Hug Twice

Today, the Monday after New Years, is basically the resumption of routine.  CJ starts school again today, the blasted car is finally back from its breaking down detour in New York, and I went grocery shopping yesterday to restock the house after our ice storm fiasco.

Oh yes.  The ice storm.  The day before we were to leave for a 10 day trip out east, we had a horrible ice storm here.  We lost several tree branches (including one that the tree people will come remove this week) and electric power.  For three days.  I’ve never had a power outage so long that I remember.  After one freezing day in our house (no electricity means no heat here) we packed the cats off to a kennel and packed the kids up and left for the east coast.  The house survived, we survived, the car barely survived (it died both on the way there and the way back, but is fixed now… for now) but everything just seems “off” ever since.  The cats are not eating as well as they used to, I’m jumpy every time I drive the car, and I just… I don’t know.  I feel off.  And not in a good way.

So I’ve got 5 lbs of chicken cooking in the oven, which will be split into recipe sized portions and double bagged into the freezer for meals for the next two weeks.  CJ is packed and ready to go to school in about 10 minutes.  The house is reasonably organized, and my desk is a mess (as always).  So why do I just want to crawl back into bed?

I start work tonight (both taekwondo and tutoring) - I better get over myself.  Quick.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Or maybe resiliency.  Something like that.

I often think of CJ as being inflexible - he likes things a certain way and he gets very out of sorts when things are changed without warning.  And he’s so smart you can’t fool him at all - we tried to play Rock Band at my parents’ house and gave him an unplugged instrument and he knew it wasn’t hooked up at all and got very cranky.

But my kids are more flexible than I think.  On Sunday, our car broke down on the NY Thruway - twice.  (We thought it was fixed inbetween the first and second time).  Both times we had to wait for a tow truck to come and then get towed to a service station.  Both times, my kids did fine.  They were tired, they were cranky, but they held up better than I did.  And when we rented a car to get back home, they cheerfully were transferred to the new car and rode home without incident.  For 12 more hours.

Thank goodness.  At least two of us were calm. 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Because CJ is only 4 and attends a public preschool with only 24 total students, we have the luxury of the bus pulling right up to our house every day, and we can wait inside until it gets here.  When CJ’s bus arrives, Alexa takes up station at the closest window to watch, and I take CJ outside to get on the bus.  I come right back in after handing him off to the bus driver, and since he has to be buckled into his car seat before the bus leaves, I often get back inside in time to see Alexa waving bye bye to CJ.

Yesterday I did just that, but when I got inside I was treated to a special surprise.  Instead of Alexa simply waving bye bye, or even saying bye bye, she was saying, very clearly, “Bye bye the brother!”

Not only is that a sentence, but it is the first time I have heard her refer to CJ as anything other than “you”.  She doesn’t say CJ, and she hadn’t, until then, said brother.  But yesterday, she did.

Bye bye the brother indeed. 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

CJ asked me is he could play his video game when his Dad got home from work.  I told him no, today was taekwondo day so he needed to eat dinner and get ready for taekwondo when Daddy got home.

He looked at me and said “But I’m sick today!”

And let out the lamest fake cough ever. 

Once he was informed that if he was sick, he was going to go lie down and there would be no video games, he changed his tune.  A miraculous recovery just in time for school!  Hee hee.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

We have lunch at 11am every weekday.  CJ’s bus comes at noon, and I want there to be plenty of time for eating and getting ready.  But somehow, every day, we are rushing more and more.  Why?  Somehow CJ has become the slowest eater on the planet.

I can’t even try to keep Alexa at the table the entire time CJ eats any more.  It is not fair to her to sit there for an hour when she was done in 15 minutes.

Today we just barely made the bus.  I can’t start lunch at 10am!

Aw, the dawdle.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!