Groundhog Day

At this time of this missive, you are five years old.    This is your life:

 

Wake up at 7:45am.   Sometimes this is in your own bed, surrounded by “lovies” and your blanket Peely.    Sometimes this is next to your easily manipulated mother in my bed, after you “had a bad dream,” which is difficult to do if you never went to sleep.

 

7:45am -8:30am:   Peeing, picking out clothes based on daily activity at school (Tuesdays – Soccer, Wednesdays- Ballet, Fridays – Splash Day) and stumbling bleary-eyed down to a breakfast of marshmallow filled chocolate toaster waffles and rubbery microwave sausage.   Brother pings around singing his version of cartoon songs, and, lately, about his “beanbag,” of which he is enamored.  

 

8:30-8:50am:   Fighting traffic to school.   You learn new and creative uses of language.    Brother, who never shuts up, says “That’s my song” if you join in, and calls out Every. Single. Truck. On the highway.   

 

8:50-8:51am:   Morning bum-slalom from the car to your school doors.   Your school is right between two homeless outreach churches that set up feeding stations a couple blocks away.    When they are not fighting at bus stops, fishing cigarette butts out of gutters, pissing in bushes, and peeling off layers of socks in the middle of the sidewalk, at least once a day, a bum representative will shamble over to the car while I have an armful of kids and backpacks, and slubbler “neah, nou gaaa a dolla?”   While my description might sound uncharitable, this is the part of day I dread the most for you, because I don’t want you to begin to realize the world isn’t all rainbows and unicorns and rainbow farting unicorns eating ice-cream.   Not yet.

 

8:52- 5:30pm:   I have no idea what you do.   You’re at school.     I tend to limit my time inside because there’s lots of little creatures there, some of whom are more tolerable than others.   Sartre was close, but wrong: Hell is other people’s children.    The second saddest part of my day is when we go into the school and I take Brother to his class.   You are big enough now that you just hike up your backpack and walk upstairs to your class alone.    I wish you weren’t.     Most times you don’t even say goodbye.    But I always loop back around, and you’re gracious enough to give me hug before sending me on my way.  

Here's your school birthday party, Lord of the Flies style. 

You have the conch (crown.)

 

5:40-6:15:   Fight traffic the other way.    It’s a little easier in “Baby Blue,” the state-owner Crown Vic we take to and from school.   Other motorists might not give us such a wide berth if they knew that inside the tinted-window dash-lights police car was a beautiful little girl strapped into her pink throne in the back middle seat right next to a fat little devil who crunches in his layer of spilled cereal snacks everytime we go around a corner.  

 

6:15- 7:00pm:   Crafts, projects, anything with lots of tiny plastic parts to scatter around the house.    When do you clean them up?   Never.   Honestly, I zone out a lot during this time frame.    Somehow, dinner gets made.   Since you only eat about 4 things- chicken fingers, beans and rice, mushroom ravioli, tater tots- I assume it microwaves itself.     Brother usually has a few bites of something and then fills up his diaper.    I try to not be present for this. 

 

Brother sucks at Legos.   Everything is a truck.

 

 
7:00-7:30pm:   Dinner.    This is so excruciatingly slow, again, I try to be anywhere else.   I just can’t deal.

 

7:30- 8:00pm:   Bathtime.   Surprisingly fun.   You and Brother still bathe together.   He’s real clear on the concept of peeing in the tub being cool, but pooping is NO BUENO.      He has to be lured into the tub, and then lured out once he’s good and comfortable.   When he’s not playing with his beanbag (see above), he’s dumping water on you or pumping out all the hand soap to make a soap mountain.   By this point in the day, I just don’t care.    You think it’s pretty funny.  

 
8:00- 9:00:    You entertain yourself, generally by reading, while we try to wrestle Brother to sleep or I check out by going to the gym.    If we were better parents, we’d have you in bed earlier.    We’re not.

Also, lip gloss.   So much lip gloss. 

 

9:00-10:15pm:   Who knows?   Sleeping?   Reading?  Performing surgery on your lovies?  

 

10:15pm”   Standing at the top of the stairs, just staring down into the living room and my soul.   Super creepy.    Your hair falls down in from of your face, so you could be any number of child-demons.        Terrifying.     When I work up the nerve to ask you what’s up, you always mumble something about a bad dream and then go get in Mommy’s bed.    It works every time.   I get to sleep in the guest room.   

This, but with a blankie.

 

That’s it.   Groundhog Day.   But in a good way.