The flowers have started to come out and the trees have started to bloom and blossom. I took this one on my work walk and was so excited I yelled and ran across the street to be near the flowery spring.
Kiernan's school had a Wacky Tacky day (a thing I had never heard of until this week). The kids were supposed to wear bright mismatched clothing and boy did we do it right. There were reds and purples there were accessories and mis-matched shoes there were stripes and polka dots made of skulls. It was fantastic.
I took Megan to a fun park and out to eat and to target to get some new socks for ice skating.
She dressed as her current favorite Princess Jasmine.
She was of course Princess Jasmine with wings.
She has been asking me to take her to a Cafe. She has a book called the Tiger Who Came to Tea in which a girl goes with her family to a cafe and ever since we started reading it she has been begging to go to one.
Do on Friday I took her to a cafe. She got sick.
The poor girl wasn't eating her food, very unlike her. She started crying, even more unlike her.
She ran to the bathroom...
My poor girl.
We will try a cafe again later.
Then we went to Grandma and Grandpas house. She felt better by then and ate and splashed in the creek while i made rock butterflies and looked at flowers.
We got home and she collapsed into her pink blanket nest of a bed. This will be the last full week for her toddler bed. At 4 she is tall enough that her feet are starting to hit the edge. She has asked for a bed like Kiernan's. So It will be a loft bed for her shortly.
Good bye little pink nest.
Pax, because of her bad manners and barking at the neighbors has had her playtime with Lila-Ray (her best friend from next door) curtailed. The neighbors cant let Lila-Ray in or out without worrying about Pax going after them. So this weekend while I was home I made sure to stand out in the yard to let Lila-Ray in and out and also to chat with my neighbor while Pax was out there to see me doing it.
We had plenty to chat about as we are giving them a great deal of wood once the trees come down. Also He knows of a great dog walking path that I am most eager to try out for walking and for running.
My work is super busy so I went in Sat and Sun for a little while. Krishna, my trainer has been every weekend in what seems like forever and she went all weekend there again. Hong is in on the weekends too and in fact on Sunday the whole department was there plus some other department. I wish I were screwing up less and more helpful. I know enough to be dangerous now. I can't wait to be over that phase. They are so very kind and so very busy and at this point i feel more like a millstone than a helping hand.
On Saturday I went in between he registration and race periods for the Super derby.
Kiernan went in with me and they made him some very cool kid friendly experiments.
He had a grand time making bubbles dance and making smoke billow. He even did a disco dance for everyone in the dry ice fog. He did the robot.
His car was very close to the full 5oz. I saw a number of people using playdoh to bring their weights right up to 5 and think we should try that next year.
The cars went much faster on the metal track and he was first or 2nd in all his heats but didn't quite make the top 3.
It was very very fast! the tigers were done in about 10-15 minutes.
He got a Super Derby patch and a big grin.
This was only the beginning of his big day.
After lunch, at around 3:30 we packed up all his stuff for his very first sleepover.
He went to his friend Jacobs house for a birthday celebration and sleepover. They went to Zootopia and they had pizza and played around a good bit.
We talked on the way over about upsides and down sides to sleepovers.
I told him (when asked) that the major upside to a sleepover is uninterrupted fun. I told him that we would get to do lots of cool things like go to a movie and eat pizza with his friends and that they could play together all day and sleep together at night and then play together again in the morning. He like that idea very much.
He asked what the major downsides were. I said the most common is usually homesickness. I said that everyone gets home sick and that the older you get the less tolerant people are about it but that at 7 and in his first sleepover people would try to help him out. He asked about when older kids get home sick. I said that usually after about 10 people are expected to suck it up. He asked what suck it up means and I said it was mostly just acting like nothing was wrong when in fact something was wrong. I said that some people think that is tough and some people would rather talk about things. I said I would rather talk about things to keep them from getting on top of me.
He wanted to know what other downsides there might be. I said the next one is kids acting inappropriately, either being bad and getting sent home or being wild and hurting themselves. I said that I wasn't worried about that because he is generally calm and polite. He said what else could be a downside. I said that adults could be inappropriate. I said that they could be very mean yell at kids or try to hit them (I had this one one a sleep over once it was quite scary). I said that they might do things kids weren't comfortable with or illegal things (I had a boss when I was 13-14 who did lines of cocaine on the kitchen table while i babysat his son for instance) and that usually they would say things like "don't tell your parents I did bla bla bla. I said if they say that then tell me for sure because they only say that when they know they shouldn't be doing whatever it is they are doing. I said that they might try inappropriate touching like he learned about in school. I said it was extremely unlikely any of those things would happen to him but they did happen in the world and they are for sure downsides. I asked him what he would do if adults were inappropriate. He said he would ask to go home. I told him that was a good answer.
Ha asked me what if the grownup wouldn't take him home. I said we are only 2 blocks away so he could try to come home by himself but if the grown up was inappropriate and then didn't take him home after Kiernan asked then the grown up would be in big trouble with both daddy and the cops and woe betied unto them.
We talked about how daddy would always protect him. I told him the story of when he was a baby and David thought I was an intruder in the middle of the night and almost flattened me like a pancake and put a dent in the wall where my head and been milliseconds before.
He loved that story.
In my heart I was so worried about child molesters and evil doers and about all the things on the news but also I was worried about preventing Kiernan from having a healthy normal childhood experience due to my own skewed filters on the world. So I tried hard to make it light and matter of fact and chatty. I tried to cover all the bases and emphasize that homesickness was likely his only thing to grapple with.
Then I dropped him off.
I had such a hard time with anxiety when I got home. I paced and fiddled with things and went out to work in the yard and David followed me around talking idly about this and that and just being nearby. He is really and exemplary human being.
I expected to hear from Jacobs dad halfway through the movie saying that Kiernan had gotten motion sick. I got no such call. I expected to hear from him after dinner saying that Kiernan was unsettled and wanted to come home. No such call again.
I expected a text saying the boys are sleeping. No such text.
When I got up in the morning I wrote a text asking if i could come get Kiernan and then staunchly didn't send it until 8 o'clock (mmm daylight savings time). Then I went over, with a very put out Megan who hadn't been invited to any sleepovers, to pick him up.
When I got there Kiernan asked if he could stay longer. Ha!
Megan threw off her shoes and rushed the group of kids in the back yard on the giant trampoline.
This yard was so great for kids. There were 2 jungle gyms and a see-saw and 2 trampolines and a kids picnic table with coloring on it and a dog and around 7 kids.
I loaded up the car and asked the young Kuehnert's to say good-bye.
In the car Kiernan told me that he beat up his homesickness and that the sleepover was all upside.
Oh my heart.
Of special note. Jacobs dad is Kiernan's gym teacher and Jacob was in Kiernan's class last year. He is a very sweet boy. They are also in Cub Scouting (pack 460) and they invited Kiernan to church with them the next morning. They are kind people in no way worthy of the suspicion I have for all strangers.
They were good to my boy in every way and provided him with a real chance to be independent and brave and I am grateful to them for doing it.
We went home and had the usual Sunday pancake breakfast.
The reason that we didn't let Kiernan stay longer was not actually my anxiety but the fact that David got tickets for the family to see a Little Mermaid play in Baltimore that day.
It was a cold rainy kind of day and the drive was pretty long and when we got there a cop pulled up beside us as we were walking in and yelled to the crowed on the front steps "Is he breathing now?!".
We got to the play just in time to be shuttled out of the auditorium and into the cast dressing room to make way for an ambulance and some emergency responders to see to a man who had collapsed.
This gave the kids a chance to hear vocal warm ups and look at live fish props and ogle girls in mermaid outfits. Megan regretted deeply not wearing hers.
The play was not for Kiernan but Megs was very happy and has been singing Ariel songs ever since.
It was a good idea and Yay to David for making it work.
I was head achy from not enough food (I went into work after Kiernan got home then rushed out for the play without eating anything much) and not enough sleep but even I was impressed with some of the stage effects and by how happy Megan was.
In a stroke of luck when we got home I found a Kura bed on Craigslist for well less than half the price of a new one so Megan's loft bed is a go.
It was Grandma Scearce's 80th birthday on Saturday. We hope to get over there to have some cake and sing to her soon.
Next week we will be doing some serious hose project stuff. Wish us luck.
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