Mental Health Day

Jeremy's boss decided he needed a mental health day on Friday, but it really turned out to be one for me. And not just because I had had 2 kids home for spring vacation* for 6 days at that point either.

No, I took the opportunity to strong-arm Jeremy into helping me paint the dining room-- an event I've been waiting for for too long. (Note that this post was written one year ago exactly.)

We picked white for the dining room, since all the other rooms have color, and my dishes are all different colors and I didn't want too much clashing. And my cousin pointed out that I don't want to have a "clown house." Unfortunately, all I could say when it was done was, "It's so... white." So we hung up our artwork, and it is better. Now we just need an appropriately sized table.

And lest it seem finished, I have this little reminder until I make it to the hardware store to buy one of those silly plates to cover the chimney flue:
Now I just need to do the laundry room... I've got the paint-- I just need the time.

*During vacation, we went to an artist's workshop and Sebastian's picture was taken for the paper.

The whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

Sebastian lost his 6th tooth on Friday.  He still hadn't left the 5th one he lost months ago for the tooth fairy yet, deciding instead to keep one for himself.  Now he had 2 teeth in two of the little tooth necklaces that come from school when your mouth starts falling apart there.

And for the first time, he questioned the magic.  "Maybe the tooth fairy doesn't really exist." When pressed, he wasn't sure where the money might come from or where the teeth might go.  Santa Claus made more sense than tooth fairies and Easter bunnies, he decided.  (Even though he claimed to have caught a glimpse of said bunny last Sunday.)  So I told him about what happened when I was his age and thought the same thing.

I decided to wait up for the fairy.  My tooth was in a film canister under my pillow, under my head, and there was no way she (or whoever was masquerading as the tooth fairy) was going to get past me.  I struggled to stay vigilant, and in the dark I checked to be sure I could hear the rattle of my little tooth in the plastic.  But it was full of coins!  And so I was convinced, for a little while longer anyway.  Sebastian pointed out that I may have dozed off briefly, but seemed to reconsider.

He didn't want to (or forgot) to leave his teeth for the fairy on Friday night, but remembered to do it last night.  After discovering the dollar he received last time still folded neatly inside his tooth pouch, he took his little calcified treasures upstairs to rest on the pillow next to his head.

Cue anxious whispering by his parents:  

"Do you have $2?"

"No!  Do you?"

"I think I have $1 in my wallet.  What should we do?"

"We'll just have to 'borrow' some from their wallets, I guess."

But then we went back to playing Mario and totally forgot.

This morning, more anxious whispering by me at 7:45am to my sleeping husband:

"Did you remember to be the tooth fairy?!"

Shit.  Now what?  The kids are up.  Sebastian has by now discovered that the tooth fairy has neglected to visit.  All wallets are downstairs with the children.  Panic! Panic!

Piggy banks!  Those are upstairs.  Who says the tooth fairy only brings bills?  She certainly didn't when I was a kid.  

Whose stupid idea was it anyway to have the kids take their change to the CoinStar machine?!  (Mine.)  The total from the 2 banks was a whopping $1.76.  There was another 15 cents on our dresser.  Jeremy told me to check his underwear drawer, but that only yielded his neckties, an "I heart Styx" button and some marbles.  (It's better not to ask.)

Now I had to sneak downstairs to get his wallet with the lonely bill, quietly put the excess change back in the banks, exchange the money for teeth and somehow not get caught.  Success!

Being the impatient person I am, when I returned downstairs some 45 minutes later I asked if the tooth fairy had come.  "She didn't," Sebastian sadly replied.  "She forgot."  

"That's not possible.  I have heard of her having trouble in bad weather, but not forgetting entirely.  Are you sure she didn't come?"

"Yes.  I checked when I woke up and my teeth were still there and there was no money."

"Hmm.  That's odd.  I wonder if she came and saw there were 2 teeth and had to go back for more money.  She probably was only expecting one tooth.  I'm sure she'll come."

"That's a good idea, Mom.  I did hold onto that other tooth for a long time."

Lo and behold, when he checked a few minutes later, the money was there... but short one dime.  Argh!  Will this nightmare never end?  I told him to check his bed and retrace his steps from his room to where the tooth pouch was now on the dining table, scrambled into the kitchen to get a dime from my wallet to throw on the floor next to the table and vowed not to worry about it when Jeremy wondered how I would explain it when Sebastian finds the original dime later.

Seen and heard

Seen:

While driving to school this morning, I was behind a station wagon with a "Baby on Board" sign affixed to the back window. As it was turning into the school parking lot, its driver threw a cigarette butt out of the window.

Apparently I am expected to have more of a stake in that baby's safety than the parent is.

Heard:

Dorian was very excited by the prospect of finding Easter eggs filled with "malted meatballs."

March Miss Lady Sweater Done!

It looks boxier lying on the floor than it does on me. (I hope.)

I may decide to change the "sleeves" a little, but otherwise it is fine. And with Ben's help, I found the perfect buttons. Not the ones I had in mind originally, but I'm happy with them.

Who's busy?

It has been a whirlwind month around here. Jeremy took that second business trip of the year-- I survived. He was a little worse for wear, having lost not only the 3 hours from flying back from the west coast, but also the hour for springing forward.

Sebastian continues to maintain his perfect attendance record, despite going into school at 9:30 last Monday and then calling home sick at 1:30. Of course his teacher thought I was pushing him to get perfect attendance and neglectfully sending him into school sick, but it is all him. He wants that Friendly's gift card at the end of the year. And he didn't have a fever when I dropped him off. I can't control what happens when he's not with me. (I can barely control what happens when he is.)

Thursday we went to Boston to visit Jim, who was an awesome host as usual. I highly recommend his chicken cutlets. Yum! I got some cutie stuff for myself and for the kids for Easter and for someone else over in Berkeley who should look for a package at some point. (But not too soon-- it isn't in the mail yet.)

We got home Saturday night, Sunday I worked, and Monday my cousin Emily and her beau Michael came to visit until Wednesday. It was a nice visit, if rainy, and now I'm trying to get my life back in order.

So far today I have raked out all the flower beds and admired all the buds emerging from the ground, swept the sidewalk, and left all the leaves in piles around the yard waiting to be stuffed into those giant brown bags. (Cross your fingers that they don't blow around too much before I can finish the job after I pick up Sebastian from school.)

And I hope to finish my March Miss Lady sweater which is only a couple of rows from being finished in the body and a couple of rows each for the cap sleeves. I can't wait to be done with that. Then I've been asked to knit a gecko for the store, but when it is done, I think I'll take a little break from knitting. I am really lacking for inspiration and maybe a few weeks off is what I need to get back in the swing of things.

Fit to be tied

Sebastian and I have been in a bit of a power struggle the last couple of years over when he would learn to tie his shoes. He was clearly winning, as I was continually convinced to buy slip-ons and velcro models, and every time I tried to teach him how to tie a bow, he would respond with limp fingers and I with yelling.

For the last few months, he has been wedging his thick wool socks into a pair of shoes a full size too small for him, despite owning a pair of low top Chucks in a more appropriate size. But I couldn't very well send him off to school with shoes he couldn't put on himself when the boots came off, so off he went day after day looking more and more like the ragamuffin he is.

Well, along came February break, and when I removed his shoes from his backpack and discovered that the elastic had completely ripped free from its moorings on both sides of both shoes, I made a bold move to win the battle. I threw the pair, along with its dry-rotting velcroed brethren, into the garbage and announced that he would be learning to tie his shoes before he went back to school because he had no other choice. End of the line.

The first few days of vacation passed with multiple refusals to learn and statements of intent to procrastinate. Finally, two days before his return to school, I told him the time had come. He tried. He failed. He tried again. Better, but not right. He tried again. And he did it! High fives all around... Lots of cause for celebration...

The next day we were out shopping, and he was very excited about his future of shoes of all sorts, and pointed out several styles he would love to have. I told him that when he outgrew this pair, I would take him shopping, but that most likely his shoes would not be coming from the large chain store where we were.

The next 3 days of school go by, followed by a weekend of wearing his shoes with no problems whatsoever. They fit. They are tied competently by Sebastian. All is right with the world.

Today I go to pick him up from school and am confronted by the information that my child was shoeless during library and told the librarian an elaborate story about how when his father came home from his business trip that he would be taking him to Target to buy new shoes because the ones he has don't fit. Umm... no, no and no.

And he apparently wandered the halls shoeless all day yesterday as well. One would think that his teacher would have told me about this. But one would be very wrong.

I suppose I should be thankful it wasn't his pants he was neglecting to wear.

The New Normal

My friend Amanda and I have been talking about when we should stop waiting for things to "get back to normal" and just accept that we have an ever shifting, very busy, new normal. For example, things are "back to normal" this week because Jeremy just took both of the boys to school for the first time in 3 weeks. But, he leaves at 3:30am tomorrow for a business trip from which he will return Sunday just in time for me to go to work. Not normal, but approaching being the New Normal since this is the second trip in as many months.

But, as I'm sure you suspected, some things are as normal as ever around here. Like the knitting... Let me introduce you to my latest, slightly abusive, and generally unhealthy relationship:

My February Lady Sweater. Henceforth to be known as the "March Miss Lady Sweater". This pattern is extremely irritating. I'm sort of irritated that I'm even making it considering that every other female knitter on the planet seems to have also made one. But we all know that I hate to follow a pattern, so of course, mine will have short sleeves and 8 small buttons instead of 3 large ones. There was some serious frogging with this little lady. For some dumb reason, the lace part starts before you divide for the sleeves, so that when I would make it short sleeved, it would end up with one little strip of the lace. It looked stupid. So I ripped it back to where the lace started, did some more garter stitch instead, and voila! it is much improved. I also made the button band narrower since my buttons will not be so large.

You might ask why I would continue with something that caused me to use the "f" word way more than normal. And the answer would be that I really want a lacy, short sleeved sweater to wear over my sundresses in spring and summer if I get a little cool. And I looked for a different pattern and just didn't have much luck. So I'm sticking with this one. And as long as I don't eff up the lace pattern again, the rest should be smooth sailing.

In the meantime, when I've needed some stockinette to soothe my frayed nerves, I've been working on some socks for Jeremy, who is the only one left in this house with no "mommy socks."

I thought this was self-striping yarn when I bought it, but it's more like self-spiraling. That's okay. It fits him like a glove. For his foot.