Your mouth is open and sound is coming from it. This is never good.

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Poor O has been grumpy lately. I picked her up on Friday, and she came out to me crying and never really got herself straightened out. I asked the teacher at the door what happened, twice, and was pretty much ignored, so I was left with O's "my butt-butt hurts" and between Bean and I, we managed to ascertain that she fell - or was pushed and fell - on her butt. We're pretty sure someone pushed her, but I couldn't make out a name.

(Another gripe about the school, she came out with dried snot schmeared all over her face. Like her nose ran, she wiped at it with her hand or sleeve, smeared it around and it dried on her cheeks. Over and over, and no-one could be bothered to take a wipe to her face with a diaper wipe. Tho I don't think they can be bothered with diaper wipes if the kids just pee, since she comes home with a bright red tush and remnants of that morning's butt balm.)

Anyhow, I elevated my parenting game to include a stop at Sonic for grilled cheese and popcorn chicken for their dinner, we came home, ate, did bathtime and then sacked out.

Yesterday, we did our breakfast taco routine, checked on my folks' place and I had plans to take them *somewhere*, but O was just a mess. She was sooo sleepy, but wouldn't nap at home, insisted on a car ride, and only slept about 30 minutes. Bean wanted to go play at the mall, but it was *packed*, so we'll try the playscape again this a.m. before the mall opens.

Honestly, tho, I hate the mall playscape. It seems to be predominantly lowest common denominator parenting and kid behavior. Parents bring sick, bratty *too old for the playscape* kids and let them cough and sneeze everywhere while they run and jump and make things totally unsafe for the kids that "should" be there. So since we get up at the a$$-crack of dawn, we can easily be there well before it opens, and while those parents are still getting tattoos and bourbon for their kids.

We stopped at Barnes and Noble and then PetSmart. At PetSmart there were puppies and kittens, so they were beside themselves.

On the way home, we're talking, she's firing off questions (and oh dear *god* can I tell you how old it gets having to answer things like "why we call a horse a horse?" and the corollary "well, then, why did those people decide to call it a horse?" when I answer the first one with "I don't know, sweetie, people named everything a long time ago and I didn't have a vote")

Bean: What's a stepmother?
Mommy: It's when a daddy has a new wife.
Bean: ... {insert look of horror here}

I think to myself 'wow, she's not happy about "new wife"', and then an equally horrified look crosses my face as I recall we read Snow-Stupid-White at the bookstore and the stepmother tries to have Snow White killed.

I furiously backpedaled with all sorts of platitudes and disclaimers that stories like that were utter poppycock. But seriously - what kind of idiot am I? Normally, I'd have bee cagey-er about it, trying to ask why she asked, and gotten a context clue about the best answer. But after a discourse on why dogs were called dogs, the difference between a Honda and an Acura and an explanation about why there are cats and kittens that need homes I was in the "get it answered and move on" phase of the game.

So now I'll be spending the rest of the weekend trying to find naturally-occurring set-ups where I can talk about how fake Disney is, how totally unreal the stories are and how great new wives can be. Piece of cake.

Sigh.

Before I forget, when Miss O was crying in the car on the way home Friday, Bean made up a song that was essentially "calm down, calm down, calm your body down; mommy and Bean are right here and we love you and care about you and will always be your friend" it was beyond sweet, and she capped it off with something like "mommy is the best mommy in the world and she will always take care of you. But she's driving and has to look at the road so she doesn't run over any deer."

Eat your heart out, Hallmark.
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I lie awake every night ...

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Last night was one of those 'can't sleep' nights. I wasn't thinking on anything earth-shattering, but you know those nights when your brain is just kind of like one of those sped-up clock montages? Where the hands go sweeping around and pictures fly by? It was kind of like that. At midnight I gave up on laying there and tried to read myself to sleep, but was up until 2:00 anyways. Then the kidlets started to stir around 5:30 ... I think I'll be hitting the Starbucks bar at work today.

I awoke, with foggy brain, to Bean saying "Mommy, I tried to explain starcasm to C at school but he didn't understand. I said: 'when I say 'I really love it when you hit me', it's not a joke and I don't really mean it. That's starcasm.' But he didn't understand even though I explained it the best I could."

Yes folks, she did.

In the car, I've been trying to modulate my ... err ... *reactions* to drivers being total PITAs, so I've employed my favorite tool, sarcasm. Things like "Thanks a bunch for pulling out in front of me and then driving really slow. It makes the drive more challenging and therefore more fun!" instead of what I'd historically say, "$%#@#^ %^%$%#!!" Neither is great to teach children, but sarcasm at least won't have her excommunicated.

After a few of my 60's-housewife-style sarcastic deliveries (by that I mean, said with a smile and a saccharine sweetness, which all 60's housewives use in my head) thanking drivers for being so very skilled at what they do, Bean asked "Why did you say that? You aren't really happy they did that." I then got to explain sarcasm; I can't wait for the email I'll get from her dad when she tries it on him. Ooo - see Bean? It's just that easy.
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So, are you shopping? You're probably not shopping

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But Bean is.

It's been a rough week for her, adjusting to full-time. And her days still aren't as long as full-time days were at her other school.

Wednesday, Dave got a call at work asking if he could talk to her about mellowing out and staying the full day. Thursday her got a call around 12:30 to come pick her up because she was throwing chairs. Friday, same thing.

It's just heartbreaking. It's not like I'm working for fun here - I have to do this. And don't think I'm not tossing around ideas in my head about working part time, not working, living in my car. Because I am. But my pragmatic side knows that I'll have to work full-time at some point, and it would be stupid to throw away the great job I've landed.

When I talk to Bean about it, I get these glimpses into her brain that really make me wonder what's all going on up there.

Like when I was talking to her last week about why she peed in her pants at school:
"I had to go to the bathroom, but I lost the football game and I peed in my pants."

She wasn't playing football, she was standing and talking to another kid at her school.

I got an earful yesterday when I asked about the choices she'd been making at school lately.

"The bad choices were one buck and the good choices were like 100 bucks ... My bigger brain was saying 'pick the bad choice' and my small brain was saying to pick the good choice. So the two brains were driving their shopping carts around the store and the bigger brain said 'pick the bad choice, it's only one buck.'"

The conversation (more like a monologue) was a bit more detailed and in depth, but this is all I could capture while driving. But she spent a couple miles of driving giving me the full story of why she made bad choices.

Big brain and small brain? Best guess is since she was looking at pictures of the brain w/ her dad and saw the cerebrum over the cerebellum, the cerebellum is the small brain.

Sure as schnitzel. She just came in, and I showed her a brain picture and she said: "that's the little brain; it stores all the stuff you don't think about." No wonder her big brain is the one making the choices.

Sometimes when I talk to her and listen to what she says, then try to line that up with what she does, I wonder if she's got something else going on ...

(Quote from "Amends")
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I'm drawing a blank

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I've been meaning to share this picture Bean drew at school a while back. It was during a "family" themed week, though she really doesn't need a themed week to focus on her family.

Anyways, this is what she drew. Be sure to click on it to see the full-sized version. From left to right is Bean, mommy, a rose, daddy and Miss O:


I crack up every time I see the disgruntled look she put on her dad. When I asked her to tell me about the picture, she doesn't say why she made him look that way, or why he and Miss O have the freaky hair going on. Even without a Beanism to explain the picture, it's still entertaining.

Speaking of Beanisms, they're much more involved these days. Gone is the simplicity of lines like "Look - it's a whole family of poopie!" and "Mommy! I just licked a bug off your table!" Now there are whole conversations a la Bean. Like a convo we had about skyscrapers, where she asked me about them, and I explained about building up instead of out, yadda, yadda. As she's done in the past, she listned thoughtfully and then essentially told me I didn't know squat:
"No mommy. Skyscrapers scrape water from the sky and then bring it to the oceans so the fish can live. You don't know anything about skyscrapers, mommy."

It seems like we have a lot of conversations where she's telling me I'm wrong, or I don't know stuff. Is that a Bean thing or a four-year-old thing?
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Well, I sorta test well.

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What a difference a teacher makes; Bean has been doing just amazing since the switch back to the Clownfish class. The almost compulsive nose-picking she had been doing has stopped, her behavior has improved and Miss Stephanie reports that if you just take a second to talk to her when she's upset, she's easy to reason with. Huh. What a novel idea - talk to the kid instead of belittling and humiliating her. Who'd have thought *that* was the solution?

(An aside: when Bean was doing her yoga at school the other day, she was in the gym with one other teacher and a bunch of kids. The evil bitca teacher showed up to assist - I watched as Bean's face shifted from joyous and smiling to this unsmiling, tense look. It. was. awful. Thankfully she looked up and saw me and I was smiling and waving and blowing kisses, so she recovered quickly. She might have recovered quickly even if I hadn't been there - she's a tough kid. But that instant shift from happy to sad was really hard to see.)

Yesterday when I dropped the girls off, Bean's teacher was all excited to tell me something, so I went and dropped O in her room and went back. Apparently during bean's nap refusal yesterday, Stephanie took her with her to go give another teacher a break. That teacher is new, so she had administered a Kindergarten 'here's what I know' type test to the kiddos in her class, just so she knew where the majority were, learning-wise. For shiggles, Stephanie gave Bean the test.

She totally nailed it, and then some.

Stephanie said "she blew me away!" Only thing she didn't nail was her address and phone number, but in her defense we've never told her that and she has two addresses and phone numbers. She had Dave's city and my subdivision, though :)

She can count to 99, identify numbers and letters, write her name, knows her left from right (which Stephanie was really wowed by, but seems kinda mundane to me), knows her colors, etc. The coolest part to me was the color part. There were like, what, 10 or so color names written in boxes, and the test goes something like: the teacher says the color and the kid selects the right color and puts a check in the box indicated. Stephanie had to get up before the last three were done, and she came back to find that Bean had put an orange check in the "orange" box. Here's how the subsequent conersation went:

Stephanie: did you put that check in the orange box?
Bean: Yes.
S: Why did you do that?
B: Because that box says orange.
S: How do you know?
B: Because orange starts with o and that word starts with o.
S: (pausing) and what about the other two (unchecked) boxes?
B: Well, (pointing to the pink box), that one says 'pink' and there's no pink marker. And that one (pointing to the white box) says white, and it's already white.
S: ... ... ...

It's already white. I *love* that. The deductive reasoning on the pink and orange boxes was awesome, but the comment on the white box is what blows me away.

Based on her testing, and the nice new teacher in the Blue Tang room, they'll be moving Bean up before the official August move-up the rest of the kids will be doing. She'll be going to the 4-4.5 year old room Monday, I believe, to see if that's a good fit for her. Honestly, though, her being with a good teacher is far more important to me than her being in an age-appropriate room, if that makes sense? The raving bitca that was in Manta Ray would never have thought that Bean was smart and perhaps acting out because she was bored (Miss Stephanie's theory), so Bean being with her peers wasn't all that helpful to her in that case.

I'll now be spending my free time smartening up so that I can keep up with my big girl :)
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No more butt-monkey, check.

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There is just nowhere in the *world* at which 4:17 is an acceptable time to begin your day. Nowhere. But as Miss O fell asleep in the car around 5:00 last night and rather than make it a brief nap, I let it just be 'down for the night', I anticipated an earlier-than-usual start. And would have been prepared for it were it not for that magical hour of awake-for-the-hell-of-it that occurred around 1 a.m. Bean joined O in that hour of being awake and making me want to drown myself in the bathtub, so I was hating on both kids last night with equal fervor.

I'm going to propose to Dave a new custody arrangement - he gets them at night, I get them during the day. My daytime patience is infinite, but O sleeps for crap here. I think his daytime patience is slightly more limited, judging by Bean's repeated "I don't like daddy because he spanks my butt!" (which, I have no doubt, is more drama-ho'ing and making a case for always being with me than it is an actual reflection of amount/intensity), but they sleep well with him. So he can do the nighttime stuff where less patience is required, and I can tap into my deeper reserves and do the daytime stuff.

Think he'll go for it?

I took the girls to breakfast at McD's, a cemetery, Toys-r-Us, the mall, the park and Target yesterday. Bean wanted McD's breakfast, and it's so cheap to feed the three of us there I have a hard time saying no, tho I do forbid the playscape. I don't do any indoor playscapes with my kids - personally, I consider them festering pits of cooties and sickness. And I'm a mom who extends the 5-second-rule to include the unwashed, straight-from-the-container blueberries that fall on the floor at the grocery store. I've just seen one too many obviously ill and contagious kid at those places, and once I read Julia's story about watching some kid slide down one and leave a poop trail, it's a completely closed case.

After breakfast, where the girls entertained the masses - Bean with her antics and O with her tiny cuteness - I took Bean on her much-desired cemetery field trip. We talked about burial versus cremation, and what one can do with the powder from cremation, as well as discussing who is buried at this cemetery. This particular one is over-represented by 'Cluck's, so Bean ID'd all the Cluck headstones.

Then she noticed the very small headstones and graves.

Thus began a discussion about why babies and kids die. She wasn't happy about there being kids and babies there, but didn't seem profoundly saddened, just a little sad and thoughtful. I thought to myself then, and think now, that this will likely be a recurring discussion for a while to come.

Bean: That's a baby's headstone
Mommy: Actually, it is. It's a baby that died a long time ago.
B, in her most empathetic and sad voice: Oh! That's so sad!
M: It is. Sometimes babies are too sick to live very long, and they die very early.
B, noticing another small grave: There's another one
M: Yes.
(We proceeded to pick wildflowers, with Bean looking at all the headstones, and stopping at any she thought were kid or baby graves. She wasn't super sad, but seemed to get that it was sadder than adult graves)
B: Miss O, this is a baby's headstone
I kid you not, O stopped and placed the flowers she had been holding down near the headstone.

But overall, Bean really enjoyed her trip there. When I noticed the grave of a veteran, I noted it, and explained to Bean that this weekend was a special weekend where we said thank you to the folks who have served our country. I said "you can say 'thank you for serving our country' because they were soldiers who protected us." She proceeded to thank everyone, babies included, for serving our country.

When I asked her her thoughts afterward, she was focused mainly on how pretty cemeteries are, and how you bury dead people in boxes. She paused and said "when we talk to dead people, can they hear us?" I said "some people think they can, and some people think they can't. Do you think they can hear us?" She thought for a minute and said "Yes. I think they can hear us." So I told her "then that's what you should believe. We'll never know for sure, so the only thing that matters is that what you believe makes you feel good."

Miss O dozed off in the car, so Bean and I chatted and drove around for awhile. She was complaining incessantly about her shoes with orthotics hurting her, and I recalled a sale at Stride Rite, so I planned a stop there. Miss O snagged a 45-minute nap in the car, we did some shopping, got both girls' feet measured (O's actually a size 5 now, Bean's an 11), scored a new pair of sneakers for Bean, then headed home for naps. That totally didn't pan out, so we went to a new park and then to Target. Miss O fell asleep on the way home, and now we're full circle to my first paragraph.

I'll leave ya with a couple conversations with Bean. The Toys-r-Us one, which is not for the easily embarrassed, occurred with someone in the stall next to us.

Bean, pointing at some scribble: Do you know what this says?
Mommy: No. What does it say?
Bean: It says 'Loving mommy. We love you. You're the best mama in the whole world. Thanks.'

Bean, leaning over to whisper in my ear at the park: This is *awesome*. Thanks!

Bean, at Target, to an unsuspecting mom with two kids: When we were at the cemetery today, we saw a baby's grave. It was sad.
Mom, fixing me with a special look: I'm sorry. I bet it was sad.
Me, trying to explain: It was a field trip that she requested!

Bean, in the bathroom with me at Toys-r-Us: Mommy, why do you have hair on your butt?
Mommy, laughing in disbelief: You just asked that, didn't you?
B: Yes I did.
M: Well, when people grow up and go through puberty they get hair in new places. And it's not on my butt.
B: Well, why do you have hair on your bulba?
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Can you cry? Sometimes I feel better when I cry.

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Miss O, meet Dr. Ferber. Dr. Ferber, Miss O.

When after an hour and fifteen minutes of O refusing to go to sleep I found myself too close to the edge, I turned her crib/toddler bed to face the wall, carried Bean to my room and closed the door. She's screaming bloody murder but it's either this or me spanking her and screaming at her because I. have. had. it. with this sh*tty sleep. Had it. I am not going to spend the teeny tiny little window of free time I get patting her ass while she fusses and babbles and refuses to sleep. I've spent 17 months kissing her ass and I'm done.

Can you tell I'm mad? And frustrated as hell? If she slept for crap everywhere else, my fuse probably wouldn't be quite this short, but knowing she falls asleep easily and stays asleep at Dave's and at daycare really doesn't add to my patience.

Bean, out of the blue: I think it was a boy that crashed Paul
Mommy, in aural double-take mode: Ummm ... why do you think it was a boy?
B: Because Paul is friends with Kelli, but he isn't friends with the person who killed him
M: ... ... ... Noooo, he probably isn't friends with the person who killed him. But why do you think it's a boy that crashed into Paul?
B: I think it was a boy that killed him because boys are allergic to other boys

Well you just can't argue with that, can you?

It's been quiet in O's room for awhile, so she's either cried herself to sleep or is playing possum. And of course, idiot me is going to check ... hold please ... she's asleep.

I still really don't like the idea of letting infants cry, since under 9-12 months or so, they may still be waking because they truly need to eat. But since O has proven, time and again, that she is capable of falling to sleep quickly, and staying asleep all night, I just don't know what else to do.

And since this post has been as 'all over the place' as my moods this evening, I'll leave you with a website I discovered a few days back, forgot to share, and was reminded of again tonight via MissSingleMama's Tweets: Awkward Family Photos.

Enjoy.
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Not everything has to be creepy and supernatural, you know.

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Conversations with Bean:

Bean: If that was your last one and you used it, you have zero left
Mommy: That's awesome. What happens if I had two left and only used one?
B: Then you'd have one left. And if you used that one, you'd have zero left.
M: You're really good with numbers. Did you learn that in school or is it something you figured out on your own?
B: I figured it out on my own.

B: (grouping her animal magnets) These guys are all together because they have hoofs. Pigs have hoofs, goats have hoofs, sheep have hoofs, zebras have hoofs and giraffes have hoofs.
M: You're right - the all have hooves.
B: Cows and horses have hoofs too, but they aren't here. If they were here, they could join in the hoof party.

B: Can we go to a cemetery?
M: Not right now, maybe this weekend, though. I'll find one where you can walk around and look at the headstones.
B: And find Paul. (For those who don't remember, the death of Paul, a PT at Bean's therapy place, is what began the death/dying/cemetery thing)
M: Well, I'm not sure we'll find Paul because I don't know which cemetery he's in.
B: Can we try to find Paul?
M: Sure, I'll look. Maybe I can find a pet cemetery, too.
B: Maybe there will be horses.
M: Probably not horses, but dogs and cats.
B: What other kids of pets?
M: Maybe birds, hamsters, bunnies ...
B: If they just died that's okay, but if somebody killed them that's *not* okay.

So now I'm busily searching online for local cemeteries, for the cemetery field trip this weekend. I was hoping to find a pet cemetery locally, but there doesn't seem to be one. It's Memorial Day Weekend, so I'll be able to wrap a good message into the field trip, and we'll stop to buy some pink flowers for Bean to randomly distribute. See how I take something that's kind of ... oooky, and I make it into something kind of nice? It's a skill. A gift, really.

Stefany, I can't believe it's been a year, either. Time really flies ... Late April was the official year since I'd moved out, so that was a kind of rough time for me. And I still have moments of regret - not really for anything I could have changed, but regret that he didn't make his case earlier and regrets that our marriage didn't get the effort it deserved. And, I'll say it, I do miss him; or, more accurately, I miss all he was in my life - my best friend, my confidant, the person who knew everything and told me everything (except, apparently, the really important stuff ... sigh). That romanticized, rose-colored-glasses view of the past that makes us better at nostalgia than at carrying a grudge.

Dave and I have a very good post-divorce relationship. Currently. It wasn't always that way, but I've come to understand enough about why it wasn't that my more magnanimous side gives him a pass. The Catty Catterson side has a few snide remarks, but usually only when I'm in my cups a little and feeling all snarky. Going forward, we may have a few more rough spots, although I'm hopeful that the good relationship we're cultivating now will see us through.

One thing I'm thankful for is that even when we were smacking each other around verbally, we somehow managed to keep the kids on a completely different *planet* and never made it difficult for the other to have the relationship and the time they wanted with the girls. I know it's not always easy to put children first in a divorce, but because we were successful with that, I think it made a lot of other stuff easier.

The fact that Dave is an involved, fantastic father and I'm a great mom is another huge plus for us - often one parent makes it hard to respect their parenting skills and their commitment. I can count on one finger the concerns I had about Dave's parenting choices, but I'll let y'all guess the finger. Without that rock-solid faith in him as a father to the girls, I think the divorce and the fallout would have been much harder.

So a year after moving out, and 18 months after finding out my marriage was in trouble, I'm in a good place. And it seems like it's a place I've been both forever and for just an instant ... a kind of "I can't believe it's only/already been this long." I'm wondering if that's a pretty typical way to feel - it seems like it almost should be, especially in the first few years ...
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