My Summer of Learning. And poop. My Summer of Poop

The summer of 2013 is winding down. My super six year old starts back to first grade, (gasp!), this Friday, and my persevering preschooler starts back at his special preschool next Monday. Last night  we had the meet the teacher and drop off a huge bag of school supplies equal to one month's salary at the oldest son's school. Later in the week we have the meet the teacher and share with her everything we learned about our youngest son over the summer while he runs around the classroom as though driven by a motor at the youngest's preschool. Thursday night we will have our back to school dinner party. The menu, chosen by the back to schoolers, will be:

lasagna (one of the few foods the super six year old will currently eat)
strawberries and "icing" (chosen by the four year old, and when he says "icing" he means whipped cream)
cookies (homemade, hopefully made by the four year old)

I think I will toss in a salad and bread sticks to make it a grown up meal for my husband and myself. Each boy will have their own place mat with their new grade printed on it and they will each get a cool "pencil" made out of construction paper and candy. (Candy assures at least a few minutes of listening ears and bottoms in chairs at our home.) The back to school banner will be hung in the dining room and we will have those so important new school year talks, like how to be brave and how to always listen to your heart. And then it begins. The early mornings, the scrambling eggs, the chatting in the school drop off line, the homework.
So it all has me thinking. This has been a good summer. We didn't do everything we wanted, but we did a lot. We certainly did more than we did last year. This summer we were able to spend more time together as a family, thanks to a combination of a slowing down of the persevering preschooler's issues and a speeding up of my understanding and patience. He was able to behave slightly better and I was able to ignore much more. Win!

For me, this was the summer of eye opening experiences and learning. Here is a little of what I have learned over the past few months, amid water gun fights, wet swim suits, road trips, and thousands of Popsicles:

• My persevering preschooler is wise beyond his years. I mean, he cannot for the life of him get the days of the week straight but he totally gets the fact that sometimes, being the youngest kid in the family isn't fair. He spent the summer questioning his big brother's ability to do "way more", in his words.
• Brothers will fight. And I mean roll around on the floor, pinching, sitting on each other's faces fight.
• Brothers will love. In a "Here, you take the orange gumball because your favorite color is orange and I will take the purple one.", kind of way.
• Six and a half years old is the exact age one outgrows "baby toys". Sadly  for my super six year old, six and a half years old is still four and a half months away from Christmas.
• If you let go of your super six year old in the swimming pool he will freak out. And then refuse to swim again. But if you let him go on a trip with Grandma and Grandpa, where he sees his younger cousin swimming like a pro, he will come home from said trip being able to at least stay a float, while loudly proclaiming to anyone within earshot that he can, in fact, swim.
• Having a kid old enough to walk through a not so busy parking lot without holding my hand is kind of sad.
• Having a kid who can open his car door, hop in, close the door and buckle his seat belt is awesome.
• Change is good. Whether that be changing to a new church, letting go of preconceived ideas of how a family should look and "feel", or simply letting go of your child's hand and letting them walk alone, change is a good thing.
• Your six and a half year old calling you "Mom", instead of "Mommy", not so good. This is a change I was not ready for, but one he made deliberately. Sigh.
• Family vacations will from now on be filled with trains, planes, race cars, and monster trucks.
• My super six year old is on the right path to becoming a man of substance. Yesterday he asked his daycare teacher, twice, if he could go check on his little brother, who was in a new classroom for the first time. Protector, his name is Matthew Zhao.
• Just because the four year old often reads his letters from right to left is no cause for alarm. Amid everything else he has going on this is just not that big of a deal. I prefer to look at it this way- hey, the kid is learning his letters!
• My iPhone's sole purpose is to keep young boys quiet and still in public.
• When you take your persevering preschooler to a behavioral therapy appointment he will behave like an angel. And then throw a monumental tantrum in the parking lot, forcing you to stuff him into his car seat and slam the door before he can break free and run off to find someone more understanding about his needs to squat down in front of traffic to check out a rock.
• My persevering preschooler has increased his vocabulary. Now, along with the constant use of the word "poop", he has added "panties" and "butt". As is, "OK, Mommypanties, I pick up my shoes." Or, "Matthew is a Poopy Butt."
• A good eater can quickly become a poor eater. The hard part is remembering that this is, hopefully, just a phase, and that someday, hopefully soon, your sweet super six year old will stop whining about how nothing sounds good.
• I can now ignore whining like a champ. I am thinking of going pro.
• Adding a puppy to an already chaotic house is not such a big deal. What's a little more poop on the kitchen floor? (If you need the back story to that reference, read here. )

So both of my boys have done a lot of growing up this summer. As have I. We have laughed, loved, cried, and thrown tantrums. We have regrouped and hit the start button a few times. We are ready to move ahead and begin what just might be the best year we have had yet as a family of four. Bring it on world, me and my boys are ready!

through the eyes of a friend

I had an amazing weekend! on Saturday I borrowed my in-laws house on a beautiful lake in Carrollton and met up with three close friends from college. The first great part of the weekend was our new GPS showing me a brand new time saving way to get there- it was a very pleasant, much shorter trip than usual. I arrived a few hours before my friends, so I sat on the dock and slowly moved between thumbing through a magazine, reading a book, and drinking coffee while staring off into the lake. Every so often I could hear a woodpecker, or the leaves behind me rustle as a chipmunk scampered through the yard. I could hear the fish in the lake jump and the geese honk as they flew overhead. All around me, moved by the occasional breeze, the leaves fell, floating down gently to the dock or landing in the water. I found myself really looking forward to my friend's arriving and yet totally enjoying this very quiet moment. I find myself alone a lot; in the car, driving to the communities in my portfolio for work, or in my home office, usually on the phone. During those moments my mind is always on, multi-tasking and solving problems, putting out fires and coaching. This quiet time at the lake allowed my mind to completely slow down. I could literally feel all those thoughts that usually run through my head at all times like a steam train - work and dinner and laundry and day care pick up and meetings and grocery shopping and serbia and music class and alone time with my husband and mom's needs- all slipped out of my brain. I sat there picturing them sliding down and slipping into the cool water, floating away. By the time my first friend arrived those thoughts were completely gone and I was completely relaxed.

That evening my friends and I laughed and played board games and drank wine and reminisced about our younger college years. We discussed children and adoptions and divorce and marriage. We delved into careers and dreams and paths our lives didn't take. We are four very different women tied together by a bond formed 20 years ago in the Kent State University School of Music hallways. It felt as though we had just seen each other last month, instead of last year. That is the great thing about old friends; no matter how much time passes before you finally get together, once you do, it seems as though no time has passed at all.

Along with spending a relaxed evening full of laughter and fun with my dear friends something else happened this weekend at the lake. One of my friends really liked the setting. Small homes nestled against a private lake struck a chord in my friend. As we walked down to the dam I felt as though I was looking at the lake through different eyes. Her eyes. I like the lake. I always have a good time when we visit there. But we haven't spent as much time there since our son has joined our family. Get away spots such as this see this happen all the time; families change and grow and what was once a favorite vacation spot becomes a less visited weekend here and there, often tapering off to nothing until the family structure ebbs and flows again- teenagers who wanted nothing to do with the once loved lake leave the house, leaving behind parents with more time on their hands. Suddenly the lake homes come alive again as the empty nesters begin spending more and more time there, followed by son and daughter in laws and then little ones. The new young families begin to raise their children on this tradition, until those little ones become busy teenagers and the cycle begins again.

Seeing the quiet and beauty of this spot through my friend's eyes reminded me that this time we have with our family so young is fleeting. We need to not let it slip by us. I am already planning next summer's visits to the lake!