Or: Beware the Monkies!

Yesterday Wallace’s daily report read that he was Outgoing, Happy, Cooperative⁽¹⁾, and Busy.  That’s our boy! 

One of the things that really seemed to help was TT picking up cousin Bean from day care on Wednesday afternoon and taking him along to pick up Wallace.  I’m only guessing, but I’ll bet that when Bean walked into Wallace’s preschool room the world connected a little bit, the way it does when you know one area of a city and another separately and then you take the road between them and suddenly you know how they interact and where they both are.

That didn’t make any sense.

What I’m saying is that I think having Bean in his new environment probably helped Wallace feel a little less like it was all far away and strange, like the moon.  Instead he could integrate the preschool into Life As He Knows It, which includes Bean.

So yesterday was a good day during the day, then we ran home and ate a quick dinner and went with MoVo and Bean to the Party Park⁽²⁾.  We met up there with another of Wallace’s best friends from his day care, who happens to be the son of the Day Care Lady, so she was there as well.

Basically, DAMN, life was good.  It was Wallace, Bean and Adfel and they ran and climbed and played and danced and swung and were wild monkey children for a solid hour and a half in beautiful weather, with all their mommies.  All three mommies got cuddled by all three kids and the kids all hugged each other. 

After a week of sadness and having to adjust to huge changes, a week of tiptoeing around and trying to hang in there, we had a full two hours of thrilling, happy play.  I can’t describe how wonderful it was.  They are the most amazing boys, and they are all even better when they are all together.

BEWARE THE MONKIES!

⁽¹⁾It turns out that the daily sheets say “cooperative” rather than “obedient”, because apparently small children are not trained like dogs. Who knew?

⁽²⁾Wallace calls it the Party Park because once when we went there a block party was going on in an adjacent road. The bouncy climber made a permanant impression.

⁽³⁾Note: The person behind Wallace in those pics is a random little girl that was at the park, not Adfel. I don’t have his mom’s permission to put pics of Adfel up, so he remains unpictured here. Note to Self: Must think of new nickname for DCP seeing as she’s now no longer our DCP, but our friend. Perhaps FCP?

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And Weird

Mr. Nice Guy just posted this on his blog.  It is a YouTube cartoon of the Japanese butt-biting bug.  It is very weird.

The Japanese Butt-Biting Bug.

It makes me think of Mr. Sparkle.

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But Improving Anyway

Day two of the grand school experiment did not go as smoothly as day one.  Two mornings ago TT reported that Wallace had an absolute cryfest on dropoff and he felt terrible leaving.  We got the report at the end of the day that said he’d been weepy, and Wallace lasted halfway home in the car before breaking into gut-wrenching sobs.  Everything that night made him sob as though his heart would break; going to the mall, not going to the mall, being stopped in traffic, the fact that daddy wasn’t riding a bike but at work (?), the fact that the water was gone from his bathtub.  By the time he fell asleep that night he was absolutely drained.

We do what we can to mitigate the misery.  In the car I said that we’d go home and have chickens and ketchup (favorite dinner) and he sobbed, “O-o-h-k-a-a-y M-m-o-m-my, Th-a-a-n-k you, Th-th-a-t be so N-N-ICE!”

Oh, my heart.

He had a binkey and watched some Cars and that made it a little bit better.

Yesterday morning he was distraught that I wouldn’t let him put his soaked pullup back on and then he carefully looked at me out of the corner of his eyes and said, “I not go a school today, Mommy, right?”

Sorry, bubs. Welcome to the next 15 years.

It’s hard, as a parent, to leave a small person screaming for you.  It’s wrenching, in fact.  Every biological instinct tells you that Your Baby Needs You! and it takes some serious brain power to recognize that they really don’t.  That five, ten minutes tops after you’re gone they may still be sad, but they are sad and playing with blocks, and really how bad is that?

In the orientation they were really good about explaining that this will happen.  It may happen at the beginning of this week, after the end of this week, or after the end of the three day weekend, but that more likely than not your child will do his or her own version of laying prostrate on the floor sobbing as though someone were ripping off their limbs.  Totally normal.  Everyone has it and, exceptional circumstances excepted of course, everyone gets over it.

They did such a good job that TT was actually able to walk away from his sobbing baby boy.  I’m not sure I could have done it.  TT is a brave daddy.

The ability for a three year old to process a fundimental change in routine, not to mention one that they don’t reaaaallly have the capacity to understand is coming, is amazing.  In other words, our report from school yesterday read that Wallace was “Outgoing, Happy, and Obedient“.

And if you need more proof that they are better parents than we are, two days ago they reported that he ate the meat and salad from his lunch, and turned down the mac-and-cheese and dessert.  Apparently they take him away and replace him with an alien cyborg who will eat things that are green.

In sad-for-me news, Wallace had to run for the potty yesterday and didn’t quite make it, so he came home in his cheapy new red sweats that I bought for emergencies in his cubbie.  They are 4Ts and would fall down to his knees if he didn’t keep hiking them up.  It turns out that these are now his FAVORITE PANTS, and I’m sure he’s not going to wear the pricey jeans I bought that actually fit him.

I’ve taken a poll and this is, apparently, a three-year-old thing.  They all want to be George Costanza in a velvet sweat suit.

Greeaaaaat.

P.S. - Wallace’s favorite thing at the moment is to greet you by saying “Welcome to the island of Sodor”, which is the opening of all his Thomas videos.  Of course, he still speaks like an almost-three-year old, so what you get is “comlandasodorer”, which is totally unintelligable.  For a short time I thought that he thought he was the island of Sodor(er) and that cracked me up. 

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Or, Damn You, NOVA!

Just for Cottontimer:  Nova’s only slightly cheesy video on Epigenetics (click on your resolution under “Watch this Segment”) and how what we do alters our personal health prospects.

Dammit.

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I took Wallace to the park on Sunday and at one point a little girl walked up to the swings where we were. She was between 18 months and two years and dressed in a yellow polkadot and jeans romper set.  She had a binkey firmly plugged into her mouth. I held my hand out to keep her back from Wallace’s swing and she took it and just stood next to me holding it.

I looked around for her parents and didn’t see anyone that either looked like her or looked as though they were looking at us, or had lost a child. The place was really busy.

Eventually the only guy I didn’t have paired up with a kid was a huge dickwad wearing a Stewie t-shirt hanging out at the entrance to the park with three chihuahas, including a tiny pup, and smoking.

I kept an eye on the little girl as she toddled around the play area totally unsupervised by anyone else, hoping that one of the folks around were her parents. Eventually she toddled over to the climbing area and climbed up on the equipment. She tried going down one of those arched ladder things and fell right through the top one, smacked her face on the metal bar on the way down, wrenched her head and landed right on her back.

I saw it happening in slow motion. I ran over to pick her up, checking her for blood and figuring that her mom or dad would come running up, but nobody.  She cuddled close and stared at me with tear-filled eyes.

Asking around I found out that her parent was the Asshole Chihuaha biker guy. I had to yell “SIR!” three times to get him to look up from his dogs and when I handed the baby to him I told him what had happened. He thanked me and then glared at me like he wanted to kill me, plopped her back on the ground, rolled his eyes and snorted at me, then went back to his dogs.

It turns out that he was there with two older kids as well. Both older ones were plainly afraid of him. I watched the little girl for the rest of the time and periodically the dad would look up, glare at me, realize he didn’t know where the two year old was and follow my line of vision until he saw her. More often than not, taking a beeline out of the park.

It hurt my heart, but particularly because this was the most sad-eyed angel-faced curly-red-hairded little girl you ever want to see. I could have bundled her up and taken her home.   I really wanted to.

Man, there has been a horrible rash of pointless hounding of foster parents lately.  If you go to Baggage’s blog or Spotted Dog Turn you can read all about it.  What’s horrible is that I could have scooped up that baby right then and there and gone home to fix up her room and lay in supplies and she could have been ours, but instead, even if the dad had done something actionable, which he didn’t, the little girl would have gotten caught up in a system that is outmoded and at least neglegent and wouldn’t have stayed with us.

I wish I could have just left with her and Wallace.  It’s crazy, but I really wish that it was okay.  For the baby’s sake I hope there is someone at home who is wild about her.  I’m sorry, baby girl, I wish you were mine.

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That’s right, due to my complete inability to post enough at the Poopyhands Weightloss Junction, and the fact that while I currently suh-diddly-uck at the loss part, and the fact that she is currently excelling in the loss department, along comes none other than Nana Poopyhands to the rescue!

She’s going to be writing about what she east, how she excercises, managing diabetes and how this all ties in with her MS.  There even, she has confessed to me, will be recepies.

Welcome on board, NanaP!

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Demeanor:  Cheerful, Busy, Inquisitive - note: “cooperative” not circled, heh

Nap:  Slept - I can’t believe it!  No pullups or binkies allowed and he slept at school!

Lunch:  Ate Everything -  This, also I cannot believe as I know that they serve vegetables at lunchtime

Job for the Day:  Teacher’s Helper - Now this, I believe

When I met up with the boys after their day Wallace reported to me that school was really, really nice and that his teacher is really, really nice and that he painted!  Snack was applesauce.  He said that he had lots of fun.

Then we went home and the stress of the new environment and expectations caught up with him and he had three or four huge, sobbing meltdowns about not much in particular.  By the end of the night we all wound up laying around the livingroom floor for almost an hour, holding hands and just hanging out quietly.  Thank heavens his dad was home last night; I think that the three of us being quietly together really helped. 

He also inhaled his food at dinner, which is very unusual.  He also ate some of the potatoes, which for him counts as veggies.  Go School!

Click on the picture below to see all 12 first-day-of-school photos!

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With formal apologies to Miss Googleyeyes

This morning we all got up together and got ready together and took Wallace for his first day at School.  I took eleventymillion photos but those are on the camera and I can’t download them until tonight.  Here’s the one I took with my phone this morning; he’s telling me it’s the first day of school.  Also he’s smearing snot across his face.  I thought it was appropriate.

Miss Googleyeyes will need to have a different name, because while she does indeed have googleyeys she was also very, very sweet and kind to Wallace this morning, while being very confident and secure and someone he could trust.  I can tell she’s going to be very dear to him.

Last night he was all curled up on the couch with his binkey and his blanket and I wondered if it wasn’t too soon. This morning he learned four proper ways to do four things in the space of time before we left the building.  As we left he was learning to serve himself breakfast sitting at the table with other children.  Like a real gentleman instead of like a small, adorable troll.  It is without doubt the right place for him to be at the right time.

I thought I would cry, but I didn’t.  The place was just so happy.  How could I cry when we’ve found yet another wonderful place for him to spend the day and learn?

I’ll post more pictures soon and think up a new name for Miss Googleyeyes because she really was just lovely.

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Tomorrow morning is the first day of school, only capital.  The FIRST day of school.  Ever.

Tonight I’m worried and trying not to do the mom thing where I fret overmuch.  Wallace has yet to encounter a social situation where he did not thrive.  Yes, his teacher is ancient older and her eyes google out in different directions and she wanted to call him by his full, given name rather than the nickname he’s known his whole life, but power struggle one (complete with lip pursing by both myself and ol’ boogey-eyes) is over and Wallace was not directly involved.  Also there are perfectly lovely teachers aids that are adorable and attentive, and Wallace may yet win over his ancient, obnoxious teacher.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

I worry that Miss Googleyeyes will pick on him.  I worry that he won’t have anyone to sit with at lunch. I worry that he’ll have a potty accident or that he won’t nap or that he’ll just miss us or WAHHHHHHHHhhhh.

And then I remind myself that I am worrying about the Lord of the Flies, and calm down.

I’m sure I’ll have more to report tomorrow.

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This morning, when bending over to help my son take off his pants to use the potty, I heard a SQUISH, SNAP, and there went my lower back.

I’m able to move, just not very fast or without excruciating pain.

Dear Universe,

I am giving you the finger.

KP

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