Glimpses

This morning's Facebook status:

The good news is that I took a personal day and get to take E to pre-school this morning. The bad news is that afterwards I get to work on a 20 paper for round 2 of comps. So, yay! And also, ugh.

It's silly, really, that they give me 4 weeks to work on such a paper when I am obviously going to do it over one weekend. This is relevant to this blog post, however, because it means that I am saving every bit of coherency I possess for the paper-writing extravaganza that will begin at 9AM. The blog therefore gets whatever rambling drivel I happen to think about typing while trying to wrestle Eamon into clothes for school.

(Hi, future Eamon! This is my attitude for documenting your childhood! You're welcome!)

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Scene 1

6:15AM: I enter Eamon's bedroom.

"Mommy," he says somberly. "I had a bad dream."

"Oh, dear. What was this one about?"

"Swiper," he says, invoking the name of the wily fox on Dora the Explorer who, well, swipes things. He is the main component of 95% of Eamon's bad dreams.

"Oh, that Swiper. What did he do this time?" I ask.

"He took Daddy's pants."

While the image of a 43-foot long, slavering T-Rex only inspires thoughts of joyful frolicking through a prehistoric funscape, the thought of a small cartoon fox who can easily be defeated by the phrase, "Swiper, no swiping!" is the stuff of soul-crushing nightmares for my 2 year old.

Also...Daddy's pants? Huh? Why?

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Scene 2

4:45AM: I awake to desperate screams of "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

I rush into Eamon's room. "What's wrong?" I gasp, still reeling from the sudden shot of adrenalin coursing through my body.

Eamon sobs, "I lost Zurg. Where Zurg?"

I stare blankly at him. He cannot seriously have woken me up to search for a two inch tall plastic replica of a Toy Story character. I mention as much (or rather, the adrenaline does) then stumble back to bed while he quietly cries himself back to sleep in this now post-Zurg world in which kittens have ceased to gently mew, butterflies refuse to flit softly, and all is dark and only despair can reign from now until the end of our pointless, pathetic existences.

It then takes me about 45 minutes to come down off the adrenaline high and go back to sleep...until 5:30, which is when my alarm goes off. Of course, I ignore it and wake up at 6:15, which means we are now officially Running Late.

I burst back into Eamon's room to wake him up and get the day started. Feeling slightly guilty about my lack of compassion at 4:45, I allot 2 minutes to look for Zurg.

But there is no need. Eamon sits up, smiling, holding the small plastic toy.

"Where did you find that?" I ask.

He laughs. "In my hand. Oops. Silly Eamon." I reflect that one day, this will probably be really funny. But not today.

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Scene 3

4:26PM: At Eamon's pre-school conference night, we see another mother. Her daughter is about a year younger than Eamon, so about to turn 2.

The mother confides that every night during their prayers, the little girl always seems really confused.

"I think it's when we say 'Amen,'" Mom explains. "She keeps looking around the room. Finally we realized that she thinks we're saying 'Eamon.'"

I bet she wonders why her parents are so darn obsessed with that little boy from school.

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Scene 4

6:57AM

"Eamon, smile for the camera. I need to post a blog and document your childhood so that one day you we can all look back and remember to laugh about that Zurg incident."



"Eamon! What the heck was that? You look like you're going to be sick. I need a nice smile so we can all look back and think about how nice everything was."



"Eamon! Come on. Please?!"



"Okay, seriously, kiddo..."



"Eamon, come out of the blanket. Please. I promise I'll stop if you just smile once. Just one picture I can use. Please."



"Aw, thank you, darling. And if anyone asks, you did that because you finally saw reason and wanted to help your mother out, and not because I just made barnyard animal noises until you finally started giggling. Okay?"

Today was...a day.

I spent most of Friday in the doctor's office or at Lab Corp, therefore today started by waking up early so I could go to work early so I could catch up.

I waited all day for a phone call from said doctor...which never came.

I was involved in a miscommunication at work, and even though it wasn't my fault, I spent the rest of the afternoon obsessing over how I should have done X or Y to avoid it.

My shoes, which matched my outfit fine in my home mirror, suddenly looked terrible once I got to work.

One of the lights in my office blew out, swathing the entire room in semi-dark dreariness.

It was a day.

And then...finally...at 4:45, I walked into my parents' house and he ran to me, screaming "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" I picked him up and held him as he and clutched his arms around my neck. We just stood there, clinging to one another for several minutes.

"I missed you," I whispered.

"I missed you, too, Mommy," he whispered back.

On the car ride home, we sang the alphabet song. He told me words that start with the letters A, B, C, D, and E. We discussed how funny dogs can be when they lick your face.

We came home, and he put away my shoes, which once again looked just fine now that I was home. We sat together on the couch. He cuddled up against me and we played Super Why together on the iPad, finding letters and singing the AlphaPig version of the alphabet song.

Yes, it was a day. A great one.

Happy Hawoween!

Highlights from our Halloween:

1. Lesson learned: Do not listen when your 2 year old child says he doesn't want to go trick-or-treating. He doesn't know. Force him kicking and screaming into his costume (the costume that, of course, he asked to wear EVERY.SINGLE.DAY since buying it three weeks ago, and suddenly decided he completely hates on October 31). Take him out. Show him how to knock on the first door. Watch his shocked face afterwards, and try not to laugh when he announces, "Mommy! He gave me CANDY. I need more CANDY. Let's go more houses NOW."

2. Eamon is an X-Men fan. Actually, he doesn't even care that much about the cartoon; he really just likes the credits. So when it came time to pick his costume, he chose Wolverine over Woody, Buzz, and Spiderman. I figured, though, that because it was a store-bought costume, everyone would have one. In fact, when we bought the costume, there was another little boy in the dressing room next to us, buying the exact same costume. I worried that maybe it was the costume of the season, but whatever. Eamon picked it out. I wasn't going to bring my neuroses into it.

But then I started to worry--maybe no one would have one, because it's the classic yellow-and-blue-spandex Wolverine from the cartoon, not the cooler black suit from the movie. Who would know that costume? Maybe it was too obscure.

Yeah, I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, and more wrong. I could probably learn something from my 2 year old, who just likes Wolverine and didn't stress about his costume one iota. As we walked along, rarely did we pass by a boy between the ages of 7 and 12 who didn't call out, "Hey, Wolverine! Awesome costume." I lost count of the number of times Eamon had to give high fives as he was congratulated on his costume taste. He seemed a bit bewildered by it all, actually.

And no, we did not see another Wolverine. Not even once.

3. After the candy-getting time, we went back to our house around 7. On the way back, I said, "Well, Eamon, we went trick-or-treating. We did it!"

He then launched into the Dora song, making up his own verse: "We knocked on the doors, and we said trick-or-treat, and we did it!" He then grooved a little just for good measure.

4. Back at the house, Eamon was just as enthralled with the giving of candy as the getting. We sat outside on folding chairs, and Eamon stayed in his Wolverine costume, garnering more high fives and swooning women (best mom quote: "Honey, his six pack is better than yours!") Our neighborhood is big into trick-or-treating, and we live near the front of the neighborhood, so we had a steady stream (often a flood) of trick-or-treaters.

Eamon loved giving out candy so much that during one of the rare lulls, he suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs, "HEY, PEOPLE! I GOT CANDY! EVERYBODY COME HERE!"

Yeah, Halloween was good. I already can't wait for 2012. I think I'll let Eamon pick out my costume.

Oh

I wrote this post well over a week ago. In fact, I've written several posts that I've never gotten around to posting because...I don't know. I guess because we've been sick, and I've been dragging myself around the house in the evenings, counting down the hours until I can go to bed and/or die a quiet death, and somehow, managing to take pictures, upload them, put them in the blog I've written, and press Publish Post...it's all too much.

(I have this self-imposed rule that all entries must have accompanying pictures, because I have a feeling that several people who "read" this really just scroll through for the pictures and I really hate disappointing hypothetical people.)

So some nights, I have energy to take pictures, but I can't find the camera. Then another night, I find the camera and take the pictures, but we have a new desktop and no one has loaded the photo editing software on it and HEAVEN FORBID I should post an un-strategically cropped photo and let you all see the coolers that have been sitting out in our backyard for weeks now because...I don't know. Because no one has taken them inside, I guess.

Then I finally convince myself that I'll be less judged for the cooler than for not posting, so I decide to just post the pictures as is...and I can't find the camera. And by that point, everything hurts and my head is stuffed up and I just tell Aaron it's his turn to put Eamon to bed and I collapse in a Nyquil-induced stupor for what seems like 5 seconds before the alarm goes off and I have to get up and get ready for work.

Anyway. Here's a post.

With a picture.

Just ignore the coolers in the background, okay?

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When the plaintive yell of “Mommy! Mommy!” comes the first time, I don’t have to sit bolt upright because the three pillows I’m sleeping on already have me at about 75 degree incline.

10:00 p.m.

I wait. I cough for good measure. Then I hear heavy footsteps traversing the stairs. Barely awake, I think, ah good, Aaron has this, and I slip back into unconsciousness.

“Mommy! Mommy!” comes another wail.

11:00 p.m.

Ugh. Wait. Cough. Footsteps. Sleep.

12:30 a.m.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

Wait. Cough. Blow nose. Wait. Hmm. No footsteps. Aaron has probably fallen asleep on the couch again watching old Spiderman cartoon re-runs.

I drag myself into Eamon’s room. “What?”

And then I hear it. The rattling breath. The stuffy nose. The bleary eyes that match mine.

“Oh,” I say. He coughs. I cough. Too tired and sick to be firm, I jerk my thumb back towards my room and mutter, “Come on.”

He grabs his blanket and Lion and toddles after me.

We take turns through the night drifting into sleep only to be awoken an hour later with violent gasps and coughs. He continues to whimper “Mommy, Mommy” in his sleep. I pat him sympathetically and try to cough as quietly as possible. He tosses and turns, trying to find a position where his nose will draw in air easily, and I keep trying to recover him with the blanket.

It is a long night full of half-conscious dreams.

In the morning, my mom texts. I tell her that we are sick. Again. I don’t write this, but I imply that we’ve been sick a lot lately, and I’m getting tired of it, and I don’t understand why it keeps happening.

“Welcome to pre-school,” she texts back. And she doesn’t write it, but she implies that this…is only the beginning.


Hi, Mommy. Please note that in the morning, I will be wide awake and full of energy like nothing ever happened, whereas your co-workers will start to secretly place bets on whether your sunken eyes and pale skin mean that you are a 19th century heroine dying of consumption or a vampire.

I Think We'll Give Scripps a Miss This Year

Aaron read the previous day’s post and liked it, but said that I also needed to post another story from the same day. (What can I say? Eamon was just “on” yesterday.)


If you’ve never had the pleasure of watching the PBS show Super Why, I can tell you that’s it just as repetitive as Dora, but better in my opinion because it’s all focused on the alphabet and reading. They mostly use lower case letters, so Eamon now knows all his uppercase and lowercase letters.

Because the show is so repetitious in form, Eamon feels comfortable “playing along.” When they ask him to say his name, he does. When they ask him to read the next letter, he can. He points to the “a” when they ask him to, and shouts out the letters in the words.

But most importantly, it’s teaching him that WORDS are made of LETTERS. Letters make sounds, and sounds make words. This is a huge concept, and I know that he’s getting it because of this incident yesterday:

From the backseat of the car, Eamon suddenly shouted, “MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!”

“Yes, Eamon?” I wasn’t worried. He’s terribly dramatic, and will often shout like that just to let me know he’s seen a school bus or a stop sign.

“I can spell, Mommy!”

Well, that's something new, I thought. I didn't even know that he knew the word "spell."

And then, Eamon began. “B.”

I thought to myself, it sounds like he's actually going to do it. He's actually going to spell a word. Maybe he’s going to spell “bed.” Or “bath.” Or “bat.”

Eamon continued, “R.”

Uh, okay. Maybe “brain” or “branch?”

“E.”

Okaaay… “bread?” Did we watch an episode about bread?

And last, “D.”

Wait, what?

He then announced triumphantly, “B-R-E-D spells ‘Presto!’”

Okay, so I guess we need to watch a few more episodes.

I Think from Now On We'll Just Call it a Yoo Hoo

I debated whether I should put this story on the blog, but my mother made me promise that I would. Here’s my warning: this story acknowledges that my son, Eamon Wolfe, is indeed a boy with all the requisite boy parts. There is nothing graphic, but if you find yourself easily offended by medical terminology, you might want to skip this entry.

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Eamon is two years old. He’s talking more and more, and wanting to know what everything is called. I’m the daughter of a nurse practitioner, so we have a rule in our house that we use the correct names for all body parts. I always thought this was a mature and responsible parenting choice, and never regretted it. Until today.

Another thing about having a two year old is that Eamon desperately wants to be independent. He’s a Big Boy, and as such he thinks that he deserves all the privileges afforded to Big Boys, like the right to eat only Frosted Mini-Wheat cereal for days on end, drive the car, or at least not have to constantly hold my hand in public places.

It’s the last privilege that often becomes a struggle. Eamon does not WANT to hold my hand. But he also doesn’t often want to stay where I can see him.

Today we got into our age-old argument in Subway.

It started innocently enough. Eamon walked in holding my hand, sweet and amiable as could be. But the man in front of us was ordering 3 subs…and apparently had never heard of the various meats, cheeses, and vegetables before because he had to have everything explained to him.

Eamon got bored.

Then he spotted it.

A Lion King poster.

He desperately wanted to go see that Lion King poster, across the restaurant, by the door, where I couldn’t keep an eye on him while also ordering my sub. He pulled away from me and started to run to the poster.

I told him to come back. Reluctantly, he did so.

But in protest, he then lay down on the floor and refused to move as the line moved up.

I hissed at him to get up.

He ignored me.

So I played the I'm Bigger and Stronger Than You card, and picked him up so that he was sitting on my hip. Even though he struggled, I held onto him and explained quietly to him that he made a bad choice so now he had to put up with the consequence. But he’s a big kid, and the more he struggled, the tighter I held him to keep from dropping him.

“Wanna get DOWN!” he protested.

“No,” I hissed again, repeating my mantra about choices and consequences, holding him tighter.

And that’s when he played a card I quite frankly never expected, and no parenting book or blog had prepared me for it.

“OW!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “MY PENIS! MY PENIS HURTS! MOMMY, YOU HURT MY PENIS!”

Everyone in the restaurant stared at us.

I put him down immediately.

We paid and walked quickly out the restaurant, one of us far more mortified than the other.

But he held my hand and walked nicely the rest of the time.



So I guess we both learned a very important lesson.

We'll call this one a draw.

Sometimes I Think We Are Secretly Playing Mad Libs and He Forgot to Tell Me

Outside the car, the sun twinkled its merry smile in the sky. Inside the car, however, a mystery began its churning rumble.

“How was school today?” I asked, still beguiled by the bright rays of the celestial golden orb and oblivious to the fate about to befall me.

“School’s fun!” shouted Eamon from the backseat.

The first answer giving me confidence, I immediately, and unknowingly, fell into the trap. “What did you do in school?” I asked.

“I pway with giraffe! I pway with elephant!” came the sing-song chorus.

“What ELSE did you do?” I continue to probe.

“No pway with giraffe! Sarah* pway! Eamon wait! Hmph!”

“Oh, Sarah wanted to play with the giraffe, too? You had to wait your turn?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Did you wait nicely?”

“Eamon, sit down!”

“But you are sitting down, sweetie…oh wait, you mean someone told you to sit down?”

Silence.

“Or that you were a good boy who sat down when he was supposed to?”

“The boy…the boy…the boy, Mommy.”

“What boy, Eamon?”

“The boy…he…tickled…me! Eamon!” (Another mystery to be solved: why Eamon feels the need to clarify his pronouns, in case I was unsure who he is referring to when he says “me”).

“A boy tickled you?”

“No tickling!”

“You told him no tickling?”

“Nooooooo…” he announces with a devilish smile.

“Miss Lauren told him no tickling?”

“Mmm hmm. No tickle, Eamon!”

“You mean she told YOU no tickling? Did you tickle the boy?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You tickled each other?”

“Owie, Mommy! Owie!”

“You got an owie?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Were you inside or outside?”

“Yes.”

“Well, which one?”

Suddenly silence draws a veil over his expression. “Shh, mommy. People working.”

“There are people working?”

“Uh huh.”

“You mean when Miss Lauren took you on a tour of the school, you had to be quiet because people were working?” I feel a bit proud, because finally, THIS strange fragment of a memory I understand thanks to an earlier mass email from Miss Lauren.

“Mmm hmm. Cwackers, mommy! Eamon eat cwackers!”

“Oh, I bet that was yummy. Did you eat anything else?”

“No, Mommy. Cwying! No cwying! Be okay…”

“You cried? Why would you have cried when you haven’t cried all week?”

“No Eamon cwy. Mark cry. Be okay, Mark. No cry.”

“Oh, Mark cried again?” (Every day I hear about poor Mark crying).

“Mmm hmm.”

“Did you tell him it would be okay?”

“Giraffe, mommy! Eamon pway giraffe!”

And that is how our wrap-ups about school go every day. I sift through these strange, half-remembered fragments and out-of-context phrases, desperately trying to piece together what the heck Eamon did for 3 and a half hours besides play with a giraffe (he seems most sure about that particular piece of information. He definitely plays with the giraffe every day. He and the giraffe are tight).

And Aaron has told me that I need to CHILL on grilling his poor teacher (not in a mean way! just in an interested, what the heck do you DO with 11 toddlers all morning because I can barely handle the 1 toddler I have! kind of way). So I am trying to be content with the assistant, Miss Savannah's, brief reports to my mother each day when she picks him up, which are always, "Eamon had a great day! He's such a good boy!"

Well, only a month until parent-teacher conferences.


*All names have been changed to protect kids whose parents probably aren't as obsessed with documenting every moment of their children's lives on the internet.

AND NOW FOR SOME COMPLETELY UNRELATED PICTURES...




Hellllllllo, Ladies.




What? Oh, this is just me...on my stump. You know. Some people might think it's hard to get up on a stump all by themselves, but I don't know, I've just always found it really easy. I guess you could just call me...naturally talented.




Yeah, I'm pretty modest, too.




And this is me, just kickin' back with muh dog and muh football. I like to do athletic things in my spare time, and I enjoy being kind to other creatures. Some people might say I'm quite a...catch. Get it?




Why, yes, people have told me before that I am super suave. How kind of you to notice. I don't suppose you'd be interested in playing with some small plastic dinosaurs sometime, would you? Or maybe a giraffe?

Excellent.