Another Morning

We are a quiet trickle
marching gently
There is bacon in my teeth
We flow from side streets
falling into line
bunched in twos and threes

Familiar good mornings to
the dad with the always-bundled baby
the mom with the screen in her stroller-boy's face
the tall woman clutching her NPR travel mug,
awkward next to the young man in kitchen pants
leaning on the bus stop sign
The 552 is late

It's kisses, it's there's egg on your lip, it's clip your gloves together, it's mommy did you take your medicine

Airplanes weave patterns in the wide blue
Holly bushes shine silver dollars of sunshine
back to me
The bacon is gone from my teeth

That old New Jersey jeep hiccups,
warming
White puffs disappear behind it
The steering wheel shakes
like always

Garbage trucks beep and clang and
slow motion drop this week's scraps inside

carpet installers
hoist a tight roll on their shoulders
aiming at an open door
nodding good morning

I smile into my vest, thinking of mornings
and family and cities and
open the door
to my full coffee pot

What Teddy and I Do All Day

Cal and Clark going to kindergarten means a lot of things, but one of the most important ones is that Teddy and I get a lot of quality time together. Until last week I had no idea how to function with only one child. Seriously. I've never been at home with only one before. It's different than with two or three. Some might say easier, and so far I agree. I only have to feed lunch to one, change the diapers of one, push a single stroller rather than a double stroller, carry one baby up the 35 stairs of our building, etc. I do find myself wishing Teddy had a little twin pal to play with, though. But he'll have to settle for dance parties with my Pandora stations and me for now.

We are settling into our little routine. After we play and I corral the boys to get them into some sort of presentable state, we walk them to school and then sometimes stay outside and keep walking or sometimes come inside to escape oppressive heat. We wave at all the same people on the way to school-- the neighborhood friends and friends-of-a-friend. Today we spent the lovely, cool morning walking to the library and Trader Joe's after dropping the boys off at school. I let Teddy walk around outside for awhile. Some mornings we've had a play date with some other little babies and their moms.

Then after the early morning fun there is nap time for Teddy, which means dishes, laundry, and maybe the beginning of dinner for me. Any phone calls to be made or writing projects to be hacked away at. The cleaning of the bathrooms and the taking out of the garbage and recycling. I turn Pandora on the TV and maybe I jam out while I Windex the sliding glass door. When Teddy wakes up we typically dance to a song I made up for him and then have lunch. He drinks from his bottle with his pinkie up. So cute. Then we have the afternoon. I love to read books with him. He has his favorites and he'll drag them around and hold them up to me to read, while grunting and smiling. He hides things in the cupboards like his firetruck I found by the almonds and the little watering can I found in the mixing bowls. He often pulls out a bag of rice cakes, and pulls it around like a blanket. He clearly misses the boys though, like I do. I find myself wondering what they're doing and Teddy usually goes over and pulls on the door an hour or so before it's time to go pick them up.

Then we do go and pick them up. We say hello to the same people, and we wait at the same doors for the boys to come through. Today I let Teddy get out of the stroller and so when he saw Cal and Clark coming through the doors, he started giggling and ran over to them. They hugged him and I had a mom moment.

The boys are now very much comfortable at school. They yell goodbye to their friends and teachers. Today Clark held up the whole kiss 'n ride line to stick his head in a classmate's car to remind him about the t-ball game tomorrow. They have to run back to high five another buddy.

And then we all come home and the boys finish their lunches or have a different snack while Teddy snacks also and we talk about the day and usually about some sort of hypothetical fighting situations (Who would win, Mom, a lion or a bear? A fork or a spoon if they were alive?). Other topics covered are usually sports, shark teeth and eating habits, food, and whatever make-believe situation they're involved in. Meanwhile, Teddy just revels in having his brothers home. He squeals while they wrestle and claps while they play catch.

The rest of the day is just normal stuff-- we go outside again if possible, eat dinner and hang out with Brian. Lots of wresting and elbows flying. I try to focus on Cal and Clark since I don't get to see them as much as usual. Some piano-practice on the new keyboard we bought for their piano lessons. Some bath time for Teddy, and the boys now shower. That's right. They shower. All Teddy does in the bathtub is stand up, turn on the faucet and tries to drink the water coming out as he squeals manically.

Then Brian and I send the kids to bed and fall asleep watching the Nationals win, cradling our wine glasses and secretly eating goldfish crackers or string cheese from the boys' school lunch stash.

And that is what Teddy and I do all day.

Just another morning before school- space mission under the table

pinkies up!

Who wants to hang out with this guy? Me!

Is it time to go get the boys yet, Mom?

Are you sure?

Well then let's turn the music up.

After school playing with clay: Clark fashions a flying squirrel

Your typical coming-home-from-school scene: boys with sticks.

Doing "push-ups" on the way to school

We found a giant butterfly!

SCHOOL IS OVER AND WE'RE WILD.

Beginning Kindergarten Series, Day 3

Today the boys were more comfortable with everything school.

My brilliant idea of using the hanging,days-of-the-week shelves for school clothes has so far not worked well. On Monday I told them to help me pick clothes out for the week, but they were way too involved in their pretend underwater shark photography expedition than in clothing. (That needs to be a whole separate blog entry.) So I picked out their clothes myself.

This morning Cal saw the shirt I had picked out for him to wear today had a collar.

Cal: "No, you don't wear shirts with collars except on the first day. We don't want to walk in like a bunch of dummies."

Me: "Oh wow. Okay. So what should you wear instead?"

Cal: "Oh, I don't know...just a shirt with, like, a, I don't know, dinosaur or something on it."

So he wore a random bright yellow souvenir t-shirt with a moose on it from Montreal. Clearly way cooler than a red polo shirt. Clark did wear the blue polo shirt and shorts I had picked out, so maybe I was half way successful.

We walked to school with Margo and the boys navigated their way to their classroom perfectly. They hugged me. They showed me where their cubbies are and I helped them take their lunch boxes out. They hugged me again. They hugged Margo. They hugged Teddy. They went to their seats and as I was waving goodbye, Clark yelled, "Bye, Mom! I love you!" Love that kid. Feeling a little lost and fairly sweaty, I walked home.

At the end of the school day they both agreed that their favorite was P.E. today because they did more than learn how to sit like yesterday. Quotes from after school:

Clark: "The funnest was P.E. but I wanna run more...and when do we play a game? I want to beat another class."

Cal: "Yeah, when do we get to run more? I need to work out."

Clark: "There is this girl in school who speaks another language. She blew her nose and just threw the tissue on the floor. It was so gross. I almost told her, but she wouldn't know what I said anyway."

(NOTE: I'm glad he found that gross and not funny)

Cal: "I think the music teacher's name is Mrs. Jones or something. No. Mrs. Garcia? I don't know but we sang a song about a man in the moon with jellybean eyes. It was really weird. I think it was Mrs. Jones."

I had to tackle a question about divorce tonight, after they told me about one of their classmates' living situation.

After dinner we ran over to the library because all the Olivia books we had put on hold were there. They were so excited that the librarian loved it. (Ok, so did this English teacher) There is a girl in their class named Olivia and they've been discussing between the two of them how to tell Girl Olivia that there are books about a pig named Olivia without calling her a pig because they would never call her a pig. I'm not sure what they decided, but I agreed that calling her a pig was nothing they should ever do.

They carried the books home and we read a few before they were wiped out and fell into bed.

Fourth day coming up! They'll be pros in no time.

OLIVIA!