Partial Week in Review

This week, I’ve made a conscious effort to take notes about our life so that I could write on these one liners later. For all my effort, I wrote three notes. [Update, found an additional note on the grocery list in recycling. Must get better at keeping track of my notes.] One of the notes does not include enough words to spur my memory, but the other notes read "she's shooting up like a rocket,"  "no good reason at all," and "Monday, Monday."

Monday

Our Monday started with the same frazzled pace of waking up a few minutes late and taking a minute too long to wash my face before I made breakfast for one kid and packed lunches for both. Snatching the baby from her slumber I took her barefoot to the car seat, intent on beating the school drop off rush.

“Woah, Mom. What happened?” Our windshield is cracked. Two different impact points with the characteristic spiderweb pattern larger than two quarters. Silver dollars, perhaps.

“I have no idea Turner.” I touch it in disbelief, the splinters on the outside of the windshield but not the inside. We get in the car, buckle up, and get moving. Just as we get to the neighbor’s driveway he says, “You know? Julian and Tyler asked me yesterday if we heard a loud thump over here.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. They were playing baseball with rocks.” For a half second, I thought perhaps a baby bear could have fallen out of our tree onto the car.

Fast forward through the day--meeting with the fire chief and graduate program coordinator to plan a class, marathon baseball, food on the go and never at the same time, baby reluctant to nap and gets in bed late with a winning ballgame). Andy stands in the kitchen watching Turner unpack things from his book bag.
“How was your day, son?”

Turner’s back fills with air, his chin bobs to his chest and he spins around with an exhale that would seem more appropriate if we had insulted him. Turner doesn’t say anything to Andy; he just casts another annoyed breath-heavy sound out into the space between us.

Andy immediately laughs, and looks at me in disbelief, rightfully taken aback by Turner’s disdain for interacting with us. Slowly, we entered into the landmine of misunderstanding and just finished my day tiredness. It’s 3:30 pm, and we’re all home trying not to wake the baby.

“I just told Mom all this . . . ” in the two minute car ride home from the bus stop.

“I totally get why Dad wants his own version, don’t you?”

“Fine.” He runs his hands over the laptop sitting on the bar as he thinks for a moment. “The most annoying thing today was ____ singing the song, ‘It’s Friday, It’s Friday’” and he snaps his fingers with a sway of the hips at the comma. Four or five times he sings the second verse, which I can no longer recall.

I’m looking at and attempting to process piles of paper populating the area around our computer--the beastly, disconnected reality of multitasking. Turner continues singing the Friday song. Andy asks, “I don’t understand. What’s so bad about that?” He's looking through today's mail.

“Everything! I mean, I like the song.” He sings it for us again. Clearly, he likes the song and that comma in the middle. “It’s just . . . Monday." He takes a long pause while we begin to understand his meaning. "Made me think about Friday and well you can’t sing that song on a Monday.” And my first thought was, Damn. It IS Monday. “It’s cruel.”
Andy puts his hands in the air, "Okay, alright. You don't have to talk to me anymore." He blinks a smile at me.
"Good. Thanks." Cue the baby as he walks down the hall.

Tuesday
First day of end of grade exams for Turner. We've received no fewer than ten versions of reminders. Phone calls, emails, paperwork home to sign and some to put on the fridge. Strict guidelines about breakfast including protein. Check, check, check. I go to bed Monday night a bit weary, but with a plan. In the morning, I enter the kitchen to find Turner huddled over a bowl of cold cereal. "Whoa dude. I'm making you scrambled eggs."
"Great. An egg burrito for lunch."
"No, you need to eat some of them this morning. Protein." I start water for my tea, lean against the oven, and take a deep breath. The starts shouting my name. She'll want to help me make breakfast for certain. Thirty minutes later, my plan is twenty minutes behind because there is, of course, a poopy issue. We still have plenty of time to get to school for "the most important of three tests of the entire fifth grade year."

Gathering, sorting, remembering, gathering, carrying and we are out the door. Immediately, I notice a slump to the truck. Closer inspection: Flat tire. Oh, Tuesday.

A friend takes Turner to school and delivers him safely on time with three bites of protein for breakfast and a massive burrito for lunch. Two hours later, a babysitter hired, we have four new tires on the truck and I revised six pages of text. Now, when it rains, I'm even more aware that our tires were quite unsafe for more than a few months.

Wednesday
Late to school for no good reason at all. Two of us out of bed before 7 am, and the other slept in so as to give us even more time. Eggs eaten before the cereal. Kid totally rested for testing. Lunches packed that include a fortune cookie and vegetable. We get in the car and somehow lose ten minutes. Bell rings as Turner's foot hits the pavement. Second day of "the most important of three tests of the entire fifth grade year."

School Days.

He kissed me this morning. Leaned from the backseat of the white Honda, lips pooched out and toward my cheek. While he was doing this, I became fixated on the vision of his knees pressing into the back of the seat though I could see that his lower body remained firmly on the seat. He seemed six foot tall. As quickly as the kiss came on, he pulled away, leaning his back to the seat again before gathering his lunchbox. Not the black one with insulation and the strap of perfect length. No, on this morning he had a bag used for groceries that bruised his apples and turned watermelon to juice. We don’t know what happened to that other lunchbox. . .

Just as the fourth grade safety patrol kid opened Turner’s door, I took notice of the two inches of sock poking out from under the dark blackness of his jeans. How could those jeans, the newest in the bunch, be too short?

"Have a good day dude," I call out to the door as it closes. I’m slow this morning, overcome by the not-new realization of how much I miss everyday. He waves from the sidewalk. Cars sit behind me and in front of me, waiting to proceed out of line. Turner encounters a friend, and he places his hand briefly on his shoulder and for a brief second I see this man that Turner is becoming, and I’m so grateful for the gentleness.

“Brother.” Mabel says from the backseat. I roll down the window. The white Element in front of me moves on. “Brother!” She shouts louder as we drive away. Brother throws a hand up in her direction. As we are almost home, a ride we take in silence this morning because I'm so lost in my thoughts, Mabel says in her softest voice, “Brother school.”

"Yes Mabel. Brother is at school. It's a school day for Mabel too." And then I sing her the song, the very one Turner helped me to make up that first day we visited his new preschool in Tucson. At the park across the street from Catalina, Turner and I brainstormed lyrics and Mabel seems equally pleased by the tune (set to "School's Out for Summer"): "It's a school day for Mabel. It's a schoooool day for Mabel. She can run and jump and read and write and tell her teachers thank you at night. It's a school day for Mabel."

The Two Showers Required Poop.

Potty training with Mabel is different than with Turner (and it has everything to do with their parents). We potty trained Turner all at once. Cold turkey. Diapers became a night night thing, and he picked out some flashy underwear that he loved. Add in M & Ms for every bathroom attempt, and the whole process seemed easy. What I forget about this is the fact that Turner spent nearly all of his time with us. I taught a full twelve hour load in two days a week, which gave me five days with Turner, and while I was teaching Andy or Janet was with him. He had nearly constant access to a familiar bathroom (and M & Ms).

With Mabel, however, we are constantly on the go and not regular to ask her if she needs to potty. She has a real reluctance to using public toilets, which I completely support, so it feels most convenient to travel with her little potty chair. It is a full time job getting everyone to the potty, and this doesn’t count all the time invested in attempting to use the bathroom. Mabel, for instance, feels the urge to poop long before she is actually ready to do the deed. She’ll scream “Potty!” and then thirty minutes later after six trips to the bathroom, she’ll finally sit long enough to get it out. This girl is too busy for the bathroom.

Tuesday, I teach at 10:30 am and need to finish prepping my flashy grammar lesson for the Writing in the Workplace class. Grammar lessons, by the way, must be flashy in order to encourage retention, and this is a lot of pressure. On Tuesdays, we get brother to school and within one hour we go home to breakfast and pack lunch, shower and get ready for the day. On this Tuesday, Mabel has not yet pooped, but we've sat on the potty and read several books. When you have only one hour to do all the day's prep, you start reading the short books. We get packed up and into the car with ten minutes to get to Mabel's school. Perfect timing.

"Potty!" I do the assessment of whether this is a means for getting out of the carseat or because she has to go. I ask her, several times, if she needs to poop and she consistently grunts her uhhuh. I turn the truck off, unbuckle us both, unlock the door, and rush to the potty. She sits for approximately two seconds and jumps up. I am persistent in making her sit on the potty, though her persistence is stronger than mine. We get back in the car. Just as the seatbelt clicks she shouts, "Potty!"
"Oh no girly. Mommy has to get to work. Are you sure you need to potty?"
"Poop!" She makes eye contact and grabs her crotch. "Poop."

We do the whole process again. As I'm rushing down the hallway, I hear her fart and by the time we make it to the potty, she has filled her green gingham underwear.

I take her shoes off and socks, learning from previous mistakes where a baby with shoes on will no doubt step into the exposed poop in the underwear. Plus, shoes going through leg holes creates a host of additional problems. I learned all these lessons in a single instance three weeks back. So, I remove her shoes and socks and begin pulling the underclothes down slowly, attempting to keep all the poop fresh in the middle. I notice that she didn't pee with her poop, and I'm grateful and intrigued. How is it possible to not pee a little?

"Put your arms around my neck." She does. I inspect the contents to discover the largest poop ever to come out of a baby. "Oh Mabel. Big poopy." She repeats my words. The gingham cloth makes it to her ankles and I pick up the right foot. Carefully, we ease her foot out and back safely on the white floor. "One more Mabel," but as we go to transition her to the other foot, the inside contents rub across her left ankle. In my panic, I do something wrong and within seconds Mabel's right foot is standing in the crotch of her underwear. A small poop rolls out on the floor and touches the toilet base. I shudder with a loud sound and Mabel attempts to repeat the noise. I pick her up and shake her a little bit so the yucky underwear will remove themselves from her foot. In so doing, of course, more poop falls out and lands on the top of my foot, which rests in a ballet slipper type shoe. I start the bath water to give Mabel a quick shower, and I snag the disinfecting wipes out of the closet. I work on cleaning Mabel and then on the floor while she pats shallow water in the tub. Just as I get the floor and the toilet and Mabel's potty all clean, I return my gaze to the tub. Mabel has pooped in the tub. In this moment, I can hear Andy's voice in head, "Plant based diet. Whaduya do?" I take Mabel out of the bathtub, walk her to our shower, strip my own clothes off, and we start our morning routine all over again with a fresh shower. Clearly, my grammar lesson would not be flashy come class time.

Growth Chart

Though Turner's limbs have been stretching in length an inch at a time for the past several months, Mabel's growth seems to happen in this gradual way. We look over tonight--all of us doing something to get dinner ready and on the table--and Mabel is noticeably taller. So, we measure her. She's patient to stand, heels to the wall and her head stretched tall, just as she saw brother do it moments before. He grew 0.75" in two months. Mabel grew an inch in a month. 

As she steps away from the wall, her height documented by a blue pen, Turner shouts with astonished laugher--“She’s shooting up like a rocket"--as he mimics a taking off motion slapping his palms together. Indeed. Before us, we watch you grow.