Category Archives: parenthood
Smurfberry Shake
He created the recipe in his Smurf Recipes app on his Kindle Fire. It honestly wasn’t very delicious — berries, water, and ice, topped with Reddi Wip — but a packet of Splenda made it more palatable.
From the Mouths of Babes
Connor, age five-and-a-half, called me upstairs after lights out tonight because his feet hurt. Totally legit reason, so I headed upstairs to dose out some Tylenol and rub his feet. On my way up, I yawned mightily and stretched my arms over my head.
“Maybe you should go to bed a little early tonight,” my son suggested.
I think he might be onto something there.
Tooth Pillow
My son has had a rough few days, with his Very Loose Tooth and his ongoing fever. This morning, his tooth finally came out, so I scraped together a few minutes over my work-at-home lunch break to whip up a tooth pillow for this second tooth.
Of course, I look at this and think, God, this looks horrible. So very first draft, so proof-of-concept. My son thinks it’s awesome, though, and I guess that’s all that matters.
(He did tell me I should write a note for the Tooth Fairy to say that he wants to keep his tooth for his tooth collection. I’m afraid the Tooth Fairy is going to tell him what she tells everyone: you want the cash, you gotta surrender the tooth.)
I tried to get him to pose with his second tooth like he did with his first… but he hasn’t been feeling well, like I mentioned, so my attempts to get him to show his new and bigger tooth gap look like tortured grimaces.
We’re going to the pediatrician tomorrow, so hopefully that plus a visit from the Tooth Fairy will make him feel better.
A New Chapter Begins
“So, how are you this morning?”
I paused. “Excited,” I answered.
We were sitting across from each other at a small table, in the very same room where my son had been screened for early kindergarten admittance exactly one year before. This time, though, I was submitting Connor’s kindergarten registration forms.
The table where Connor had sat during his screening was now filled with stacks of paperwork. I recognized pieces of the registration packet I’d filled out, yanked from their staples and stacked in piles topped with the names of the district’s elementary schools.
How analog, I thought. Someone has to go through all these papers later and enter the information into the school’s database.
The woman asked for Connor’s registration packet, medical information, proof of residency (i.e. utility bill), birth certificate, and my photo ID, checking off each on a half-sheet checklist — and we were done.
She gave me a checksheet of all the school supplies Connor will need for kindergarten, with important dates on the reverse. I asked the few questions I had (when can I sign Connor up for Latchkey, and when will I know his bus schedule), got my answers (for Latchkey, ask the Latchkey people; for the bus, at the Open House in August), and I was on my way.
I get the impression that a lot of this school stuff will be us flying by the seat of our pants and trying to be as proactive and involved as possible. It’s only March — we have five months until school starts — but it’s a totally new thing for all of us, and we want to be as prepared as we can. We like our routines, and this is going to be the biggest upheaval in our routine since Connor starting daycare back in the day.
It’s exciting.