Tank took this picture of me. It’s a good picture and also illustrates the increasing bagginess of my clothes as I continue with the 30 Day Shred

Lightsabers and NERF guns

Who shot first? Han? Greedo? Nah, it was Babypie.

A few months ago, Tank decided that his middle name needed to change. I’m perfectly willing to go along with a temporary name change and even told him he could change it to whatever he felt was the right name for him as soon as he turned 18; I’d support him completely. Given the complete freedom to name himself anything he wanted, he spent a few minutes thinking hard and mulling some ideas over aloud, before his eyes lit on Captain Science’s t-shirt (black with a white guitar with bat wings). “My new middle name is Bat-guitar!”

We discussed the appropriate spelling. He can’t read yet, but he could weigh in on whether it was one word, two words, or hyphenated (he chose the hyphen). I agreed to call him Tank Bat-guitar McLernins as long as that’s what he wanted to be called. I even changed it on his Facebook page, because, yes, my kids have Facebook. They enjoy Pet Society. Shyuddup.

Today, Tank announced that he no longer wanted to be Bat-guitar. Instead, he wanted his middle name to be Charm Bracelet. A few minutes later, he decided it should just be Charm. A few minutes after that, he decided it should be Charmander.

Charmander, I choose you!

A little while after that, he asked if I knew who Mace Windu is, because Mace Windu is a great name. “I think my middle name will be Mace Windu, only without the Mace. So just Windu.” When Captain Science urge him to keep Bat-guitar, tank said, “I’ll go back to Bat-guitar next summer.”

He’s stuck with Windu all day, so there you have it, folks: Tank Windu McLernins.

I still prefer Bat-guitar, myself, but it’s not my name, after all.

Yesterday, Babypie colored a little on his picture with a marker. I immediately moved Babypie to another seat (and, since I was asked about it, yes, I did scold her and tell her to color on HER paper, not Donovan’s), wiped up as much marker as possible, and offered to get him a new picture. That was not enough to address the insult, apparently, because as soon as I walked back out of the room, he slapped the marker from Babypie’s hand, knocking her from the chair, where she hit her face, bit either her tongue or the inside of her cheese, and started sobbing as she bled from the mouth.

When told to go to his room, Tank refused. He only went under threat of having his box of markers thrown away, and once he was there, he spent the next half hour screaming that if I thew away his markers, I wasn’t his mom. “You’re not my mom! You’re a monster! You’re a bad mom!” Thanks, kid. Well, he finally got calmed down, came out and apologized to Babypie for hurting her, and all was fine.

Fast-forward to today. He and Babypie were watching some math song videos on the computer. He asked to play computer, and I told him he could have a little time on PBS or Poissonrouge.com, but that was it. He told me that was not it, that he was going to play Pet Society or Bloons and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I turned the computer off and sent him up to his room to get himself calmed down. No, he would not get calm! I’m the worst mom ever! I am not his mom! He doesn’t want me to be his mom!

I said, go up to your room, or I’m coming up and bagging up your stuff (the only thing that really works for him). Nope, not gonna do it. I got a kitchen bag and put in his bugs, dinosaurs, etc. and while I was doing that, he kicked me, and told me I wasn’t a mom, I was a monster.

I almost lost it. Vision going red. I felt myself want to just slap him, so instead, I picked him up and plunked him down on the bed and screamed, “A monster? I’m a monster? I’ll show you a monster!”

And then I started roaring and running around with my arms over my head, screaming, “ARRRR! I’m a MONSTER! A MONSTER!” I hopped up and down. I growled at him. I grabbed him and tickled him. I threw his blankets up into the air, all while saying, “I’m a monster! Grrrr! Arrrr!”

Tank was looking at me like WTF? but he did stop yelling and pitching a fit. I went out of his room then and just ignored him until he was calm enough to talk to me. He then went calmly up to his room and stayed there while I finished taking care of some stuff. I gave him back his bugs and dinosaurs and we put them back where they belonged. He’s in fine spirits. I think he possibly thinks I’m crazy, but I didn’t do anything I regret (except accidentally stepping on Buddy the dinosaur and breaking his head off).

Sometimes, being ridiculous and over the top is the only acceptable alternative to selling them on ebay.

Poor Buddy! I know exactly how you feel.

Five and a half years after Captain Science was born, Tank rocketed into our family…and I do mean rocketed. I had just enough time between pregnancies to completely forget what to expect, which is good, because Tank’s was completely different from Captain Science’s. I had it so easy — almost no sickness, plenty of energy, no swelling, and all the weight gain going straight to my belly — that I think I was lulled into a false sense of security. I was certainly not prepared for Tank’s explosive entrance into the world. Good thing I was planning on a homebirth, because I never would have made it anywhere else! I went from “oh, I might be in labor” to Tank’s head popping out in its entirety as my water broke. Rocket man from the beginning, he’s lucky his Nana was able to baseball slide and catch him before he took flight.

No, he hasn’t slowed down since.

My Tank was not an easy baby. He took right to nursing, which as a relief, but the sleeping thing was another story. At a month old, he turned into the shrieking colic monster. At around four months old, he decided he could only be nursed lying down; I had to trick him by latching him on side-lying and then sitting up. I don’t think he was put down for more than a few minutes until he was nine months old. He was a funny baby with a huge, gap-toothed smile, but he also had a serious furrowing brow, which earned him the nickname “Dubious D.”

If Captain Science taught me flexibility, Tank taught me patience. Everything was on his time table and his time table was completely different from what Captain Science’s had been. He sat unassisted well at 3 1/2 months, crawled by around 5 months, but didn’t walk until 13 months old…at which point he took off running. He said just enough words by his second birthday for it to be “enough” words, then his vocabulary exploded overnight. He decided to use the potty at 19 months old, changed his mind after a week, then completely potty trained again at 22 months (this time, thankfully, for good). He demonstrated excellent gross and fine motor skills from an early age, draws beautiful and intricate pictures with an excellent sense of color, but still has only the vaguest interest in learning to read (though he really loves knowing how words are spelled). For Tank, the parts are so much more interesting than the whole.

Sometimes I think Tank is my maternal grandfather reincarnated. He has the same booming Ballard voice, the same dark good looks, the same roguish grin (often coupled with a “I know what I’m getting away with” wink), the same BIG stage-like presence. He’s not a large kid — tall enough, but with a slight build that makes him appear smaller than he actually is. I try to remind myself that my hoss of a younger brother (the original Tank, btw — Tank’s nickname is technically Tank Junior) started out that way, too, and could pick me up and carry me around by 14. Tank resembles his uncle quite a bit. He also looks a heckuvalot like Officer Daddyman, especially his mouth and those brows.

Tank wakes up early and hits the ground running. He goes non-stop until bed time, when it’s a struggle to get him to stay in bed long enough to actually fall asleep. Tank wakes up during the night to demand repositioning of his blankets, the hall light turned on, a drink of water, or an answer to any of a number of odd questions. Nothing in the world can convince him that 3am is a less-than-ideal time to ask about what ants eat or whether or not ghosts have their own planet (and what it looks like, and what they do there, and how we get there). He is full of questions, day and night, and he expects a serious and thorough answer. He’s highly observant, especially about the number/volume of things/people and their social relationships. From an early age, he could sort items into perfect even piles for people to share. He asks insightful questions about why people act how they do.

One of Tank’s greatest ambitions in life is to turn “hive” and “pay hootball.” He threw himself into soccer this year with abandon. He loves homeschool ice skating day, and even though he falls down, he gets right back up, because something as insignificant as a little gravity can’t stop him. He will run around the house when he gets excited until everyone watching him gets dizzy. He loves riding his bike. He will play hard until forced to stop. I can’t stop him from leaping onto and off of things, turning things over, dumping things out, scaling the cabinets to find a hidden piece of Halloween candy. He talks non-stop, even though most people can’t understand a word he’s saying. He is movement and energy in a boy shape. Sometimes he’s selectively deaf (two hearing tests have confirmed that any hearing problems he has are selective) and exceptionally naughty. Sometimes he’s the sweetest boy, wanting to sit in my lap and cuddle me.

Last year, when Captain Science start homeschooling, Tank wanted to badly to stay home with us. He enjoyed the little preschool he attended for a few days a week, with his best friend Dimhibbins, but what he really wanted was to be here with us. More than anything else, Tank loves us. More than anyone else, Tank adores and wants to be like Captain Science — so of course, he torments and annoys him endlessly. Tank waffles between devouring workbooks and snubbing anything resembling curriculum. He’s a Gemini, though, so duality is his way. He keeps me on my toes, which is something I probably needed to get better at, anyway.

He’s a delight and a joy, a handful and then some, a bull in a china shop, a little artist (sometimes of walls and his body, too), and an unbroken spirit. I wouldn’t trade him for anything else in the world, and I am so grateful for him.

Types of Spider-Mans
as dictated to Smrt Mama  by the Tank while riding in the car

• No-Hands Spider-Man. He has no hands and shoots webs from his arms.
• No-Head and No-Hands Spider-Man. His stomach is his head. His belly-button is his one eye.
• No-Tummy Spider-Man. His arms and legs and feet come right out of his head.
• Mind Brain Spider-Man. He’s a scientist of brains. If you need to find out about brains, you call him. He has a car with a map on it to help you find where the brains are.
• Muscles Spider-Man. He shoots webs from his muscles. My costume is Muscles Spider-Man.
• Wheels Spider-Man. Instead of feet, he has wheels. He shoots webs from his wheels.
• Top Spider-Man. He makes lots of statues. The statues shoot webs. “Top” is his nickname.
• Upside Down Spider-Man. His feet are his hands. His hands are his feet. He uses a tornado to walk instead of his legs. He shoots webs from his tornado.
• Robot Spider-Man. This side [left] of his body is Legos and this side [right] is robot. He shoots webs from his fingers. That’s what he is.
• Night Spider-Man. I don’t know about Night Spider-Man. He…He…I don’t know what he’s about.
• Giant Spider-Man. I forgot about one Spider-Man that I love, Giant Spider-Man. He’s a giant Spider-man. He can crush bad guys because he’s giant. It’s kind of hard for him to see, because he accidentally crushes buildings.
• Big Hand Spider-Man. He can crush bad guys with his big hands. He can punch them and stuff and throw them out of the world.
• Super Spider-Man. He can fly and he has a special rope that can swing on trees and go to the other part of the world. It might be the Dark World. The Dark World is so easy, I’ve found. That’s the world I’m on.

There you have it, folks. In case you were wondering about Spider-Mans, you now know all the different kinds.

We learned this after Tank vomited dramatically in the middle 4 o’clock performance of the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. He’d been complaining of a tummy ache throughout the late morning and afternoon, but when that blast of heat from the exploding truck hit him, it was all over. I swiftly removed him from the show, cleaned him up in the next door restaurant’s bathroom, then watched in horror as he got sick all over the restaurant floor. He was rewarded with another sponge-down, a Sprite to sip on, and a fresh new Indiana Jones t-shirt. We figured he’d earned it.

The poor kid continued to ralph every 30-90 minutes, dozing in between, for the rest of the evening, managing to get tidily and quietly sick into an assortment of small, plastic Disney bags. We had reservations at the Hollywood Brown Derby (in Hollywood Studios) at 6:45 and were in a bit of a panic over what to do about the sleeping Tank, in his giant rented double stroller. Enter St. Alma.

Alma was the hostess at the Brown Derby that evening. She was a tiny, older woman with a dignified and commanding presence, who initially came out to tell us we could not park our stroller there (“there” being outside the Brown Derby, in a pathway that was used for wheelchair parking). Once Alma learned why were trying to get the stroller into the cool, shady spot, however, she immediate became our angel. She arranged for a table with space to park the humongous stroller and invited us to bring it inside and right up to the table. The Brown Derby is a nice restaurant — small, fancy portions of exceptional food on pristine white plates, with a decorative drizzle of sauce — and takes two deluxe dining plan credits (absolutely worth it, btw, sick kid or no sick kid). Whatever. Alma let us park our four-wheeled monstrosity up next to the table.

Alma fretted over Tank for the rest of dinner as though he were her own grandchild. She brought us some ice water for him to sip (with a Mickey Mouse curvy straw), encouraged us to put a cool cloth on him, constantly reassured us that it was FINE that our child was occasionally dry-heaving into a plastic bag in the middle of their restaurant, and sent the manager our way to check on us. The manager, Debbie (another Derby Angel), brought us a snapping cool-pack to help bring down his core temperature, since at that point it was pretty clear that the issue was a combination of overheating and dehydration, and brought him a white paper bag filled with metallic confetti (in Mickey ears and stars) and three light-up ice cubes. The paper bag was labeled “My Bag of Pixie Dust.” She said she thought it might make him feel better when he woke up and saw it. She was right; the puking didn’t stop, but morale definitely improved. Before we left, Alma and Debbie both came back by to check on Tank again and to make sure we knew where the first aid station was (where it was confirmed that he’d gotten dehydrated and overheated).

We’re writing letters to Disney praising Alma and Debbie, but I also wanted to share this story here, to encourage you to give the Brown Derby a try if you’re ever at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I expected friendliness and happiness from Disney employees; it’s what they’re paid to offer. What I didn’t expect was the level of genuine human compassion and care we received at the Hollywood Brown Derby. It was a five star experience in every way.

The angry rabbit-looking guy in the middle is my favorite. I want to call him Ralph. He looks like he’s giving a thumbs up, but he isn’t. That’s a gun.

Here is the artist himself, wearing his zebra head band from Zany Zebra Day (don’t ask). He’s also wearing his “specialty shorts.” Note the strategically placed smiley face sticker on the crotch. Yeah, I couldn’t explain that, either.

Yesterday, I went to spring conference at Tank’s preschool. I met with his teacher and looked over her assessments of his abilities and development. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw!

First, Mrs. SweetTeacher (he also has Mrs. HappyTeacher, the assistant teacher) showed me the assessment from the music class instructor. The Tank showed concept mastery in all areas, including the area of “how to behave yourself in a music class.” It wasn’t worded exactly like that, but that was certainly the implication of that particular bullet point. Tank apparently knows the names of all of the instruments used in class and can categorize them (drums are percussion, for example). He always participates in class and enjoys singing. This, I knew, as I can’t put on my Glee cd without the child belting out “Don’t Stop Believing.”

In Mrs. SweetTeacher’s class, the Tank has also been making great strides. His gross motor skills are just as good as I knew they were and his fine motor skills are also excellent. He can jump, skip, draw a straight line and a circle, and draw a picture of himself with all the parts that a child should be consistently putting in drawings at this age (head, facial features, arms, and legs). He is social and gets along well with other kids, always has a playmate as is right in the middle of the action, though he shows a mature ability (“We usually see that in much older children!”) to identify the kid that won’t put up a fuss if he swipes their toy — yes, the Tank is the kind of child who could easily become a bully if that sort of behavior weren’t parented out of him, which is one reason why I think homeschooling will be much better for him than public school, where his innate bullying instinct might be fed. I’m glad he has such a high level of social intelligence, but I want him to use it for good, not evil!

He knows all of his colors and shapes. He can count to 15, though he often skips 16 and/or 17, then can continue to count up through the 20s and 30s, and often beyond, especially with a little prompting. He has sight recognition for the names of all of the boys in his class (the preschool ended up with way more boys than girls this year, resulting in an all-boy classroom for the M/W/Th group). He can write his own name, from left to write in all upper case, though he writes each letter from right to left, which is sort of interesting. They don’t expect them to have name recognition or the ability to write their name, but they assess them for that anyway, just to see if they can, and the Tank can!

The area where I wasn’t at all aware how the Tank was developing was in letter recognition. He won’t even sing the ABC song for me (“I don’t know them all.”) and I didn’t know that he could now recognize all of the letters, at least the upper case ones! He sometimes misreads G for C, but otherwise, he can correctly identify all of them. Wow, this really blew my mind. On the one hand, I was really excited that he could do so much more than I realized. With Captain Science as my barometer, it’s often hard for me to know if the Tank is behind, normal, or even ahead, because Captain Science was so far above average that the usual “above average” seems like “average” to me, if that makes any sense. It was comforting to know that the Tank is not only NOT behind, but is ahead in most areas.

On the other hand, that I didn’t know all the things he can do leaves me with a slight feeling of loss, just like missing any milestone in your child’s life. Where was I when he learned the alphabet? How could I miss that he knew all the things he knows? I don’t think it would have occurred to me to feel regret about this if I hadn’t been homeschooling Captain Science this year. I like being a part of my children’s education. I like knowing what they know, because I’m the one who helped them learn it. I’m sad that I wasn’t the one who taught the Tank the rest of his letters and it only reconfirms my plans to homeschool him starting next year.

Mrs. SweetTeacher asked if we were reenrolling him for next year and I told her we would be homeschooling. She seemed disappointed that he wouldn’t be returning to the school. I’m glad his teachers seem to genuinely like and enjoy him, because he’s an enjoyable, entertaining child. Both Mrs. SweetTeacher and Mrs. HappyTeacher have remarked on his good sense of humor, his advanced verbal skills, what a great personality he has. It’s always nice to hear that from an outside source.

I’m thrilled this conference was full of so much good information, but now I can’t wait to start preschooling at home next year!