Motherhood and More: Youngest child starting school brings conflicting thoughts*

My youngest child, my daughter, is starting kindergarten in a few weeks.

I … don’t know how I feel about that.

I am relieved in so many ways. Being at home has been a daily struggle between responsibilities that have to be done and the fun that everyone wants to have. It feels like I have failed on all fronts.

So I am not sad that school is starting, that the kids will be intellectually and socially stimulated for many hours with no effort needed from me.

Except I am. I am sad. She’s not quite 5 yet, as she’s just squeaking by the age cutoff to start school this year. This is probably our last real summer together and I don’t think I’ve taken full advantage of it. But I feel that way every August when I see all the other children who have attended camps and vacations and whatnot.

We hung out at home. The kids watched too much television. We went swimming as many days as possible, we learned that coloring and Legos can occupy them for hours, we ate Popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and played video games.

But we didn’t seem to do anything especially memorable. And for that I feel guilty. It is my daughter’s last summer before starting the decade-plus journey of school. This is when she’ll start growing into her own person, figuring out what it means to be Adele.

She’s already one of the coolest people I know, strong in her convictions and opinions. She’s tough with a forceful personality and would just as soon punch you in the leg as give you the best hug of your life. She’s able to disarm just about everyone she meets while at the same time convincing them she is right, always, no matter what.

I don’t want her to lose that. As difficult as it’s been to parent such a wild child, that wildness is what makes her amazing.

School is hard on people, but especially girls. Maybe that’s because I am one, but I think we have so much more pressure to be a certain way or act a certain way. I don’t want my daughter to be influenced and pushed to be someone she isn’t, just because she feels like she has to in order to fit into a specific mold.

She isn’t a big Barbie person, but loves animals and bugs. She’s fearless in the water, swimming better than any 4-year-old has a right to, diving off diving boards and doing underwater flips. She loves dresses, but doesn’t know or care anything about makeup.

She keeps asking me to cut her long, thick, gorgeous hair as short as her brother’s, mainly, I think, because I force her to let me brush it at least every other day.

So I want her to be a leader. I want her to be who she is, to accept everyone else for who they are, to not be influenced by petty, mean-girl antics.

But that’s part of it, isn’t it? Almost all girls have experienced that part of navigating through friendships and relationships.

I can only hope that when she comes out the other side, when she becomes a full-fledged woman, that she retains that fearless, full-throttle attitude we all love in her.

Because she’s going to do incredible things.

*This column originally published in The News-Enterprise on July 22, 2015.

The real question here is how is she already old enough for kindergarten?

I don't think it's any secret that I worry more about Adele than I probably should.

She's stubborn and mule-headed and sweet and caring and wild and completely ignores me when I ask her to do something as annoying as 'STOP STANDING ON THE TABLE.'

I stress and stress and then stress some more.  And I've just added more to my list of things that worry me because now we are discussing kindergarten.

Her birthday is in a weird place - September - and the rules are changing soon for kindergarten eligibility.  Namely, in 2016 kids will have to be 5 before August 1 in order to be able to start school. It was a little up in the air as to when exactly that was changing because I've gotten conflicting information but I just called the school and got the 100 percent, here-is-how-it-works facts so yes, Adele will be going to kindergarten next year.

Holy shit.  Holyshitholyshitholyshit.  Holy shit.

I mean, we do have the option to keep her out next year if we don't think she's ready, but I really do. I haven't always, I admit it.  I've been so worried about how she is and how she learns and where she is on a scale of ready or not but she's grown and learned so much in the past few months at her preschool that I know she'll be ready for Real Live School.

Plus she's much better behaved at school than she is at home.  I haven't gotten any notes about her spitting in her teachers' faces so I think that's a good sign.

Of course, I've made everything about the school situation even more difficult because now we are deciding where exactly she should go.

A little background - Sebastian went to two years of preschool our local catholic preschool/elementary school/middle school.  It's an amazing school.  Like capital 'A' Amazing.  The teachers are great and the other students are great and even Sebastian's public school kindergarten teacher said that kids coming out of this preschool generally 'know their stuff' when they start kindergarten.  We didn't keep him in the catholic school when he started kindergarten because, well, it's expensive and I wasn't working at the time.

Adele is going to the same preschool this year and now I kind of want to keep her there for school-school.  And move Sebastian from his public school to the private one next school year.

We've had really good luck with public school - both of Sebastian's teachers for kindergarten and first grade have been amazing.  But this other school - it just gives me a really good feeling, you know?  It's my pick.  I want to give my kids the best that I can and I think this school is the best.  And I don't worry about Sebastian switching schools.  He may be shy a bit at first but he's an adaptable boy and incredibly social and he genuinely likes people.

The only issue is money.  As it usually is.  The school isn't cheap and we'd have two kids to cover.

We are mulling it over.  We are discussing.  We are budgeting.  We are strategizing.

(This is going to sound super selfish but in addition to the money aspect I'll also have to pick them up every day from school instead of relying on public transportation and IT'S ALL THE WAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN!  So I'm taking that into consideration.)

Coffee features prominently into this post for many reasons

Well, I survived the first snow day and I only beat the children once each.

It was nice, you know?  I miss being home with the kids all the time, even though when I was home all I wanted was a few minutes of peace.  Never satisfied, I know.

So Monday it snowed quite a bit and we spent the day making snow angels and throwing snow at each other and then after five minutes of that I gave up and went inside to pour myself another cup of coffee because BRRR.

And when the kids finally got cold I made hot cocoa with extra marshmallows and we watched Frosty on Netflix.

(I also made bread and yogurt and butter that day because I am an idiot.)

The afternoon kind of sucked because they always do.  Something about being tired but not wanting to rest and me trying to rationalize that 'resting' also can be playing video games or watching tv because at least they are sitting still.

It never works.  When I finally tell then that hey, time to unplug, they're glazed over and super-extra tired and pissed off because I've separated them from their beloved screen.

(Is this just my kids? Because this is a regular occurrence in my house.)

Also Adele lost a tooth.  Which, what?  Too young, right?  But she's a teeth grinder and loosened them up, which I think had something to do with it.  Obviously I am super concerned about it all.  The tooth fairy came, but since she couldn't care less about money she barely has acknowledged her dollar in a baggie.  It was kind of funny when the tooth fell out, though.  I heard her saying "It's not working!" and holding the tooth like what the hell just happened?

She's pretty excited to show everyone the missing tooth, though.

Chris was out of town for work for the last few days which means I stayed up extra late because he wasn't there to tell me to go to bed at 8:30.  That also meant I was dealing with the kids' extra-crankiness (are they sick or just moody? I DON'T KNOW!) all alone and feeling pretty cranky myself which didn't help anything.  In fact, surprisingly, it made everything worse.  As did the staying up later and now I am currently surviving on 6 hours of sleep, a gallon of coffee and dreams of my bed.

But because of all the crankiness and the fact that I couldn't leave the house on account of my children being horrible store-goers, I jokingly facebook-requested a liquor-store delivery.  But sometimes the universe gives you nice things in the form of friends who send their preacher-husbands to your house at 9 p.m. with a bottle of wine.  Also I'd like to formally apologize for answering the door while not wearing a bra.  I did put on a huge sweater, though, because no one needs to see that.

In other news, Sebastian has been complaining a lot this school year about his afternoon bus driver who takes him from school to his afterschool place.  Apparently this man is a yeller.  One day he even forgot to drop the kids off at this particular place, then blamed them.  Also I'm not the fondest of the afterschool place, either.  There's yelling there, too, and Sebastian is always told to keep his hands to himself when he hugs his friends goodbye.  Dude.  Let's promote more love and kindness and less yelling, ok?  Especially since this is at a church.  You'd think kindness would be more encouraged.

But because of all this, and also because I want to save money, I've switched up my hours at work.  Now instead of working Tuesday-Thursday, I'm going to work Monday-Thursday from 8-1.  That way Sebastian can just ride the bus home (different bus driver, we know and like her).  I won't have to pay for afterschool, I'll get a little more time with my guy, and whenever Adele starts kindergarten we will be officially paying $700 less a month in childcare.

I can hardly contain my excitement.  Maybe we can finally have another car instead of sharing one!

But none of this would be possible if I didn't have one of the most understanding bosses around.  He gets families and family commitments and the need for mothers to be mothers as well as employees.  I'm extremely lucky, I know it.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to find someone to tape my eyelids open.

A day of firsts

It doesn't make any sense, really.

I was all set to have to rip my daughter off of my leg at her first preschool dropoff this morning.  She's a bit of a Mama's girl, and, as I said yesterday, every other time we visited her school there have been tears and partial meltdowns.

She started daycare last March, with mixed results.  Her first week or so was fraught with screaming and tears and general guilt (mine) for going back to work.  And then she was fine for awhile.  And then she had another bad week.  Then the cycle would repeat itself.  In July, of course, she stayed home with me and her brother.  So I kind of figured she'd gotten out of the habit of being away from me, which would make today extra hard.  She's been telling me for weeks that she didn't want to go to school, that she wanted to stay home with me.

I could tell she was nervous last night.  She screamed extra hard at bedtime and fought with me on everything.  I lay down with her, as usual, for about five minutes, but she still was super pissed at me for leaving her bedroom.  (This is normal - but it was the level of her pissed-off-ness that wasn't).

She also woke up around 2:30 in the morning, crying.  I lay down with her again, but thankfully (for all of us) it didn't take long for her to go back to sleep.  And then at 5:30 when I got up I heard her up again.  I didn't encourage her to come downstairs so she went back to sleep.

This morning we dropped Sebastian off first - my Big First Grader who walks into almost any new situation with confidence, even though he admits that he's "a little shy."  The kid amazes me.  Other than the few months of screaming at his new daycare when he was 18 months old we've never had any issues about dropoffs.  He just goes with it, you know?  It's an amazing quality, that ability to not be painfully shy in new situations.  I hope he never loses it.  He's told me over and over again how excited he was to go to school and how much fun it's going to be.

When it was time to drop Adele off we walked to her classroom and she casually held my hand, but not too tight.  And we talked about the playground and all the toys and all the writing and learning she would be doing.  And then we went into her classroom, she hung up her backpack, found a Frozen puzzle and started working it.

Okay then.

I gave her a hug, told her I was leaving and to have a good day.  Then I braced myself for the screaming and clinging that was sure to follow.  It ... didn't.

She told me bye.

I walked out the door.

And that was it.

Until, of course, one of the teachers chased me down all the way to the parking lot because I forgot to sign Adele in.  But even then, when I expected her to cry when she saw me again, she was absolutely fine.  Great even.  She was sitting with another little girl working the puzzle.  When I said goodbye to her, she waved at me and said "Bye mom."  She wasn't overly excited to be there, but she was okay with it.

I didn't cry when I left, though I wanted to.  I don't know what to think about all this.  It made her seem so grown up all of the sudden, so much a little kid.  I don't know if this new-found independence will last, or if it was a one-time thing.  But this is it, you know?  The baby is in school, starting her journey.  Her brother is already well on his own way.

I'm not going to survive them moving out of the house, am I?

Bittersweet, time marches on, cat's in the cradle and all that

I'm back at work today and I already miss my babies and wish I was with them.  It doesn't matter that the past five weeks have been super hard and full of drama.  I usually want what I don't have.  Or rather, I wanted the entire experience of being home to be better than it was - easier, more full of educational family time and less full of video games and arguments.

My husband is staying with them today because their school doesn't start until tomorrow.  It hasn't helped my frame of mind that he keeps sending me updates via text on how their day is going.  It's still morning and already there has been painting and board games and twister and probably reading and flashcards and novella writing.  Also he's taking them to the pool later.

I told him that they're never going to want me to stay with them ever again because of him.

I think he's doing it on purpose to try to show me up.

Whatever.

Adele starts really real for real preschool tomorrow.  I don't know how it's going to go.  She cried when I went to pick up the paperwork - mostly because she thought I was leaving her there that day.  And then she cried again when we went to open house.  I am not looking forward to dropoff tomorrow.  I am hoping that she will surprise me and be perfectly fine, though I'm not entirely sure that would be better.  On account of my feelings.

She just still seems so young to me, you know?  She still seems like my baby.  And maybe it's my own fault, maybe I've babied her entirely too much over the past few years.  I mean - she still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night as opposed to calmly walking down the stairs to crawl into bed with me if she needs comfort - which to me is much more logical - and less jarring - than the screaming.  But logic and calmness is not one of her strengths when she's upset.

So my baby is going to school where she'll learn all kinds of things and will grow and change and it makes me incredibly sad and glad all at the same time.

Sebastian is starting first grade and I don't hardly believe it.  Kindergarten was in an entirely separate building that only housed city preschool and kindergarten, so he was the oldest kid there.  In his new school he's the youngest.  He will be surrounded by lots of kids who are older than he is and it's scary, you know?  I mean, I know it's not really that big of a deal.  But at the same time it is.  He's one more step removed from me, closer than ever to college and backpacking through Europe.

It's hard to see my kids grow.  I mourn the time when the were tiny, when all they really needed was me, when I knew everything about them.  All of these changes are good, productive, normal things.  But I've never been all that great with change, especially when it comes to my kids.  Each new milestone is filled with a tiny bit of sadness that nothing will ever again be exactly like it was.

I want them to experience life as hard as they can, to be independent and adventurous and wild.  But I also still want them to be my babies, to need me, to want to be with me.

And I think that is what makes motherhood so hard.  Our job is to spend time and effort and love raising our children to leave us.

Of course now I have a little more time to myself, so that's nice

Adele started preschool last week.

Well, it's sort of preschool.

It's more like - hey, why don't you spend an hour twice a week with other children and without your Mama in hopes that you can expand your language skills a bit.

I'd been contemplating having her evaluated for the city preschool for months.  The only way she could get in was if there was a developmental delay - such as with speech or behavior. 

I've noticed that it's hard for people who aren't close to her to understand what she says a lot of the time.  She'll get in a hurry and get excited so her words come out in a jumble.  For the most part I can understand everything she says, but I'm with her all the time.

I asked Adele's doctor what she thought about having the evaluation done and she said that any preschool is good, so it wouldn't hurt.  Which is kind of what I thought to begin with. 

I don't want to push Adele, or make her live up to some arbitrary timetable of what she should be doing/saying at a certain time.  But I also don't want her to have trouble, you know? 

So I took her in and they decided to have her come for an hour on Monday and Wednesday to interact with other kids and get exposed to that type of environment.  She'll do this for 6 weeks and then she'll be reevaluated to see if she needs to go for longer periods of time.

Last week was okay.  She cried for me one time - but she seems to be taking it all in stride. 

It's weird.  With Sebastian we had him in regular preschool at this age, but Adele just wasn't ready to start in August.  And there wasn't the build-up to the first day of school like we had, or the backpack or excitement.  But still, there was that rock in my stomach when I dropped her off the first day.  I didn't cry, probably because she was only going to be gone an hour and it still doesn't feel like real school. 

But still.  My baby. 

Do zombies even still have nuts?

My daughter is still sleeping and it's almost 8 a.m.  This can only mean that she is extremely sick or that she woke up at 4:30 a.m. crying and begging to play on the ipod.

The what?

Of course I was already awake because I my body hates me and gave me a headache and also because I ate a big bowl of pasta last night because Chris was out of town and the kids will eat pasta without wailing and whining and withering in front of their plates.  I haven't had pasta in awhile because of the whole Paleo thing, and my reaction to it last night is probably enough to convince me that maybe we're on the right track with this whole 'changing the way we eat' thing.  The stomach cramps are still continuing and also still making me want to jab a sharp object into my gut in the hopes of relieving the pain.  It's like, you don't know how much better you feel until you eat something that you're not really supposed to.  And then it's like, whoa, maybe there's something to all of this.

I'm impressed that I was able to take this
picture and no blood was shed.

So - no sleep for me.

Sebastian slept in this morning instead of waking up at 5 wanting to get ready for school.  I actually had to wake him up so he wouldn't miss the bus.  He wasn't feeling all that well, either, but I think that was more because it is relatively warm in our house and he insists on sleeping with a feather blanket, which slowly bakes him all night long.  So he was understandably sweaty.  But I sent him to school anyway because it's picture day and I didn't want to have to fiddle with make-up-day or whatever.  Also I am enjoying the peace that comes with my children not being together during the day.  There is much less yelling and screaming and crying.  I think it's good for them to be apart some.  Last night I even caught them playing in the same vicinity without physical violence.  Sebastian was working a puzzle and Adele was building with Duplos and there was a bit of tranquility.

Adele is a bit jealous of Sebastian riding the school bus.  But I want to tell here that it's not that pleasant of a place to be and her brother already discovered the word 'nuts' from a boy on the bus, as in "I'm going to kick a zombie in the nuts."

Ask me how happy I am about that.  Go on, ask.

I know that I can't keep him from all that forever.  But he's 5 years old!  He's just a little boy!

I really wish we could have kept him in the private catholic school that he went to for preschool.  Part of that is because when we went to open house to meet the teachers, in the big meeting with transportation people and lunch room people and whatnot, everyone who spoke basically told us that we were idiots, and that we were going to be an idiot sometime throughout the year, and that they would have to have someone escort us away once we did become idiots.

It wasn't very promising.

But he's learning a lot, I do admit.  He's started sounding out words for real now, and not just sounding them out by repeating what I say.  And he's writing his name so much better than he used to.  He's had some trouble as somehow his name includes more letters than any other name in the history of ever.

Sorry, kid!

So we'll see.  Maybe for first grade we can put him back in catholic school.

We also have both kids playing soccer this year.  Sebastian started on Monday and I spent the entire practice trying to keep Adele off the field.  I brought her ball with us in the hopes of distracting her, but all she did was try to kick it in their goal, and then scream when I kept her from her Olympic soccer dream.

Last night was her first practice and it was ridiculously adorable.  I think she had a lot of fun and I think she's a natural.  She's so athletic and tough.  She was the only girl on the team not wearing a hot pink shirt.  Their team name is Uruguay, but the coach insists on calling them The Princesses.  I kind of wanted to shake him and tell him that his attitude and need to force girls to be dainty princesses is what is wrong with society today.  And then my daughter smacked his daughter in the face so I think he got the point.

(Chris saw it and said she was just playing - not trying to be mean.  But I say it was a direct response to being called a princess.  He made her apologize but I think he should have given her a high-five.)

(I'm joking - please don't fuss at me.)

With Sebastian, I've noticed a big improvement in how he plays.  And he has some of the same boys on his team as last fall, which is nice because there were some parents I really liked and wanted to keep in touch with but am too shy to say "Hey! Let's hang out!  I need friends!"

So now I can see them a couple of times a week.

(Adele is still sleeping.  I should probably go check on her.  Or maybe she sneaked downstairs and found the ipod and is playing in her closet.  Either way, at least she's quiet.)

My girl can kick any princess' ass.

But surely the next one wouldn't be as insane as the last one, right?

This morning, after dropping my son off at his first day of kindergarten, I unsuccessfully attempted to convince my husband that we need to have another baby.

He thinks I'm cracked to want another one.

I understand, I do.  But I'd also just dropped my oldest child off at real school, at his first day, for the very first time, and at the beginning of a whole new way of adjusting our lives.

Does that sentence even make sense?  I'm not entirely sure, probably because I didn't sleep much last night on account of the Kindergartner.  Well, not so much him as the fact of him going to school.  When there's a big change happening, I don't sleep, I eat a lot of carbohydrates, drink wine, and attempt to hold down all of the carbohydrates and wine because my stomach rolls and turns and tells me that the whole world is going to implode because my son is going to kindergarten.

Or something.

I could tell that Sebastian was nervous last night when he told me he didn't love me because I took away his cup of water he was using to stall going to bed.  That's not like him.  I mean, yeah, he loses his shit occasionally over stupid things because the world is so cruel to him and it's hard out here for a 5 year old, of course.  But this was different.

I told him that wasn't very nice and I came downstairs and cried, then made him homemade chocolate treats for his lunchbox because MY BABY IS GOING TO SCHOOL.

This morning, the first thing he did when he came downstairs was to tell me how sorry he was for saying that and that he didn't mean it.  And then he let me kiss him.

We walked him into school and sat with him while he ate his free breakfast, then walked him to the gym where all the students gathered first thing in the morning.

And then we left.

And then Adele and I went home and she peed on the couch because I was cleaning the kitchen and wasn't paying attention to her.

Maybe I've changed my mind on the third baby.

When Sebastian got off the school bus I had a whole 7 minutes of him telling me about his day over homemade muffins before he had had enough and wanted to play on the ipod.

I'll take it.