PDG in K!

PDG is now three weeks into the life of a Kindergartener. I'm not quite sure how it happened this fast, or how it's no longer the weirdest concept possible that my baby boy is in school all day.

There's obviously been a lot of build-up to this point. First, I had to figure out where he'd attend, and as past posts explain, moving to Woodbridge ended up the best option I could fathom given the factors. Our neighborhood is pretty diverse, meaning the school within walking distance is also a mix of black and white and brown and all sorts of languages and cultures. The big kids that ran the townhouse community gang on their bikes all summer, now keep an eye out for PDG and the other younger ones in the halls. PDG loves the days he sees his big friends around, just like he likes absolutely everything about school.

Take that back. Bathrooms. We're still working on liking, and therefore using, public bathrooms. But let's be honest, what adult actually likes using public restrooms either?

The first event of the summer was registration and assessment. Apparently PDG rocked the reading and numbers portion, but when it came time to cut with scissors, my little perfectionist wanted to cut exactly in the center of the line, which predictably did not happen. This led to a shut-down pouting face that you've likely seen if you've seen PDG fail in even the slightest bit at anything. Luckily, his teacher Mrs D is amazing and already knew he'd be in her class, so she gave him a pep talk and encouraged us to keep using scissors at home for a while.

Two weeks later JG and I attended orientation where PDG got to practice going through the lunch line and then went off to ride a school bus with all the other Kindergarteners. Meanwhile the grownups sat in their tiny seats and filled out a bunch more forms and learned again about what we can send for snack and how the classroom is set up. It got more and more real. And emotions of all sorts about my family came bubbling up and out.

The first day the boys woke up at my house and we hurried around like usual to get out on time. Fantastically "on time" is 25 minutes later than last school year, but still early. Due to a wait list situation that still isn't resolved, PDG goes to his old daycare with MDG in the mornings, and then Miss S walks him to the school (she's in walking distance too!). For the first day, however, JG escorted him and I charged him with taking tons of pictures so I could live vicariously while I gave my first day spiel to my own scared new freshmen (and lots of nervous upperclassmen too). I checked my phone a ton to find all of these.

Since then my favorite part of each weekday is picking up MDG, driving the half mile to PDG's school, and then walking to the entrance and waiting for Mrs D's class to come out. It's all so organized, and reminds me daily why I prefer high school to these tiny tots. They walk with their mouths full of air like puffer fish and their arms folded before standing backpacks against the wall in the same order every day. Kindergarteners have to be released directly to a parent, so once Mrs D sees me, she calls PDG's name and he runs over, grabs my hand, and I pepper him with questions. There's almost always a huge smile followed by "I dunno" or  "I don't remember" to every question I ask. When he does start to remember, I get filled in on details of "clipping up" which is part of a positive rewards system, an overview of lunch or specials (art has been rocky so far), minor tattles on the girl at his table who talks too much and occasionally clips down, and snippets of songs about the calendar, letters of the alphabet or his new favorite book: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

MDG loves to see the crossing guard as we walk from the car to the entrance and back again, and entertains the other parents and waiting little siblings. We take a break from learning to relax in our downstairs "imagination station" with no screens for a while. Then there's dinner or playing outside, or some PBS Kids apps, or baths before 20 minutes of reading and bedtime and repeat.

I can't believe he's so big, but I also can't imagine a better Kindergarten experience so far.  And hey, if he ever does go #2 at school, an hour of solo iPad time awaits.

Snowzilla

As I mentioned before, we were out for seven snow days. The first was for the two inches that caught the DMV by surprise. The second was because no one knew for certain what time the snow was starting on Friday, and hence we all needed to be tucked safely away with milk, bread, and televisions blasting fear and fantasy at us from all angles.

J-Man, after having two separate flights get canceled in advance, was able to catch an early morning flight to DC, before the airports all closed up shop. By lunch we had him, a serious stash of snacks on hand, freezer meals ready to thaw, and a sense of "ok, let's do this thing" at the ready.

The snow came fast and furious that afternoon, all night long, and all day the next day, not ending until well after bedtime Saturday night. We halfheartedly did some of that shoveling and playtime during the height of the storm. MDG hated it, PDG wanted to like it, and J-Man was mostly in awe at how much snow can fall from the sky.

before going out

uncertain in the midst of it

hot chocolate reward

Even though I don't watch Game of Thrones, this was still my favorite meme of the storm.

Once the snow stopped, we got down to business. Sunday the Mormon neighbors hosted all the Mormon families within walking distance for a pot luck lunch. We're a pretty prepared bunch, so it was delicious, but we're also a procreating bunch, so there were a lot of children occupying a duplex hardly larger than my own. This particular family has a basement, so with Aladdin playing downstairs, the adults got through a game of Taboo upstairs that was only slightly interrupted by the five two-year-olds whose attention spans are too short for a full Disney production.

When the shoveling really commenced, sometime late Monday afternoon when we saw the one and only plow we would ever see, it was like that scene at the start of Beauty and the Beast when everyone comes outdoors and knows each other and is part of a happy wonderland. A snowy, back-breaking wonderland, but chipper nonetheless. The kids ran around on the snow mountains while the adults tackled driveway after driveway together, making sure everyone could get out the next day when work presumably would return. Turns out J-Man and I own the worst two shovels on the block, but we did our part.

The days passed with no predictability at all. Unlike Camp Nicole, with frequent outings to parks and scheduled time for just about everything, we took each day flying by the seat of our pants. Blanket forts? Ok! Turning snow mountains into slides? Sure! Jumping in puddles of melting snow? Rather not but, oh, ok, you're going to do it anyway... Yay!

I also started watching this Australian teen dance show on Netflix.  I'll just let that sit there for a while.

The boys went to daycare twice, the mornings I wasn't worried about black ice from refrozen snow melt, and I had a chance to clean the house from all the sand and salt and general chaos of days off. That plus PDG started wetting the bed again for the first time in almost a year, so that's been.... not awesome.

But that brings us here, back to reality and work and finally warmer temperatures that are melting the remnants of those two feet of snow. I should be more excited about this return to normalcy. But if I'm being honest, I'm already looking at the 10-day forecast on my phone, secretly hoping to see another snowflake somewhere in the future. Not another two feet or anything, maybe just a good 1-3 inches. Preferrably on a Tuesday night. Enough for a no school Wednesday and delay Thursday. Because, truly, it's all quite magical at the beginning.

Camp Nicole July 2015 Schedule

How are we G's staying busy you ask? Well mostly by following Camp Nicole schedule. It goes a little like this:

6-7am - wake up and snuggle in my bed while J-Man dresses for work

7-8:30am- gradually move downstairs, eat some combo of dinosaur oatmeal (PDG), chocolate eggos (MDG) and yogurt/oatmeal/fruit/granola bars/etc (me) all coveted by and eventually shared with MDG and PDG

8:30-9:30am - get dressed, choose a park for the day, pack a "park bag" and inevitably choose a snack that one boy likes and the other doesn't, and convince PDG to potty  even though he'd much prefer the chance to wait and pee on a tree

9:30am-12pm - head somewhere outdoors with one single goal: wear PDG out so that he naps. Everything else comes in a distant second place. Fingers crossed the other park parents/nannies aren't obnoxious.

12-1pm - get back home, eat an easy-to-fix lunch balancing out any unhealthy hot dogs or chicken nuggets with excessive blueberries (and hope J-Man gets stuck with those diapers...)

1-3:30pm - independent play in the bedroom until the boys pass out. Occasional check ins required to remind PDG that bed-jumping is not, actually a "quiet" activity like books or stuffed animals. Also not quiet - hiding MDG's blanket from him, screaming "say geronimo," pretending to echo, and throwing socks at one another. Quiet but equally not ok - finding a chapstick and eating the whole thing, unscrewing the lamp's light bulb, stripping all the blankets and fitted sheet from the bed. As for me, watch two episodes of something embarrassing, possibly do some novel revisions, maybe read some more of the Amy Poehler book, sweep up any sand deposits and take at least five minutes to sit in total silence.

3:30ish-5pm - Operation Wiggles Out (Part II) location varies depending on how long dinner will take to prepare but jumping and running highly encouraged.

5-5:30pm - eat again and try to trick MDG into ingesting a vegetable and not just some cheese and animal cracker combination. Unload dishwasher while no one can break anything while trying to help

5:30-6ishpm - keep checking the clock to see how much longer until J-Man gets home. Notice the living room suddenly get covered with every toy we own.

6-7:30pm - mix and mash talking to J-Man while he eats with corralling the hyper children and convincing them that cleanup/bath/brushing teeth/pajamas are all super awesome activities

7:30-7:40pm - successfully ask J-Man about his day after pulling the boys' door shut

7:40pm - miss the boys and say how we can't wait to wake them up and play again

7:45 - 10ish - watch Downton Abbey, practice our terrible British accents, wax philosophical about how to solve the world's problems, step on a crayon or puzzle piece we somehow overlooked, wonder what our life would look be like without the boys, decide we're glad we'll never know, and tuck ourselves in at a more reasonable time than during the school year, but still early

10-6am - wake up twice to pee. possibly once more because MDG decides to announce he also woke up, pray he doesn't need attention, remember he's my last baby and he won't need me forever, and try not to have any more dreams about a 3rd kid. Come on subconscious, that shop is closed!!

Time to start again.

Potties and Pull-ups and Poops and PDG

It's decided. Potty training is the worst.

Let's add this to the list of parenting downers that no one tells you about.  Or at least, no one told me about.

I know some kids are just easy to train.  And some parents are probably better at recognizing when a kid is (the mystically elusive) "ready." Still. This seems like it shouldn't be so hard. And if it's gonna be so hard, why didn't anybody say something?!

Here's our journey so far -

1) over Christmas break declare we will be a diaper free household (obviously premature, but sometimes I aim to be the overachiever)

2) proclaim how awesome PDG is (and by default J-Man and I) when he mastered peeing in like two days

3) remain in denial when he became terrified of pooping on the toilet and saved it for a few rare night/nap diapers over those two weeks

4)feel defeated when he pooped his pants the first day back in daycare and I had to be informed he needed to stay in pullups until this was handled

5)get confused when the return to pullups also somehow caused more mini-accidents

6) wonder when my ever-regular, twice-a-day-pooper kid decided to transition into a poop-hating, backed-up, toilet-fearer

7) complain woefully to J-Man that PDG will never ever learn to just sit down and poop! (despite that somewhere during steps 1-6 he did have some success and earn lots of cookies and jelly beans and mama dances and hi-fives)

8) eventually agree that ok, maybe he will learn one day.  and it will be on his terms. and when he does eventually learn, it will be all the sweeter. and maybe in some cosmic parenting balance, it will all mean that MDG will be super easy to train. I mean, he already grabs the potty-seat, stands on the stool, and pulls down his pants. Not bad for 13 months.

Anyway, this is all to say that I have no clue what we're doing, or how many more times PDG will announce "I didn't poop my pants. I pooped my pullup!" when at a park or the Burger King playplace, or the car outside of daycare. We'll get there. And then I can stop being the mom who talks too much about poop. I mean, this is me holding back. Yikes!

But also, how great will it be when extended stays in the bathroom can look only like this?!