Oh, Maaaan!

Ian turned to me this morning and said “Nancy Day?” He goes to Nancy, his speech therapist on Thursdays. “No, Ian. Today is Wednesday. It’s daycare day.” “Oh, maaaaan! I don’t like daycare.” Recently, he’s replaced screams of protest with “Oh, maaaan!” complete with a hand gesture. [Video clip to come]

He’s not digging daycare. He doesn’t like the art projects. There’s a lot of sitting around time. He doesn’t like wearing his shoes for all that time. He doesn’t want to nap anymore, but they are making him sit in his sleeping bag for two hours any way. His teacher doesn’t seem all that fond of him.

Too bad for everyone. He’s got to stay there. As boring as that place is, it is much better for him to hang out with other kids than to be stuck at home with a dumb babysitter. And after a little googling this morning, I found out that daycares aren’t allowed to kick out kids with disabilities and that the school even has to pay for it, if he’s a non-inclusion class in the morning. Gee. Nobody told me that.

Picked up Ian from nursery school and transported him to the daycare. There was some whining and dragging of the feet on the way to the car, but I got him to the place. Bribes were doled out. Lunchables for lunch, because little cubes of slimy ham and cheese are so much more cool when they come in little tubs and swell graphic boxes. And I whispered a promise of McDonalds for dinner, if he was a good boy and didn’t take his shoes off or run out of the room or jump over the bodies of his sleeping classmates during naptime. As I shut the door of his classroom, I heard him yell, “wait for me!” There was a thump, as his body collided with the door.

Oh, yeah. Totally ready to get to work now. Nothing like massive doses of guilt and worry to jump start the creative process. Called Steve and my mom to report events, bought myself some treats at Starbucks, and then forced myself to write a conference proposal and finish copyediting a book chapter in the town library.

Around 3:30, Jonah came home. We picked up Ian 40 minutes later. He had a good day. When I walked in, he was lying in the arms of a little girl listening to the teacher read a story. The teacher said he did a good job, so after Jonah’s TKD practice, we drove to McDonald’s for the reward of saturated fats and a two-inch rat from Flushed Away. The kids figured out pretty quickly that you can get the rat to bite your finger and, like a pitbull, it doesn’t let go. Just kinda hangs there for a while. Really fun.

Dropped by my brother’s place on the way home for a quick chatteroo with my sister in law. Need to do more dropping by. We don’t do that enough. Made plans to see Borat on Friday with them.

We pulled in the driveway, just as Steve came home. Hello. Hello. Kisses. Baths.

As I was tucking Ian into bed, Jonah came in with a huge smile on his face. “Mom, Dad is folding up laundry and he touched your underwear and your boob covers.” I am usually good with the fact that I live in a house with all male types, but then my son goes and calls a bra, a boob cover. Oh, maaaan!