Daddy Is Tired

It’s never a good sign when the caller ID shows the kids’ school, especially during naptime.

They told me E had been complaining about a stomachache all day.  The school is pretty good about not calling right away for vague complaints, so she must have been complaining a LOT. I suspected she just needed to poop* since she hadn’t gone over the weekend, but they said she didn’t need to go.

It was about 1/2 hour before M was scheduled to wake from his nap, so I told them to distract her and I’d pick them both up then.  I got there and found E whimpering on a couch.  Her belly was huge, and I KNEW she had to poop, despite her denials.  We packed up her stuff and I tried to get her to go to the bathroom, but nothing happened except a lot of crying out.  And if it was going to be one of those “lots of complaining” poops, it was best to take it home.

I tried to get M, but he didn’t want to leave yet, so we left him and went home.  On the way, I warned E that there was going to be no fun…if she’s bad enough to come home early, she’s not going to get to play…she’s going to get on the toilet and try to go.

We got home, she went into the bathroom and I hadn’t even gotten downstairs by the time I heard a very happy singsongy, “Daaaaaadddddyyyyyy….I pooooooooooooped!”

I won’t go in to details, but let me just say WOW.  In fact, I actually told her, “Wow!”  Then I asked why she hadn’t done that at school.

“Because I didn’t want to stink up the bathroom at school.”

*sigh*

_______

* You know I can’t get through a “kid” post without talking about poop or farts.

My kids’ school, particularly my 5yo’s class, has been reading about Martin Luther King for a week.  My daughter would come home telling me about how he was a great man.  How he wanted everyone to be nice to each other.  How we were all equal.  And how one day, a bad man shot him at a hotel.

“In an hour, Martin was dead,” she told me.

This past week we’ve had lots of talks about why someone would want to kill him, but it’s hard to explain to a 5 year old how “the bad man killed Dr. King because he didn’t like what Dr. King was saying.  He didn’t think we were all equal.”  She just doesn’t understand.

So I try to explain that back then, some of the kids in her school wouldn’t be allowed to go.  Some of the teachers wouldn’t be allowed to teach her.  And (fortunately) she doesn’t get it.  She said, “But they’re nice people.  Why wouldn’t they want them to play with me?”

Exactly.

So last Friday, on his birthday, she decided that “Martin” needed a birthday card.  The more she talked about it, she wanted to make a birthday poster instead.  When she was done she taped it up, and we love it.

That's a picture of MLK, the birthday message, and a smiley-face balloon.

Coincidentally, today at lunch she asked me if girls could marry girls and boys could marry boys.  She’s asked that before, and I did the same thing I’ve done in the past.  I lied and told her yes, on the assumption that one day this country will pull its head out of its ass.  One day people will realize that gay rights are civil rights, and that MLK was fighting for that as well.

During Ellie’s darkest days of the past few months, she said some really strange things.  Before we knew about the things she was hearing at school, we had no idea what was prompting such horrible thoughts.  Sometimes she’d pop out a one-liner, like “Whenever I have to go to the bathroom it feels like I have a stick in my crotch.”  (Um, yeah, does that make you worry about the same thing we did?)

Occasionally she’d sit there, staring into space, and tell us a longer story.  Often this was in bed, and she’d be imagining something like getting hit by a car, or being trapped in a house that was on fire.  It was always very detailed, and was pretty scary stuff for a 5 year-old to be thinking about in bed.

I’m not sure what made this particular story grab me, but it was the only one I wrote down.  We’d been sitting in our sunroom watching people walk by when a man went by walking his Golden Retriever.  Ellie stared out the window for a while and, without looking away, said:

I’m imagining that man put the dog in a machine to cut his hair, but instead it cut the dog.  The man didn’t know, and when the dog came out it was like a puzzle and the man laughed at it.  Then the man ran over the dog with his car.  Before he got run over, the dog yelled at the man and said, “WOOF” because he was mad.

Ellie’s psychologist told us that Ellie’s next appointment will be her last, and she’ll need to say goodbye.  I know Ellie is going to be heartbroken, and I will be forever grateful to the doctor for how she helped all of us through a horrible time.  Ellie is continuing to do well, and her ups and downs now seem more normal for the 5 year-old crowd.

Based on my writing frequency, I probably won’t post until Christmas.  Heck, it might not even be that soon.  So anyway, Happy Holidays and I hope you’re doing well!

I know I shouldn’t tell you this, much less even think it, but I feel like I need to let someone know.  And who better to tell than the tens of people who read this blog!  So here goes.

I think my daughter’s sleep issues are beginning to get a little better.

Okay, it’s out there.  Please hang on while I go knock on every piece of wood in the building.  I’ll be right back.

Are you still here?  Good.  As you may or may not know, our daughter has had SERIOUS sleep issues for months.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that bedtime was a disaster every night.  She’d bounce out of bed every 2 minutes and camp out in the bathroom for up to 45 minutes (at which point we’d put her back to bed).  She’d wake several times crying, and would finally wake in the morning crying.  And heaven forbid we actually try and leave her room after consoling her.  She’d convulse on the bed and panic like you’ve never seen.

After finding out what she’d been hearing at school we were able to help a little, but not a lot.  After the teacher issue was resolved (the teacher is no longer there), things didn’t get that much better right away (we didn’t expect them to).

But this past week bedtimes have been better.  Although she has her OCDesque routines, there hasn’t been the panic we saw before.  There’s been no begging for us to stay.  And just as important, she hasn’t been waking us up most nights.  When she does get up, she goes to the bathroom and gets back in bed quietly…and stays quiet in the morning when she gets up.  Which has been later than she’s EVER gotten up before (often after 6).

She’s also telling us a little about her days at school, and if we prod her a bit, she’ll speak a little Spanish.  We haven’t been able to get her to do either of those things in a long time, so we’re really excited to see the changes.

Of course she’s not completely “cured,” and I’m sure we’ll have setbacks (after this we’re guaranteed to have one tonight), but I’m so happy to see progress.  The extra sleep is helping all of us deal with life more calmly, and it’s so good to finally see her talking about school, even if it’s just a little bit.

Now, I’m going to go knock on wood until I go to bed tonight.

I heard the following conversation from the bathroom the other night before bedtime:

Matthew (now 3) asked, “Mommy, do you have a vulva?”

Yes I do, because I’m a girl.

“Can I see it?”  (at this point I had to fight back laughter and other “me too” type of comments)

Umm, no sweety.

“Ellie shows me her vulva when we’re in the bath.”

Uh…

“You and Ellie have vulvas.”

That’s right, but let’s not tell other people that.  You can just tell them we’re girls.

That’s right – The Letter is finished, we both signed it, and I’m going to deliver it at the end of the day.  Of course I can’t tell you what it says, but there is no ultimatum…just a documentation of what has happened, our concerns with the “positive nurturing environment” that the school claims it strives for, and our expectation that the school will do the “right thing.”  And we’ll see what happens from here.

Oh, great Flying Spaghetti Monster, we pray for your guidance.  Please deliver us through this stressful time!

Interestingly, today is meatball day at school. I think it’s a sign.

Last night got to a pretty predictable start.  We were trying to get out the door trick or treating, and one or more of  the kids threw a tantrum.  By the time we opened the door to leave, the hordes were beginning to descend upon our village, and despite our best efforts to convince them we weren’t home, the open door and light being turned on may have given us away.  At least we had good candy to give away…none of that crappy non-chocolate stuff!

Anyway, we finally got going and the promise of free candy magically made the tantrums go away!  The story is boring – the kids had a great time, they collected more chocolate than I ever did as a kid (when did everyone stop giving out crappy candy?), and we spent the last hour of the evening at a friend’s house watching the kids have a great time.

And now, with every keystroke, my keyboard is getting chocolatier and chocolatier.

Our Scary Skeleton (thanks to Matthew)

Our Super Heroes

Amazingly, this pose was Sharon's idea!

It’s now officially been a year that we’ve been without a dog.  Losing Mena was such a terrible thing, and to lose Gideon only two weeks later was devastating.

I can’t pretend that he was the perfect family dog…he had sore hips and didn’t like when the kids got near them.  He liked to wrestle – roughly.  But we’d gotten him before we had kids.  Before we knew some of the habits we should break from a dog.  So I ended up with the perfect dog not for a family with kids…but for me.

He and I really understood each other, and it’s contemplating how wonderful he was that makes me REALLY wonder about what people call the soul.  He had such a strong personality, and was so smart, that I wonder where that came from.  We understood each other perfectly.  When I was in a bad mood, he’d sense it from across the house and put his chin (or butt) on me.  When I was sad he’d come cuddle me.  And of course he’d always want to play in the yard.  I miss throwing his toys and watching him catch them mid-air.  I miss going on walks, watching how wiggly he got when I got the leash out.  I miss coming home from work to have lunch with him.  I miss just hearing his nails click on the floor.

You may not have been the ideal family dog, Gideon, but you were perfect for me.  You were my little guy, and you always will be.  I love you.

My Little Guy

While I was wiping my daughter’s butt – yeah, like many parents most of my stories involve bodily functions – my daughter started talking about how she didn’t want to flush peaches down the toilet.  Then she informed me that pee and poop were okay to flush, but she didn’t want to eat them.

THANK GOODNESS!

Then she went on to say that farts were okay to flush too, but we couldn’t eat them.  And then out popped:

“What if someone put their mouth right on someone’s butt and waited?  And then what if the other person stopped holding it and farted in their mouth and then the other person started barfing all over?”

I swear – I SWEAR – that I haven’t shown her the video I know 75% of you are thinking about right now.  But with stories like that, is it any wonder she doesn’t want to go to sleep?