‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…
Tonight, the Tank told Papa (my dad) that he loved him “eighty ninety.” He told Nana he loved her “ten-ny.” I asked how much he loved me. He looked me up and down and said…
“One.”
One? ONE?!?! I made a sad face. He sighed, rolled his eyes, and said, “Ok…five.”
Merry freaking Christmas, y’all. 
Babypie doesn’t like her medicine. She really, really doesn’t like her medicine. She hates it so much, that now she hates all medicines, even the ones she used to take without fuss, because the delivery method (oral syringe) is the same. Today, she hated taking medicine so much, that she gagged and gagged, which made her cough, which made her vomit her medicine all over both of us and the kitchen floor. Breastmilk and medicine puke isn’t horrible, thankfully, but it’s not exactly what I’d call festive, either.
Can you believe I’m actually missing homeschooling? Without some semblance of a routine, my days feel alternately too long and boring or too short and harried. I’m really looking forward to revamping our schedule, post-Christmas. Piano twice a week, Latin, maybe some new language arts programs! It’ll be like a second Christmas for me!
Spent the better part of the afternoon in the pediatric urgent care, after night two of both the Tank and Babypie shrieking all night long. The final tally was three infected ears between them (two for the Tank, one for Babypie) and a chest x-ray on the Tank to rule out pneumonia (clear, thankfully). Nothing says Christmas cheer like an infected ear. I’m on day two of almost no sleep. Things are getting giddy up in this joint.
Growing up, my mother (Nana) used to always sing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to us when we’d whine or complain. I’ve continued that tradition with my own children. They, in turn, sing it to each other.
A few days ago, the Tank was whining about wanting something or another (the red cup, maybe) and Captain Science broke out in song with “you can’t always get what you want!” I sang, “but if you try sometimes, you just might find…you get what you need.”
Without missing a beat, the Tank sang, to the same tune, “But you won’t like it…’cause it’ll have a spider on it.”
That’s so true. So very true.
The Tank: “We’re watching Batman.”
Smrt Mama: “I’m sorry. You’re watching what?”
The Tank: “Batman. You know, Batman.”
Smrt Mama: “Batman? What Batman?”
The Tank: “You know, Mama. Batman. The blue Batman.”
Captain Science (hollering up from the playroom): “We’re watching Sleeping Beauty!”
The Tank: “Yeah. Sleeping Beauty Batman.”
Officer Daddyman is in police training all week and sleeping down at the training center (it’s about two hours from here), so I’m flying solo with the three kids. Not only that, but my first line of defense, Nana and Papa, are on a much-deserved anniversary trip to the beach. It’s my first week alone with the kids since we’ve started homeschooling, so I’m a little nervous!
The first day has gone smoothly thus far, with a little hangup over Captain Science’s use of the word “scandal” in his history assignment — the rule is “don’t use a word if you don’t know the meaning,” and he didn’t know the meaning. Even after looking up the definition, he didn’t understand what the big deal was about Julius Caesar’s “adulterous relationships with married women” — and I did not enlighten him! Roman history is colorful, to say the least. I’m hiding A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome from his, as I don’t want to explain about some of the methods of execution. Being, ehem, loved to death by a bull to recreate the conception of the minotaur before a live studio audience? I’ll skip that lesson and the subsequent therapy bills.
I managed to successfully get everyone schooled, run my errands, and am now trying to decide what to feed them, before heading over to feed Nana and Papa’s cats (and possibly hitting Target for an additional stocking hanger for our mantel — five people, five stockings, but only four hangers currently, you see). I’m trying not to feel too down about Daddyman being gone all week, our undecorated half-lit tree (stupid pre-lit trees with stupid shorts in their stupid wires), and the fact that there’s still so much work to be done on the house before the holidays and our post-holidays guests. Oy! Humbug.
I’m getting a little worried about splitting Rome in half with the holidays like we’ll be doing. Will Captain Science retain everything over a two week break? Will he retain anything? Will we have to redo what we’ve done? Maybe I should make some trivia cards and pretend it’s a game, but really it’ll be homeschooling. Like that cookbook where they hide the vegetables in the cupcakes so kids don’t know you’re feeding them something other than white flour and sugar. And seriously, what kind of dumb idea is that cookbook, anyway?
Digression, for the win. It’s only Monday, and already I’m cracking up!
I am developing a game plan for the week, and that game plan is “keep them as busy as possible.” We’re going to run errands, go to meetings, do anything we can to stay active. We are going to be on-the-go-schoolers this week, because I cannot be cooped up in this house with our snaggledy-lighted naked tree like some sort of shut-in, just because it’s too damn cold for the kids to go outside barefoot (which, yes, they whine about). I have outlawed whining this week and declared that any “didn’t get my way” crying fits will result in laps run or times out, depending on the age of the child (Babypie excluded). I shall broker no crap this week, thank you ever so much.
Off to stuff the children full of some semblance of dinner before Babypie’s nap is over, then loading them all run them around to sleep. At least tomorrow is the La Leche League meeting, so I don’t have to concoct any entertainment (or lunch). Maybe I’ll make Captain Science sit in, take notes, and call it a science lesson. Maybe I’ll just trot my children out as an example of either evidence of breastfeeding’s link to increased intelligence or a warning of how extended breastfeeding and babywearing can turn into a scary snowball, rolling downhill into full-blown homeschooling hippie crunchiness. We shall see.
All this weather is not conducive to high quality homeschooling. Days and days of rain and gloom have left Captain Science fidgety and unfocused. It’s bad enough that the broken arm limits his ability to partake in the physical activities that help keep him on track, but not even being able to go outside or see so much as a ray of sunshine leaves me with twitchy, bouncy, scatterbrained children. Eyes are rolling around in the head like marbles. It’s not pretty.
Captain Science keeps snapping his glasses. They’re semi-glued until the new pairs arrive. The kid (and his brother, who has broken half of the Captain’s broken pairs) is rough on glasses. He’s twitchy, fidgety, glasses-falling-apart unhinged. The sound of his cast scraping against the desk is making my skin crawl and he keeps whispering to himself. Send help before I invoke The Slappening*.
Seriously, though, it’s hard to give too much of a damn about Ancient Greece or the parts of speech when you’re expecting an ark to go sailing by any moment now.
Ark-related question (from me, not Captain Science, who doesn’t give a hoot): Did Noah supposedly save two cockroaches on the ark? Or did the cockroaches just hold their breath and walk along the bottom? What about two mosquitoes? If so, why? This is one reason why it’s so good that we’re secular homeschoolers, because I have no answers to questions like these! See, even my mind is wandering.
*My friend Heather’s term for that moment when you’re just going to lose it and start grabbing anyone within arms’ reach and start slappin’ ‘em.
