August has been schizophrenic. In between some old fashioned lazy days, there's been too much travel. Little plastic shampoo bottles litter the bathroom, and the toiletry kits still hang from hooks.
On Friday, my parent took the kids to the Intrepid, so I had the day to myself. I cleaned the upstairs, while Luz, the cleaning lady, did the downstairs. It was really a two person mess. Exhibit A – our bath mat. I guess I hadn't changed the bath mat in a while, because when I tried to pull it up, it didn't move. The rubber backing had become fused to the tile floor. I had to rip up the rug in order to remove it from our lovely, brown tile.
I threw myself into the cleaning partially because our house was a Haz-Mat site. Also, it was a way of putting off the conference prep that needs to happen. I have to make an outline for my talk on Saturday at the APSA conference.
I'm flying out on Thursday, right after I get my haircut. I'm going to miss the kids first week of school. I'll be home on Wednesday, their first day. But I won't be around for all that paperwork and adjustments of the rest of the week. I'll be doing long distance parenting. Steve, you should know by now. Ian only eats panella bread. No butter, mustard, mayo, lettuce, or American cheese. Everything must be put in zipped up bags. He also needs two juice boxes, Veggie Bootie, strawberries, and two chocolate chip cookies. Jonah likes lettuce in his sandwich, but no American cheese.
Steve is working from home those days and will be running the ship. And then his parents arrive Friday for a five day visit. I'll be back on Sunday.
For some reason, I'm more nervous about this conference than I have been in the past. The classic bad dreams have set it. I'm in Toronto, but I don't have my luggage with my nice clothes and my presentation material. I can't find the room and I'm super late. I'm running down hallways. Wait. Are they padded walls like in an insane asylum? And it's getting later and later.
Today, I need to finish assembling the bags of school supplies. $70 at Staples so far. I have to go back for some missing items today. The kids summer homework needs to be finished off and tucked away in folders. We're forgoing the back-to-school sneakers right now. Money crunch. But they have brand new backpacks from Land's End with their names stitched in at the top.
Jonah and I are waiting around for Ian to wake up. The neighborhood girls were screeching under the boys' bedroom window last night, and I think they had trouble falling asleep. I'll take them to the diner for a treat, then Staples, Shop Rite, homework, and then later soccer practice. If I keep moving, then I won't notice how nervous I am.
Apt. 11d 
Steve, you should know by now. Ian only eats panella bread.
I don’t do that. When my husband is in charge of the kids, he’s truly responsible for them; I don’t need to second-guess what he’s doing and he doesn’t need to hear me bossing him around. Same thing when he goes away, except he reminds me of my son’s soccer practices because I subconsciously want to forget them. It makes us both a lot happier!
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I have to tell Steve what to do with the kids for several reasons.
1. Ian has special needs, so things need to be done a certain way or all hell breaks loose. If his lunches aren’t made exactly the right way, not only will he not eat anything for the whole day, but he might gag at the sight of the wrong sandwich and vomit all over the lunch table. He’ll goo up everyone else’s lunches and be sent home for the day. That happened six times last year.
2. Steve rarely does the morning school routine, so he has no idea what to do. He’s usually out of the house by 6:45, so he never sees the kids in the morning.
3. Ian goes to a school out of district. If something is forgotten, then you have to spend an hour in the car driving back and forth from his school. His school bus arrives at the same time as Jonah’s school starts. I still need to figure out how to get Jonah to school on snowy days when I have to be home to put Ian on a school bus.
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This is our third week of school, but we’ll finish up the year at the end of May. Interestingly, getting two kids off to school has been easier than just one, especially with the kids being a year older now. Last year D was theoretically in preschool two days a week, but the kids didn’t go to school together, so it felt different. This year, C (in 2nd grade now) seems much less to think of school as a gross imposition and violation of her human rights this year. Discussing their lunches in the morning (Daddy made pumpkin muffins last night!) seems to help. Lunch service starts in about a week, but given that it’s not a public school, the hot lunches are rather expensive, so I foresee packing a lot of lunches this year.
Homework started with reading, but C has started to have 2 or 3 pages of Singapore math at night. So far, so good, but I wonder when spelling words start.
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I’m still working on getting *myself* back to school next week. Life is surreal when you can’t drive yourself.
The school supplies are mostly set except that my daughter needs shoes desperately. Her feet keep growing (a fact for which she blames me and my size 10Ws–hey, they were size 9.5 till I had you, babe!). And my husband seems to think it a gross imposition to take her out to buy shoes.
L, I get what you’re saying about Ian’s special needs. E’s new quirk is that he resists eating most lunch foods (and won’t eat other-meal foods for lunch because they’re not lunch foods–duh! I sent Ken out to the store to get crush cup yogurts (which E always wants and which we rarely buy), hoping the novelty would appeal to him. I also told my husband to get “volcano” yogurts (YoPlait–E calls them volcano yogurt because of the shape). So Ken called me from the store saying “Do I get crush cups OR volcano?” He couldn’t get his brain around the idea of getting both because I had no idea which one E would eat. And the answer is probably that he’ll eat neither, come home, and want to eat Nilla Wafers all afternoon while I fret about his nutritional needs.
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Crush cup yogurt has just entered my aweness. I was sent to the store to get some. Except I’d never heard of them and assumed I was to get ‘crunch’ cup yogurt, since I was acquainted with the idea of putting granola and other crunchy bits into the yogurt.
Also, my dad drove with with only one moveable foot. Granted, it was his right foot that worked. But, he was driving a manual transmission and it wasn’t just his left foot that was gone. His entire left side was frozen by a stroke. Mom got really mad at me for letting him drive like that (there was a fair bit a swerving involved). However, the drive was crash free and crucial to getting him to buy a new car.
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I can’t even imagine driving with my left foot. So many people have suggested it, but all I can think of is that I don’t want to break my other ankle, too. 🙂
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Wendy,
Forget I am even making this suggestion, but have you considered Lunchables? They are indisputably a lunch food and they come in a box. C talks longingly about them.
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Amy, Lunchables worked for a couple of weeks. We still have a few rejected ones in the fridge. Would C like them? 😉
We also have Hot Pockets in the freezer. Ken thinks that if a kid shows an interest in a food, he should buy 50 gajillion of them. He does not understand the Rule of Children and Food taught to me by my father so many years ago–the minute you stock up on your child’s favorite food, s/he will immediately lose interest. My dad learned this rule when he found himself with a closet full of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup I refused to eat.
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Hunh. Kid Three invented the crush-cup stuff all on her very own. Where do we go to get the royalties?
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“Would C like them? ;)”
Oh, yes, as long as the Oreos are intact.
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Maybe ours can patent “Chair-paint yogurt”.
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Update: my son reports that blueberry crush-cup yogurt is AWESOME and today was the first day EVER that he actually LIKED eating lunch in the cafeteria.
Did blueberry crush-cup yogurt make the difference? *ponders*
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