Bye, cable and daycare!
The Bee cried tonight when we turned off the TV, knowing that this is our last day of having cable. I cried a little too, especially after we tried to turn the TV back on after the kids were in bed, only to discover, in some kind of cruel cosmic joke, that our TV now only receives Telemundo with any clarity.
I cried earlier tonight, when I was paying the bills, and wrote the very last daycare check I will ever have to write. Those were tears of relief, though. Hello, extra $9K per year! (Well, except that we do have to pay for aftercare. And summer camp. But even then, we’re still saving a hell of a lot of money.)
It’s hard to fathom that, after this Friday, we will never again drive up the road to the daycare where we’ve been dropping off both or one of the kids every single work day for seven years. At this point, I don’t think there’s a single institution that I’ve had that long a relationship with in my entire life, unless you count the public school system that I grew up attending.
This summer has felt like one long transition to me, and it’s hard to believe that a major part of that transition is coming to an end this week. I took the kids shopping for new school supplies yesterday, and the Potato promptly came home and filled his backpack with new notebooks and boxes of tissues, and then put it on and walked around the house triumphantly.
The Bee, of course, was too cool for that (although she did effect the same transfer of supplies to her new bookbag). But isn’t that the best part of being a big sister? Getting to be cooler than your little brother?
realizations that I’ve rather not have had
The Bee acts badly when she’s mad at me for going away. I’m beginning to see that she does it because then she can tell herself that my leaving has something to do with her behavior, not something that is totally out of her control.
This sucks. A lot.
I guess it’s good for her to feel control. I wish it didn’t mean that we were fighting the whole time I’m at home. I wish that she would just tell me that she’s mad at me for working too much, or traveling too much, instead of making it about how I ruined her life because she can’t find her purse.
But I guess she wouldn’t be 8, then.
he’s got the wiggles
Does anyone else have an almost-five-year-old boy who just can’t sit still?
I’m starting to really worry about how the Potato is going to do when he starts kindergarten in less than a month (ulp!). He is just not a kid who can sit still for any length of time. It’s not that he can’t concentrate on things–if you give him a pile of legos, he sits there (with his tongue sticking out–a sign that he’s focused) until he’s built a huge stack of whatever it is he’s dreamt up to build that day.
What he can’t do, however, is sit still while he’s doing it.
Or while he’s watching tv.
Or while he’s eating a meal.
Or while he’s listening to a story, or playing a game, or having a conversation, or even sleeping.
The kid is just a wiggler. A fidgeter. A squirmer.
He twitches, he jiggles, he’s basically a big bundle of energy that needs to keep moving.
The only thing that gives me hope that he’ll be okay in kindergarten, is that I know that the kindergarten teacher has three sons. Surely one of them was a wiggler too?
Also? the Potato will not have the same kindergarten teacher that the Bee did. I don’t think there’s anyone left reading this blog who read it back when the Bee was in kindergarten (with the possible exception of MetroDad–can’t remember–can you, MD?). Here’s a refresher, if you want to catch up.
things that keep me up at night
Why is it, do you suppose, that the tendency for near-sightedness (or other vision problems) stayed with humans, through the evolutionary process.
Doesn’t it seem like the gene for good vision would have been more successful than it seems to have been? Maybe it’s multiple genes for multiple vision disorders, but still.Do you think that animals have as many vision problems as humans do? And if not, is it because their eye-brain connection, or their eye structure, is somehow less complicated?
Sometimes I wonder how I would have survived to adulthood, if I had been born in a time without any kind of corrective lenses. And if I (or rather, my great-to-the-nth-power grandmother) didn’t survive, how did she pass on this horrible vision?
It doesn’t seem to me that humans have over-developed our other senses to make up for the fact that our sight is so downright undependable. And we’re a prey animal, as well as a predator. It’s hard to imagine other prey animals (say, gazelles) running into trees or something because their distance vision isn’t good. Or if they did, then they’re certainly not living to pass down that trait.
Bumblebee Sweet Potato 