks, go back, and do it all again. But I always love
my color, and I don't want to go one place for a cut, and another for
color. Couple that with the fact that we recently moved and my
hairdresser is by my old house. It is 20 minutes away. Which doesn't
seem like a lot. But with traffic and the fact that I color my hair it
is like a whole day process to get my hair done. And I just don't have
that kind of time for something I don't like all that much. But how
exactly do you find a new hairdresser when you have been going to the
old one for 5 years?
I know the advice is ask family and friends, but I have, and for one
reason or another, I haven't been able to find one that way. I'd like
to find something very close to my house, for convenience sake. Can I
just start calling salons I pass on the street? How does that work?
While I haven't loved my cut, it's not terrible, and I do like my
color. I'd hate to end up with something truly awful. This is my hair
we are are talking about. I
know this is not the biggest issue in the world. It is not hunger, or
poverty, or war, or health care, but as women, our hair is pretty
important to us. That's why there is a hair salon in almost every
strip mall in suburbia and a million of them in cities. But how do we
snuff out the good ones?
My son turned five a few weeks ago, and
since then the questions have been nonstop. The ride to and from his
preschool is 15 minutes, and those fifteen minutes are just non stop
why. For example: "Mom, how long do I have to go to school?" "Until you are 18, at least. But I went to school for much longer than that." "How much longer?" "Until I was 24." "Why would you do THAT?" "Because I wanted to be lawyer?" "WHY?" "That is a question for the ages Michael." And then, it morphs into questions about something that happened from his day.
"Mommy?" "Yes?" "E.
and I played bad guys outside and Miss C. said we should not play bad
guys and I want to play bad guys and why can't we play bad guys?" "What did your teacher say?" "That we can't play bad guys." "Then you can't play bad guys." "But why?" "Because that is what your teacher said." "But why?" "Because that is what your teacher said." "But why?" "Because you have to listen to your teacher." "But why?" "Because those are the rules of school. And playing bad guys is not nice." "But why?" "Michael, I don't know how to answer this question any other way." "But Mommy." "Because we are home now and this conversation is over." "But, Mommy....." "Yes?" "Do you have waiters at work?" "Waiters?" "To serve you lunch?" "No. I serve myself lunch. Do you have waiters at school?" "Just my teachers." "Can we go inside now?" (We had been sitting in the driveway for 5 minutes during the endless stream of questions. "Mommy, why don't you have a baby?" "WHAT?" "A lot of the other kids at school have babies and you don't have a baby?" "Well, Daddy and I decided not to have a baby. We think our family is complete." (Please let this conversation be over.) "But why?" "Because that is what Daddy and I decided." "But why?" "Um....." "I know why, the baby wouldn't have anywhere sleep. There is no room in my room." "Um, sure." "We can go inside now."
I
love that my son is so inquisitive and he he has a lot of questions,
but sometimes, every once in a while, a little peace and quiet would be
nice. And a little less.....WHY??????
My son planned his 5 year old birthday party
for six months. And I'm honestly scared for his Bar Mitzvah. He kept
talking about "the list" and who was on the list and what we were going
to do and the favors and etc., etc. I'm not sure who this child was,
but for him, his 5 year old birthday party was a very big deal. We eventually settled on a local firehouse
that allowed you to use the party room if you made a donation to the
firefighters. And who doesn't like firefighters? They save your life
in a fire. And I somehow missed that this meant I would be responsible
for doing absolutely everything. The food, the entertainment, the
favors, everything.
The week before the party was the perfect storm of crazy week at work,
a crazy week at home, and out of town guests coming in for the BIG
PARTY. And of course the morning of the party we were hit with
torrential thunderstorms and we woke up to no power. Which in itself,
was enough to make me cry having spent 4 days without power after the
most recent snowstorm. But
the power came back on after 3 hours, and we managed to load all of the
food and fireman hats and coloring books and balloons and cake into the
car in the rainstorm, and unload it once we got to the firehouse. (So
much for nice hair in pictures.) My son's friends arrived, parents
arrived, and for two hours I entertained 20 children, age 2-5. The
fireman gave a fantastic tour. The children put stickers on plastic
firemen hats, colored fire related coloring books, played pin the tail
on the fire dog, and of course, ate ice cream and cake. And at
the end of it all, my newly five year old son looked at me and said,
"Mommy, it was the perfect party. I couldn't have asked for anything
better. But what are we doing for my school party on Monday?"
I just spent the past 73 hours without power
in my house. In a blizzard. More if you count the 8 hours we lost
power, and then it came back on for 8 hours, just to lose it again, for
73 hours, straight. And what I encountered during that time was a
complete failure by our electric company to communicate any information as to what was going on or when we were going to be able to get our electricity back. At
first, it was ok. Sure, it was boring and cold and annoying. But I
kept calling the outage line to be told by an automated machine they
had no restoration times and I understood. We were in the middle of a
blizzard. Snowpocalypse the DC area was calling it. So we light a
fire and hunkered down and then I started tweeting on my iPhone.
I found lots of my friends didn't have power either. I found the Pepco twitter page,
whose tweets went from the aggravating to the downright bizarre, like,
if you don't have power, you should leave, while emergency personnel
were telling everyone, WHITEOUT CONDITIONS, GET OFF THE ROAD. And
every time I called the Pepco outage line, I never got a restoration
time. One by one I watched on twitter while everyone got their power back, but me, and my friend Amy.
And after about 24 hours, when our streets had been plowed, we started
calling hotels to discover that they were all filled by power outage
refugees. The local power outage shelter wouldn't let us take our dog
and I refused to leave him in the freezing cold. Luckily, my best
friend's roads were passable, not great, but passable, and we loaded up
the car and the dog and headed over there. I will be eternally
grateful for the warmth she provided us because at this point we were
simply, freezing. And I watched Pepco tweet what a great job they were
doing. While at my friend's I finally got a restoration time that
put us at a full week without power, and we were slowly closing in at
three days at my friend's house, with sick two year old twins. I felt
as if I couldn't impose on my friend that long, and my parent's private
road had recently been plowed. So after 2 days at my friend's (and one
futile trip back to our house on icy roads when Pepco called and told
us we had power and we didn't) we packed it up and went to my parent's,
where they proceeded to lose power. They called Pepco, where they
promptly, received no information. Are we sensing a pattern
here? We went home. We needed to check on the house anyway as our
roof has been leaking (I know) and at this point, we were out of
choices. As we pulled into the neighborhood, we noticed all of our
neighbors huddled outside starring at A PEPCO TRUCK. I walked over and
asked them how long. "It should be a few minutes." And, after 73
hours plus 8, it was. We had about 14 hours of uninterrupted
power when we lost it again for about 30 minutes, at which point I
called Pepco again to be told, nothing, rudely. We had now lost power
3 times and they were being rude to me. They had no idea why we lost
power again. Luckily it was restored rather quickly. And we are not
out of the power woods yet. We still have high winds today and they
say they may have more outages. Look, I know the system was
stressed by the recent storm and I was not the only person this
happened to. But over 73 hours without power, a freezing 4 year old, a
leaky roof, and NO ANSWERS, it is enough to make you go insane. Pepco
is the only deal in town and there has to be some accountability and
some change that comes from this. This cannot happen again. Pepco has
to be able to answer questions when you call. At least give you a
reasonable time frame for when you can have your power back on.
Because just saying it will be a week to shut you up? Unacceptable.
We got a wii for Hanukkah. And yes, we were
maybe some of the last people on the planet to obtain said gaming
system. I was one of those, what the hell am I going to do with a wii
kind of people? I don't really like video games. And we don't really
NEED ONE. But my four year old started Occupational Therapy for some
fine motor and gross motor issues and his OT suggested it as something
we could do at home to work on gross motor skills. And then I received
a wii fit at a Nintendo blogging party and my mom offered to buy us a
wii for Hanukkah, and we ended up with a wii. It is has totally
changed the way my family interacts with each other.
My husband has never been TV person. And I love TV. So in the
evenings, after my son went to bed, I would watch tv and he would go up
in his office and do whatever. Unless we specifically scheduled time
to watch a movie together, or we were working on a project for the
house together, we weren't really "together." Now we wii
And my four year old loves this thing. He begs to play it. He wakes
up every morning yelling, time to wake up and wiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!
And I really do see what his OT is talking about. The sports games are
active. And he is always moving. And I would rather have him moving
around then watching TV. Also, we just have to threaten to take the
wii away and Michael falls right in line. It is my new favorite
discipline technique. I
am cognizant though of too much "screen time." I have always been
fairly strict about television time for Michael, but I see myself
slipping when it comes to the wii. Do I add up wii time with TV time
to come to the total, or is it separate? And because it is active, I
don't seem to care as much because Michael is not sitting on the couch
and vegging out. I'm sure the newness will wear off soon and
things will go back to normal. But I really like the fun family time
we have been having. Even if it is getting a tad competitive.
This will be my ninth year hosting
Thanksgiving for a large crowd. Ninth year. Every year I promise
myself I will not stress. I will plan better. I will start earlier.
I will, something.....
Ha!
This year we moved, twice, and now my son is having significant problems in preschool,
and I work part-time, and all of a sudden I turn around and
Thanksgiving is a week and a half away. A week and a half away. I
have ordered a very large turkey and discovered that I have no idea
where my recipe folder is. Good times!
Look, I know the holidays are supposed to be filled with the wonderment
of cinnamon and vanilla smells throughout your home and the laughter
and love of family and friends. But really, does anyone who HOSTS the
holidays feel this way? And if you do, how? Other than Xanax and
wine?
I'm not trying to complain. It's lovely that my son has both sets
of grandparents alive and that our sisters come and everyone gets to be
together. It is, and I am not trying to trivialize that. I just don't
remember the last time I ate on Thanksgiving. Oh wait, it was 10 years
ago, before I started hosting it.
Instead of writing this blog post I should be looking for my recipe
folder. Or trying to recreate it. Or making shopping lists or cooking
lists or some other kind of list. Or maybe try to convince my husband
that one of those boxed pick up and go Thanksgiving dinners REALLY IS
the way to go. I suggested that to my husband one year and his
response to me was "I don't know what you are talking about.
Thanksgiving is not that hard." Yes, the fight that ensued was epic.
And yes, IT REALLY IS THAT HARD THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I think I will procrastinate just a little bit longer.
My best friend gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, and the baby's baby naming is coming up ( Sim chat Bat,
as it is known in Hebrew.) My best friend is also a Rabbi, and this is
her first child, and this is a very important day for her. I live
in a very Jewish area. 50 percent of my high school was Jewish. 50
percent of the world's population is not Jewish, but 50 percent of my
high school was Jewish. So why exactly did it take me three
trips to three different card stores to find a baby naming card? When
they had a million Christening, Baptism, and Dedication cards? And
what exactly is the difference between a Christening, Baptism, and
Dedication that they each need a hundred different cards?
I realize I just could have gotten her any generic baby girl card, but
I did not want to. And I should not have to. This is not an uncommon
tradition. And when I finally did find the card I needed I found one
version. One. So I bought two, one for my parents, and one for me. Yet,
they had every kind of Christening card imaginable. Christening your
special needs child. Christening your adopted child. If I was the
parent of a special needs child or the parent of an adopted child I
would be so offended by these cards. Your child is your child. You
don't need to call them out on the day of their Christening for being
different. Can't we just celebrate them for being them? I'm
not Christian, but does it matter at their Christening that they have
special needs or are adopted on the day of their Christening? Really?
It is so important they need their own card? But Jewish children can't
have a card? It is almost like being over inclusive and under inclusive at the same time.
Out of nowhere on Friday, while driving Michael to preschool from
the back seat I hear, "Mommy, remember when we met Mickey and Goofy?" "Of course Michael." "I don't think that was real, I think that was just a costume." "Of course it was real Michael." "No it wasn't." "What makes you say that?" "Because they live in Mickey's clubhouse. Not on the Mickey boat."
"Couldn't they have left the clubhouse to come on the Mickey boat?" "No." "No?" "No." "Why not?" "Because they can't leave the clubhouse." "Michael, I know that that was Mickey and Goofy." "I wasn't Mommy. It just wasn't." I'm
devastated. If my 4 year old doesn't believe he saw Mickey, what's
next? It's a good thing we don't believe in Santa. How am I ever
going to get him to believe in the tooth fairy? What is he going to do when we go back in two years? Turn to Mickey and say you're not Mickey?
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