avocado8

Stage 2

The purple is in.

Also, after a disastrous return to work yesterday (duh, I *knew* I was pushing it with the non-waterproof mascara!), today is a better day. The crisp fall weather is finally here, I woke up with an idea of what was causing the bug I spent hours on yesterday, and, most importantly, Al is becoming incredibly expert at cheering me up. What's more, he enjoys doing it—cheering me cheers him. SO glad I married that guy (5 years ago last Saturday!).

can you feel the wacky?

One thing that cheered me up on day off #2 (prior to the disastrous return to work) was reading through my blog archives. I didn't intend to do it—I was mostly in there fixing all the references to Flickr photos that broke when I made my Beaner photos Private/Friends & Family Only—but I started looking to see which Beaner milestones I'd reported on and which I hadn't, and I got sucked in. I thought to myself, "hey, I'm actually kind of good at this blogging thing. I'm even funny sometimes." Well, I crack myself up, at least, which suits my purposes at the moment.

Speaking of the Beaner, I'm not going to beat myself up about not having written the School post yet. I'll just offer a few bullet points for now:

• He's enjoying it
• I'm starting to think that they tell the kids, "when your parents ask, 'what did you do today,' the answer is "I DON'T KNOW."
• Al drops him off in the morning, and he climbs the stairs to his classroom on his own now.
• I like picking him up. He looks for me between the railings on the stairs and shouts, "Mommy!" and waves. Very sweet.
• He wants a lunchbox like B_____'s, he's friends with A______, and he points out other kids in his class as we leave each day.
• He's sometimes dismayed at the drawings that his teacher sends home in the Friday folder. "I don't like that one. I can do better than that."
• The fall picnic is tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing more kids & parents together (I've met many of the moms/nannies who pick up their kids, but I'm not always sure which kid belongs to whom).

[Pretend there's a transition here.]

Last night I was really struggling to keep it together, and eventually I just stopped trying and sat on the floor in the kitchen with tears streaming down my face. "Are you happy or sad?" the Beaner asked. Then he saw the tears, and I could tell by the look on his face that he didn't really need me to answer, though I did. "Sad." He sat down next to me and tilted his head to look me in the eye. "Why are you sad, Mommy?" I started to explain, but got stuck on where to start. "Well, it's a combination of factors..."

The Beaner interrupted me. "Are you sad because Daddy's not home yet?" I smiled and said, "yes, that's one of the reasons I'm sad."

"Don't worry, Mommy," he said. "Daddy will be home soon."

When did my son become so grown up? So stoic? Lest you think he's like this all the time, I should mention that we are firmly in the "but I don't WANT to!" phase. At bedtime last night he about drove me crazy with the whining about wanting to have a picnic, and he seemed to purposely fail to understand my explanations about choosing one OR the other of two options, not both. As in, you can watch Blues Clues OR have a picnic, but not both. You can have chocolate OR vanilla, but not both. But I want chocolate AND vanilla! OK, kid, let me explain OR again...

He finally conked out under protest—and I mean that literally. As I extracted myself from under his little body, he flopped over and moaned, "but I want to have a PICNIC!"

And then he was silent.