Before school

Jay and Rose got ready for school with relative ease this morning, leaving themselves nearly 40 minutes of playtime before we had to leave for school. They took full advantage of the idyllic 65 degree May morning and went out to play in the bright clean sunshine. A little while later, a glance at my watch told me that the playtime had elapsed. It was 8:28am: go-time (school starts at 9am and it takes 6 minutes to drive there plus 15-ish minutes to get everyone into the car--my least favorite 15 minutes of the day). I mentally tightened my mom-armor, took a deep breath, walked outside, and said the dread words.

"It's time to get going!"

The kids' reactions were exactly as I anticipated.

Amber squealed and ran away.

Rose ignored me.

Jay sighed reluctantly and tried to squeeze in a few more shots with his bow and arrow, asking me to take a picture and a video of him. Since Jay usually rolls his eyes when I take pictures, I couldn't resist taking a picture of him that he volunteered for. So I whipped out my phone and obliged briefly with a few pictures and a quick video. At the end of the video, Jay got his foam arrow stuck high on a tree branch.

After I took the pictures for Jay, I went in search of Amber, who was still in her pajamas and saggy nighttime diaper. She evaded me in her usual crafty fashion, requiring me to walk down the basement stairs, out the garage, and halfway around the outside of the house before I found her. Clamping my hand onto her forearm so as to be able to wrangle her sneaky squirming, I marched her into the house for a diaper change. 

Once I had Amber dressed, I called out to Rose to COME GET YOUR SHOES ON NOW. Rose's agonizing daily ritual slow motion shoe tying commenced (carefully untie yesterday's triple knot, slowly put on shoe, meticulously tie a fresh triple knot, repeat with other shoe). To save time, I decided to go get Amber buckled into the car while Rose worked. Amber had slipped away during the 22 seconds it took me to throw away her old diaper and call Rose in for the shoe-ritual. 

When I looked out the window to locate Amber, a scene straight from my nightmares accosted my gaze. Amber was standing across the road on the edge of the canal-cliff, leaning out over the ledge. My mom-armor either raised its sword and shield or fell away completely--I'm still not sure which. I dashed for the door, ran across the yard, and grabbed Amber's outstretched hand with a cry/growl of worry-anger-frustration-relief. Then I saw the reason for Amber's unprecedented canal-cliff-leaning.

Jay had scrambled down the steep canal bank and was at the water's edge, reaching out over the water towards a lost ball, which he had been using to try and knock his arrow out of the tree.  The tableau slowed to half speed, with Jay down there by the water while I was in the process of saving Amber. Then frantic-frustrated-freaked-out Shaina busted through.

"What are you DOING?? Get OUT of there! AHHHG!! That is so DANGEROUS, especially with Amber watching--what if she FOLLOWED you down to the water? She might FALL IN, even if she didn't follow you! What if YOU fell in the water??" My throat actually felt slightly raw from this extra-long extra-loud exclamation. Suitably abashed yet still slightly defiant and determined, Jay scrambled a few steps farther along the water's edge.

"I can almost...reach...it!" he grunted, stretching his arm out towards the bobbing ball.

"NO! NO!!! GET OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW!" I squeal-shouted from the canal ledge six feet above Jay's head. He finally began the careful ascent. I turned to Amber, my eyes still flaming.

"WATER IS DANGER. NO WATER. TIME OUT. You need to stay in the yard. No going in the road. NO WATER." I picked Amber up and carried her around back to buckle her into the van while she sobbed. After a minute or two, her unintelligible sob-words became clear: she was not upset at being scolded or even at being forcibly removed from the water's edge. She was upset because the ball was still lost.

Heaven help me, living with this child on the edge of a deep canal!

With Amber buckled in, I pulled the van around to the side of the house to pick up Jay. He jumped into the van and we waited for Rose. When she finally appeared, slamming the house door behind her with the usual bang, she announced that she needed to do her homework on the way to school.

"You didn't do your homework?" I asked in deflated dismay.

"I forgot!" Rose replied. Obviously.

"I did my homework yesterday on the bus with my friend," Jay contributed. A little red flag popped up. I paused and tried to examine it, but my mom-armor was still in flux after the recent canal crisis, so I less-delicately, more accuse-a-tor-ily said,

"You didn't cheat, did you? You didn't let your friend copy your homework, did you?" Right when the words left my mouth, I realized that I should not have been so accuse-a-tor-ish myself. Ugh. 

"I do a few problems and get the answers, and he writes them down, then he does a few problems, gets the answers, and I write them down." came Jay's matter-of-fact response.

Trying my best to reign in the deadly accusation in my voice, I said, "but that's still not all your own work!"

"I get the answer in my head to make sure they are all right." said Jay in a "calm down, mom, it's ok" type of voice.

"But it's still not good to let anyone copy your work. Always do your OWN work and never let anyone copy. It's a bad habit to let people copy your homework. It's not honest." I may have been a little too heavy on the serious-Shaina tone, but copying homework is something of a sore spot dating back to my high school experience... 

{flashback: it's the year 2000, before Algebra class and a group of students is feverishly copying one kid's homework before the bell rings, all of them annoyed/judgmental that I wouldn't speed up the process and donate my homework to the pool. 14-year-old Shaina sits alone feeling shunned and alienated because she laboriously did her homework the night before and wouldn't "share" it. UGH.}

Even though I did not go into the details of my high school experience at the time, I think Jay began to see my point. But he still seemed so nonchalant about the whole affair. I gave him some space and let it go while we had family prayer in the car. 

While we drove the six minutes to school, Jay chattered in his usual way about inventing a long claw to fish things out of the canal. Rose tried to convince him to be her partner for her homework (the directions said "write a question about the graph and have your partner answer it"). Whether he was feeling a bit traumatized about homework and partners or just being a stubborn big brother, Jay refused to answer Rose's question. 

"But IT SAYS I need a partner to answer this question!" Rose complained. "Will you answer it, Mommy?"

"I can't look at the graph while I'm driving," I said. "Why don't you just answer the question and if your teacher asks you about it, tell her your big brother was not in the mood to be your partner." Rose hunkered back down in the back seat to finish her homework.

As we pulled up to the school, I felt the need to make sure that Jay knew:

1.  I wasn't mad at him.
2. His actions (both with the canal-reaching and homework-copying) didn't affect my love for him.
3.  I had confidence in his ability to make good choices.

That's a lot to fit into one parting sentence! As I gave him the daily one-armed backwards hug and cheek kiss from my spot in the driver's seat, I said "You know I still love you no matter what, right?" He nodded, and I continued. "I know that you can make good choices." 

"Yes," Jay said, and with that, he climbed out of the van and walked into school.

Meanwhile, from the back seat, Rose finished writing on the worksheet with a flourish, explaining "I wrote my teacher a note so she knows about me answering my question." Good ole Rose, living the letter of her teacher's laws. Rose crammed her homework into her backpack, nearly forgot to hug me, then clambered out of the van a full minute after Jay had disappeared through the school door. Halfway across the sidewalk between the van and the school, Rose suddenly sat down. I don't like driving away until both kids are inside the fence or the school, so I stopped and waited.

One of Rose's shoes had come untied. She carefully tied it back into a triple knot with her usual agonizing meticulousness. I shrugged and shared an amused grin with the teacher-greeter standing by the school door. At last Rose was on her feet again, trotting into the school and out of sight. 

Total elapsed time from "go-time" to school drop-off: 22 minutes. I felt as though I had aged a week during one short morning routine. Some days require cramming a week's worth of parenting into 22 minutes!

PICTURES:

Jay got a Faux Bow Pro last Christmas. First it was too cold for him to want to use it, then it got too wet, then it was way too windy! This week he finally used it for the first time, and I was relieved to find that it really is as fun and awesome as I thought it was when I bought it six months ago. Note to self: outdoor toys are anticlimactic as Christmas gifts.

Arrow retrieval crew with my favorite background view.

Arrow retrieval part II: the long white arrow is at the very top of this picture horizontal in the tree. That rainbow soccer ball is probably floating somewhere miles from here now, and the arrow is still in the tree. When Jay started throwing the ball at the tree, I almost launched into an explanation about all of the possible negative outcomes, but I stopped myself for two reasons-- one: I had to get the girls ready for the day, and two: the best way to learn is by trial and error. (until it involves climbing down into the canal!!)

Rose was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk outside the school for so long I had time to shrug at the door-teacher and then take a picture of her. I should add that she was wearing a purple plaid skirt and a purple floral shirt because they were both purple. Even after my mild style guidelines of "plaid and flowers are a better separately," she insisted on wearing them and accessorized her self-made side ponytail with a purple headband bow. Another real-time lesson for me that sometimes the best way is to stand back and let them be, even when it's hard/overly purple!

Amber's current diva-hairdo is amazing--we're on day three of this same exact ponytail and it's still going strong, and she can actually see out from under her curls! Hah! The minute Amber and I got home at 9am, I sat down to vent the rigors of the morning via typing since all of my go-to phone-call people were busy. Amber, however had different plans. She was "super hongwy" and pestered me for a full half hour before I got up and made her a peanut butter Nutella sandwich. She ate the entire sandwich long before 10am. The girl has opinions, and in her book, lunch is best eaten right after breakfast, before 10am. I'm trying my best to remember just to roll with it. {parenthood in a nutshell}

Less than a month left of school. We can do this.