Slacker Mom!

Caity is enrolled in Safety Town this week and next. It's basically a 2-hour-a-day, 9-day class about how to stop at stop signs and watch out for cars bearing down on you and not talk to strangers and other such "try to keep yourself alive in case Mommy isn't paying attention" behavior. I think she enjoys it; I enjoy whittling my child load down to one every morning. It's very freeing. It's amazing how trips to Target (the thrice-weekly sojourns that they are) are much easier to tolerate when there's only one kid whining for a sucker/toy/freedom from the cart. Anyhow, I digress.

Drop-Off and Pick-Up (capitalized because they are clearly Procedures of Importance) at Safety Town are a crazed mass of moms, Safety-Towners, and various, unquantifiable siblings. Dropping off is shuffling one's way to the front of the mile-long line, depositing one's kid with a teacher, and then fleeing. Picking up, however, is a more rigorous process. At the start of the week, each mom was given a laminated square of blue construction paper with a colored sticker on it. Each mom was also given a neon-yellow sheet of paper that says (and I am copying this word-for-word off of the sheet that I got out of the trash so I could share it with you), "PARENTS: YOU OR WHOMEVER IS PICKING UP YOUR STUDENT MUST HAVE THE RECTANGLE CARD EVERYDAY!" Ever the obedient one, and a little frightened of the implied evil consequences that awaited if I failed to comply, I made sure to have the square (it's not a rectangle, really) with me at pick up yesterday. But today. Oh, my. I must have been preoccupied with thoughts of the McSmoothie I'd just purchased because

I.
Forgot.
The.
Square.

I realized my error just as I made it to the head of the Pick-Up line. Swiftly, I removed my driver's license from my wallet and brandished it at the teacher working the door. "I forgot my square, "I said hurriedly, "but here's my license." The teacher frowned, looked gravely into my eyes, and sighed. She paused, just enough for me to fully realize my heinous error, then asked in a surly tone, "What's your child's name?" I cringed, but told her, and she stalked off to fetch Caity.

Tomorrow I will be sure to remember the square. I can't imagine being a repeat offender is a pleasant experience.

Resurrection?

Someone presented me with this query last night: "Whatever happened to 'bloggerdroozle'?" Sadly, it is well known that this blog died a quiet death sometime in January. But it made me ponder - did I have the faith, and the power, to resurrect my journey of words? I suppose I could try. Perhaps this time I will find something - anything? - interesting to write about. Not today, though. Apparently.

Oops.

Falling behind again.

Developments!

I think Jamie may be talking more. "More" as in "more English", I mean. He has been talking all along, but not saying anything a normal human could understand. If he DID speak English, it would really only be to repeat a single word that someone else had just said (luckily, a curse word was never the single word that he would hear/repeat, although how he managed to escape those still perplexes me, given the amount of exposure he has to them). Now, however, he will string two (or more!) words together without hearing someone else say them first. It's a breakthrough!

Here are some example conversations:

Me: Where is your sock?
Jamie: Sock downstairs.

Greg (trying to corral kids into the bathtub): Come on, let's go!
Jamie: Caity! Caity! Bath!

And this is the best one (so far), from tonight:

Me (hearing a voice outside) : Shhh. I think I hear something.
Jamie: A noise? The noise is Daddy.

Seriously. Sometimes he can get crazy like that and put 4 words together! Chances are high that anyone else would not understand what he's saying, but I understand him and he's saying actual words!

My triumph is somewhat nauseating, I know. But I've been waiting so long for this moment...

Random, Disturbing Thoughts

Can you believe that Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released 23 years ago? I remember begging my dad to let us see that in the theater (it was rated PG-13; Dad had to carefully consider whether or not he wanted to expose his under-13 children to the adult themes sure to present themselves in the film).

Wandering around life, doing day-to-day things, I don't really feel that old. But when I ponder random trivia like this, and think about where it falls in the timeline of my life, I feel ancient.

I graduated from high school in 1993. That seems like it was only a few years ago. But ah-ha! do the math and 1993 was somehow seventeen years ago. How is that possible???? Let's see: if I'm 34 now, and graduated when I was 17, that means HALF OF MY LIFE has gone by since graduation. Where did it all go? What did I do with the past 17 years?


Argh.

Welcome, 2010!

I am going to post to this blog every day this year.

Really, I am!

Probably.

Most likely.

We'll see.

Timber!

Today, during lunch, Jamie almost toppled off of his chair and onto the floor.

Caity and I both told him to be careful or else he might fall.

Then Caity asked me: "Will he fall to his death?"

Our chairs are NOT that high.