Preparing for Back to You-Know-What

I can't believe I'm even writing about this in July. It seems almost sacreligious and rude, but the truth is that school starts here in Mattoon in THREE weeks. I'm not allowed to talk about it at home, but it's only three weeks away. This means that teachers (including my husband) are gearing up both emotionally and physically for the start of school. Shad can't get into his classroom until August 1st, but that is only next week and then he will have a measly 8 weekdays to prepare his room before he must start attending some insane-o three day Staff Extravaganza of meetings (aka The Hope Conference that is being hosted at his school for other districts). Ick.

So, here it is staring us in the face: Fall. Because school starting really is synonomous with fall, isn't it? Well, it used to be. It is only July and yet we are faced with preparing for a season that doesn't technically start for 2 more months. Who decided that school should start in the middle of August around here? I'm pretty sure that there are entire states where school starts after Labor Day, aren't there? At least that is September and maybe a month closer to jeans-wearing weather. Who can think about wearing back-to-school jeans in August? And what fun is back to school shopping without buying jeans?

And tennis shoes. And crayons. And a new backpack and/or lunchbox (for those that partake in sack lunch). Truly, what is more fun about back-to-school than shopping for going back to school? I overheard some moms talking about buying new backpacks the other day here at the library and complaining about how their kids think they have to have a new backpack every year. What? OF COURSE THEY HAVE TO HAVE A NEW BACKPACK EVERY YEAR! You can't start a new year of school with last year's backpack!!! That's like starting a new job and wearing the same old clothes. (OH, ok maybe I've had to do that... ). Well, it's like buying a new house and putting all old furniture in it. (OH, fine, we've all done that, too...). But you get the idea, right? You can't start 1st grade with a Kindergarten backpack. What would that do to your little 1st grade morale?

Really, the only great part about going back to school is buying all of the stuff that you take with you on the first day: the crayons and glue and scissors and paper and maybe even markers or paints. And you have to take them in a new backpack or school bag (I do realize that the messenger bag is about to trump the backpack as the bag of choice among the youth...I'm not that out of touch, thank you very much). And for about a week, it's really fun to open your desk at school and use your new crayons and pencils and notebooks. It's like a balm on the wound that is the death of summer vacation. As it scabs over, you delicately medicate it with the smell of new Crayolas and really sharp pencil lead. Your handwriting even looks better in that first week, too, you'll recall. Then the newness wears off and the crayons are dulled and the notebook becomes a symbol of mathematics (ie. disgust) and you're right back in the swing of school as if you'd never had a summer in the first place.

So, maybe the sooner the better... let's get it over with and move on with real life. The days of the year where I get up at 6am instead of leisurely sleeping until 6:40. Eating breakfast standing up in the bathroom. Trying to put on make-up without getting make-up in the cereal. Fighting with children about getting ready in time. These are not things that I relish, but they are real life so Bring It On.

And in the meantime, I think I will stock up on my very own personal box of crayons. The big box with the sharpener in the back. I'll use thistle and vermillion and silver to make a picture for myself and tape it to the wall in my office next to the kids' artwork. After all, why should grown-ups miss all of the fun of going back to school??

The Numbers Game

Guess who's gonna be 3 on Monday??

Yep, Nathanael David. He couldn't be acting more like a classic Terrible Two Year Old lately, but here comes age 3 and there's no stoppin' it. And this year he totally knows that he's having a birthday and that we will have cake and ice cream, he will get presents (though he hasn't yet learned to ask for anything in particular, which is refreshing), and he will then be 3. He's been wondering about his birthday since about February when we celebrated mine. Satisfied mostly with the answer that it will be his birthday "Someday", he has requested a Spiderman cake and seems to be ready to be the Big 3 in all but one way...

That's right, Mr. Nate, who will soon be 3, will not attempt #2 on the potty. #1 has been going alright, especially at daycare where peer pressure and teachers with rules send you to the potty about 17 times a day. He is able to stay dry there most days. And Daddy even taught him how to stand up and go #1, which is awesome fun and only marginally more messy than using the little potty sitting down. It seems that in the area of #1, we are just a few days in underwear shy of being trained.

However, given his preference to make #2 in his pants, wearing underwear isn't always the most successful of activities lately. It makes for some wicked nasty laundry, which is typically my area of expertise. And if I were home all of the time, even for a week, I would jump on the underwear wagon and hope for the best. The fact is, of course, I'm not home all of the time and Shad doesn't seem ready to offer his services as Potty Trainer in Residence. So, what to do?

Talking to Nate about the task at hand (as I frequently do), he replied to my suggestion of making poo poo on the potty with this very succint statement: "No, I not gonna do that. That's too hard." This leads me to believe that his resistance in this area is rooted in a lack of confidence, but how on earth do we boost his confidence if he won't even try?? For months now, we've read books, watched videos, played the Elmo Potty game online, all to no avail. I decided to try (again) to bargain with him.

"Nate, if you make poo poo on the potty, I will take you to the store to pick out new underwear."

He thought about this. He thought that sounded like fun. OK!!! Off he went to try sitting on the potty to make poo poo. He sat for a minute and whaddya know, no poo poo. Shocker.

"Now let's go get new underwear!!" he exclaimed.

Right. He totally doesn't get the concept of bribery. His end of the deal is rarely fulfilled when I offer a "reward" (aka bribe). Yet he is just pretty sure that he should still get the reward.

Alas, we are a little stuck with the #2 level of potty training. I don't remember this being an issue for Maia. She had ONE accident after she was in underwear. I remember it well because it was just the ONE time (and we were out to eat with my parents...). That was it. She was a few weeks from turning 3 and after that one accident, we were done potty training.

This boy thing is very different. The degree of stubbornness and refusal is much stronger and the determination to accomplish the task is lacking. I guess that adds up to him just not being quite ready. *sigh* Mind you, he's still obsessed with talking about poop, and this kid is in time-out almost daily for calling one of us Poopyhead. He even told me that he's going to poop and pee on his birthday cake. I thought that was a fitting threat from an almost 3 year-old who refuses to do #2 on the potty. You could say that he's stuck in a very anal stage right now. :) And I guess we don't want to rush that lest he miss something in this critical stage of development.

Still, if anyone has been through this stage with a young man and would like to give me any advice, advise away. I'm open to any and all suggestions, realizing that it is likely not going to happen on my time table (which would have been 6 months ago) no matter what we do.

And, despite this frustration, my Baby Boy is turning 3!!! I guess we will focus on that excitement for these next few days and pick up potty stuff where we left off later in the week. ;)

Well, it's taken me a while, but, as promised, I will disclose my thoughts on grandparents and how, even though they spoil our children, they are a fabulous group of people. (Take, for instance, Papa and Grammy Huddleston who stood in the rain with the kids for the 4th of July parade on Wednesday.)

Those of you in my family will know that I grew up with one set of grandparents close by and one set of grandparents in Florida. We saw my mom's parents every week or so throughout most of my childhood. They lived on the farm until I was 7, and I can remember lots of farmy stuff from my early childhood, which is cool. That said, my grandparents had 12 other grandchildren and I was just one of them (stuck exactly in the middle, actually), AND they were the kind of grandparents from the bygone era of not spoiling grandchildren. My grandma would make cookies before we came and put them in the brown ceramic cookie jar for us, and often there would be ice cream bars in the deep freeze. Sometime Grandpa would send us home with 50 cents each "for the ice cream truck". That was about as far as the "spoiling" went. And that was ok. I didn't feel slighted. Once I got a Strawberry Shortcake doll for Christmas. Once some earmuffs. I'm sure there were other gifts, but not many, and that was alright.

My dad's parents moved to Florida before I was born. We saw them once a year which involved a laborious 2 to 3 day drive in the family station wagon (or, later, the mini-van--oh yeah!!) followed by a week of sleeping on couches or blow-up air mattresses in a musty, smokey double-wide trailer. But we got to go to the beach, eat out a lot (Grandma R. didn't really "do cooking"), take a side trip to Bush Gardens or, if we were lucky, Disney World. And the last night before we went home, my grandma would let me pick a piece of costume jewelry from the leftovers of her famous faux collection. Again, that was as far as the spoiling went and I didn't feel slighted. OH, and once they sent me a nightgown for Christmas. I'm not sure what precipitated that because it was just the one time. And I remember thinking that it was kind of weird, but it was alright because I hadn't been expecting anything in the first place.

Enter Shad.

Here is a boy who was utterly surrounded by grandparents. Short of actually living with or being raised by a grandparent, he was about as involved with his grandparents as a kid can be. And he had scores of them! Four of them in Mattoon alone! He was the first/oldest on one side and the ONLY on the other side. Since his parents separated when he was 1, his Grandma and Grandpa Huddleston housed him frequently on the weekends during his time with his dad. And his mom's mom and step-dad were just up the street with a POOL in the backyard. I don't know what actual hours were clocked with his grandparents, but they had to be almost as many waking hours as he was at home, maybe more. Was he spoiled? Probably. He would say no and remind me that he saved uphis own money at age 9 to buy his own VCR (complete with wired remote control). Still, his experience with grandparents growing up was vastly different from mine. For sheer amount of time spent with grandparents, he wins hands down.

Enter Maia and Nate.

When Maia was born we lived in Champaign. And we liked living in Champaign. We still saw our parents every few weeks, be it us visitng Mattoon or them visitng us. But holidays were difficult, with everyone expecting us to be in Mattoon and our own nuclear family getting lost in the shuffle. Maia would come to spend the night without us sometimes, but it required at least one trip down and sometimes two. When I was about 5 months pregnant with Nate, it dawned on us that we were an hour away from our most reliable babysitters: our parents. Not only that, but Shad's grandparents weren't getting any younger and he really wanted for the kids to know them better, to spend more time with them. Those factors, along with about 7 others, prompted us to move back to Mattoon. This was not a decision that we took lightly, either, knowing that employment here would be more difficult to find and would pay less. Our priorities were mainly family, though, so being nearer to them made sense.

And so far, three years later, I can say that it has been worth every minute of not having a Target or a Red Lobster nearby. We have occassionally lamented having to live here, being forced to face people from high school that we thought we'd left behind or being left with only 4 restaurant choices for a night on the "town". Overall, though, we have not looked back with regret. This is largely because we see how fortunate our children are to be living near their grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa Huddleston feed Shad and the kids every single Wednesday night while I am at work until 8pm. Saturdays typically find them back in the same spot for at least part of the day while I am working. My mom helps me with picking up kids and covers us when daycare issues or early school closings arise. And, of course, they all helped to watch the kids while we went to Jamaica.

Do they spoil the kids? Uh huh. I've never seen anything like the amount of gifts they get at Christmas. It turns my stomach, to be honest, having not grown up that way. Maia has more clothes than she knows what to do with most seasons. During our vacation she was treated to a spending spree with Shad's mom and came home with new flip flops, socks, dress, wallet and hair accessories...all of which were clearly not necessary items. And there appears to be a new dollar store find every trip we make to a great-grandparents' house. Do they let the kids eat WAY too much junk? You betcha they do. My mom is famous for having new baked goods every visit. Shad's grandparents seem to have an endless freezerfull of ice cream. Do they let them get away with not using manners and being a little bratty? At times. Not always, but probably more frequently than we would allow it. After all, who wants to discipline a grandchild? That's what moms and dads are for, and the grandparents have already dealt with years and years of being in that unsavory role.

Indeed, Maia spent the night with Shad's grandparents last night for the first time. Her cousin was there, as well, and the report back this morning was that the darling six-year-olds didn't go to sleep until 11pm. Yeah... like I couldn't have predicted that would happen...LOL The best (worst) part is that they got up at 3am. And stayed up. They slept 4 hours. Upon hearing this I had a few reactions:

1) Poor Grandma and Grandpa!!

2) Shit!! Now they won't let her come back to spend the night!

3) Poor Shad will have to deal with tired Maia all day

4) Wonder how much junk and sugar they ate all evening before "bedtime"?

I've learned that worrying about all of the above things does nothing but wrinkle my forehead and give me a stomachache. None of it really matters. What really matters is that my kids have a relationship with their grandparents. Planting flowers with my mom, watching the tomatoes grow with Papa H, seeing a play with Grammy, going to the fair with Shad's mom and grandma... That stuff can't be replaced and will last them their whole lives. Long after the Dollar Tree "Barbie" hits the molecular level in the landfill, they will remember the love and attention that their grandparents gave them. The inner child in me is jealous, and the mommy in me is delighted.