Snips and Snails and Endless Supplies of Destructive Energy

Right this second, Caedmon and I are both completely spent.  We have thirty minutes until we have to leave to pick the bigguns up from the bus stop.  I am typing.  He is curled up in the fetal position next to me.  This is what helping out at school parties does to us.

When I got an email from Atticus's teacher begging for more parent helpers for the Valentine's Day party, I was like, "Sure, yeah!  I can do that!  No problem!  Oh, what's that?  It's an hour and a half of Valentine fun with 25 of my favorite first graders?  Brilliant!"

That is how Cade and I found ourselves hauling a snack into a classroom, then obediently accepting a handful of chopsticks, marshmallows, and paper plates for our superfuntime Valentine game station.  There were stations all around the room, each manned by parents who were wearing their best forced smiles (except for that dad who had the grimmest, sourest expression that has possibly ever graced that classroom.  I admired his facial honesty and wondered what kind of bet he had lost with his wife.), and the teacher grouped the children into packs of five, rotating them through the stations.

Our first two groups both consisted entirely of boys who took the "pick the marshmallows on the center plate up with chopsticks and deposit them on your own plate, most mallows at the end wins" game to a place I didn't really know it could go.  There was stabbing of food and hands.  Marshmallows flew.  Chairs toppled.  I have two boys of my own so I knew what to do:  Disqualify every last boy and eat the prize strawberry Starburst in front of them.

Round two went more smoothly.

Honestly, though, at one point I found myself thinking, You know, IT'S FUNNY, I checked the school lunch menu last night and I'm quite sure I didn't see amphetamines on there, yet there is no other possible explanation for this.  It was madness.  I couldn't understand why there wasn't thick plexiglass between me and the animals and why I hadn't been charged admission to watch this display.

Then came one group of girls after another.  Beautiful, beautiful girls.

They were so calm.  So civilized.  Yes, many of them were competitive, but I didn't have to snatch Caedmon back from the table repeatedly due to fear of chopstick puncture wounds like I did with The Others.  They followed directions.  One of them told me I was pretty, another said, "You are SO NICE."  It all I could do not to pet them and maybe cry a little over the fact that they had to share a classroom with such beasts.  The shy "You're pretty" one had curly red hair and freckles and all that remains to be done is get her parents' contact information so I can arrange a marriage between her and our son.  Ginger grandbabies suit me just fine.


Atticus was one of three boys whose necks I did not find myself mentally measuring for estimated circumference- for shock collars, understand- and while I like to think our son would have been a good role model for the Testosterone Gang, more likely it was because he was the only boy in my final group that was otherwise populated by girls, and because hello, Mom's right there.


I've read before about the wisdom of classes divided by gender, and while I won't weigh in much on the topic, given that, you know, I'm not an educator, I do think that if I were ever sent to the fourth circle of hell and had to teach a classroom full of boys, I would demand Satan outfit my classroom with a fleet of treadmills, no desks necessary, thanks.  The treadmills- or stationary bikes, I'm not picky- would be arranged in a semicircle facing in, where I would teach as the boys remained in constant motion.  Kid with the most miles and completed math facts at the end of the day wins, as do their parents, who no longer have a kid bouncing off the walls the second they walk in the door after school.  You're welcome, society.

"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him," says James 1:12.  It would seem that feral boy-related trials get a mustache rather than a crown, perhaps because it's not from God but rather one of his little angels whose mother I prayed for immediately after he left my station .  Also pictured:  Exhausted Caedmon who is SO DONE immediately following the party.

Semi-Sweet

This week I've been driving our kids to the school bus stop in the mornings, because although I know we can survive twenty minutes outside in single digit temps, I choose not to.  I'm generally a "Why drive when you can walk?" kind of person, so I've had our children out in some extremely questionable weather in the past (number of times kind citizens of our community have stopped their cars or stepped out of buildings to ask if we need a ride:  Countless.  In my defense, our little town stretches out for no more than a few miles at its widest point.  This is not exactly the Trail of Tears I'm forcing our kids down here.), so our children have welcomed this reprieve.

The older two wait in our vehicle until they see the bus getting ready to round the block toward them, then they hop out and go to stand in line.  Every day this week, from the back of the van, Caedmon has given voice to the fierce war waging within him:  "Ohhhh.  I really want to go say good-bye just one more time.  But it's cold outside!  The bus is coming.  I-I- MOM, I NEED TO GET OUT."

He then bolts out the van, and scurries up to Adelaide to hug her tightly one last time before she leaves him for seven long hours.  

Caedmon's in the orange coat and blue hat, squeezing his sister.  Pardon the frost patterns and snow in the foreground; I don't get out of my vehicle even for a picture, so this was taken through the windshield.

Today Atticus got a hug, too, although there's no picture of that embrace as it was quick and very perfunctory.  

You would think that this would mean that Caedmon loves it when we go to his sister's school to eat lunch with her, but no.  Absolutely not.  He gets very quiet and increasingly downtrodden as more and more fourth grade girls squeal over him and say to Adelaide, "Oh mah gahsh.  Your little brother is SO CUTE.  He is adorable.  Oh em gee.  Look at his face.  Look at his Batman hat.  Do you think he'd give me a hug?"  

It got bad enough last time that Adelaide took the worst offender, a very nice but rather loud girl aside and said, "Privately, I agree with you, Caedmon is cute, but you really shouldn't say that in front of him; he considers it very offensive to be called 'cute' or 'little' or anything like that."  

By the time we left, he hadn't said a word in thirty minutes and his shoulders were hunched up around his ears.  All he'll say about the lunch experiences is that he does not like to be around so many bigger kids, and he does not like to be called cute.  Fair enough.  

None of this is terribly surprising given how loud and crowded and busy Adelaide's lunch room is, and I'm able to watch as it begins to overwhelm our youngest within minutes of our arrival, but I was in Caedmon's preschool for two hours yesterday morning for his Valentine party, and you want to talk about overwhelming?  So loud.  So shrill.  And it's busy-ness borders on a swarm at times.  It is nuts in there.  It's always incredible to watch how Cade's preschool teachers can begin singing any of the songs they use to transition from one activity to another, because all those children who were I swear about to go Lord of the Flies on each other settle down and start cleaning up or washing their hands or sitting on the carpet.  I guess it really is the presence of bigger kids that overwhelms our son so much.

Those same magical preschool teachers had also instructed that their students were only to write their own names on their Valentines; scratching out the recipients' names on nineteen pieces of paper is too cumbersome for little hands, and it's much easier just to go through a line and drop a Valentine in each sack, not worrying about which one goes to whom.

Our Caedmon, however, threw a wrench in this whole plan Wednesday night when I stated how happy I was that all his Valentines had been finished for days, as he'd already written his name on every last one.  He grew upset, started honest-to-God weeping, and through a torrent of tears told me that "But Mom, the Valentines all say 'To:' and I can't just leave those blank!  It'll look stupid!  You're supposed to write who each one is to, Mom!"  Then I began sorting through them, and he had already phonetically spelled out half the names of the kids in his class: Noah was Nou, Drake was Drak, etc, etc.

And that is how Caedmon got to stay up past his bedtime doing something his preschool teachers told him expressly not to do.

That's More Like It

Thanks to wonderful, wonderful friends, I think I've almost got this Valentine-party-game-situation licked.  Adelaide is thank-you-God capable of addressing and preparing her own Valentines this year, so that's done.  At least, I assume it is.  I think I glanced her direction all of one time while she was filling them out the other day, and she seemed to have everything more or less under control.  She's come a long way, baby.

Atticus has been steadily working on Valentines for his classmates since Saturday, which meant that, as of 10 pm last night, all that was left to do for this completely useless holiday was prepare Atticus's Valentine box for his classroom.

Unfortunately I had made the mistake of searching Pinterest for "Valentine's Day boxes" while Atticus observed from over my shoulder.  It took several minutes to explain to him just how little I was willing to invest in this whole project:  Zero dollars and maybe two television episodes' worth of my time.  That wiped out 90% of the results on there, but he did find an Olaf box I decided was reasonably do-able.

According to the Olaf Valentine Box Tutorial, I needed:

• One empty Kleenex box
• White Cardstock
• Black Acrylic Paint
• Scissors
• One Orange Pompom
• Two White Pompoms
• One Black Pompom
• Rubber Cement
• Low Temperature Glue Gun and Glue
• Black Craft Foam
• White Craft Foam
• A Sharpie

Of those things, I had:

• One empty Kleenex box
• Scissors
• A Sharpie

Instead of all those fancy materials I cut up an empty granola bar box for various appendages and taped the heck out of the whole thing.  He also sports the tip of a real carrot for his nose, which is rather precariously attached to his face.  I thought about calling him White Trash Olaf, but Fiscally Conscious Olaf or Refurbished Olaf sounds way more pretentious and makes me sound like I made it this way intentionally due to my high-falutin' hippie ways.  The truth is I can't bear to buy all that stuff for something that will no doubt be trash in a matter of weeks.  

Good enough, says I, says Atticus, says Reused Household Materials Olaf.

Do Kids Still Play "Upset The Fruit Basket"?

I received an extremely disturbing email from Adelaide's teacher last week.

It would appear that at the beginning of the school year- you know, back when I was fresh off summer vacation and believed I could learn to like doing things with large groups of children, aka completely insane- I signed up to help out with the Valentine's Day party in our daughter's class.

Once I got over the shocking message contained within that email, suppressed memories began misting back.  I'm pretty sure I had blocked almost all traces of that fateful Back-to-School-Night to preserve my sanity in the intervening months.  I now recall that by the time we got to Adelaide's classroom and had stocked her desk, met her teacher, etc, all the easy jobs like bringing drinks and napkins and themed-snacks had been fulfilled by parents who had already come and gone, leaving the stinker responsibilities like "games" for all the holiday parties.

Thankfully my friend Anne was also a latecomer that night, and is to be my partner in Valentine fun.  I sent her a rather desperate and not totally coherent (I PANICKED, OKAY?) email right after I read the teacher's message stating I had signed up to coordinate games for 25 third graders for one hour.  Honestly, even now a part of my brain is having trouble believing this, because this is just not like me.  I'm not sure how I ended up this way, but I (usually) have little problem saying, "No, thank you," to people, and am not someone who feels pressure to say "Yes" to everything under the sun.  This likely has less to do with strength of character than my hermit-like tendencies coupled with having strong female role models in my family who were not afraid to say what they thought.  AND YET.  Here I am, searching Pinterest for Valentine's Day party game ideas.

This is probably because I know that if she asked me to, I would organize games on a monthly basis for Adelaide's teacher.  The way I've been carrying on since receiving her email you'd think Adelaide's school was some kind of displaced Gulag camp amid the Iowa cornfields.  Of course it's a fine school, but that teacher is in there for hours upon hours with those little vectors (I just can't seem to shake my mom's pet name for children, no matter how I try), whereas I'm slated to be there for one measly little hour, after which I will stagger out the door and renew my prayers of thanksgiving for teachers, who will still be stuck in there.


Upon finding out he would be coming with me, Caedmon, however, reacted as if he had won the lottery.  He cannot believe his good fortune:  One whole hour?  With Adelaide?  At school?

Hmm.  I put that gif up there to illustrate Caedmon's state of extreme excitement and anticipation, but I feel like it represents how I feel about the party pretty accurately, too, though for admittedly different reasons.

4-H Crafts for Grown Ups

See this?

Right away, let me assure you I did not come up with this idea.  I first saw this monster Valentine box idea on Pinterest a long time ago, and it has since mated and reproduced and made many, many monster babies.  Also?  I did not think that analogy through.

Backing off of the reproductive practices of monster boxes and onto the advent of Valentine boxes:  If you have school-age children, you know that it is not longer enough to send your child to school with a plain old Valentine.  They must now have a small treat with their standard Valentine (something that was only reserved for the over-achievers when I was young), half of their classmates' Valentines won't even be those cheap, perforated, store-bought numbers; they will be beautifully crafted, hand-made creations you'll feel guilty about throwing away (oh, but you'll still do it), and you will be expected to create some kind of receptacle for all those gorgeous Valentines and treats and other guilt-inspiring doodads ("guilt" because I don't generally do those things).

Enter the Valentine box.

Somehow, when you see those amazing Valentine boxes on Pinterest, you believe that it's just that: something that that one mom on Pinterest does, while the rest of us are content to wrap old Kleenex boxes in butcher paper and hand our kid a crayon to decorate it (this was my actual plan, FYI).  Then you walk into your kid's preschool and see glittering castle Valentine boxes and Lego Valentine boxes and boxes that are covered in real chicken feathers (don't even ask).  At this point you realize that your slacker parenting methods aren't going to work this time.

I know how this all works, okay?  I was in 4-H.  I competed in the fair every summer and won my share of ribbons.  (And not those lame reds or, God forbid, white ribbons, just so we're clear)  I can lose sleep and cry real tears over meaningless crafts with the best of them, making these Valentine boxes right up my alley.

Still, it's been a long time since I was in 4-H, and there are no ribbons on the line here (soccer moms prefer to deal in guilt and shame), so I find myself veering toward the ideas on Pinterest with key words like "Under 10 Minutes!" and "So easy I was able to do it in the middle of the daily ten-mile run!"  Unfortunately, Pinterest moms are dirty, dirty liars, as this box took me approximately one and a half episodes of Doctor Who to complete (although, to be fair, one of the episodes was Angels Take Manhattan which I absolutely recommend if you want to have a panic attack every time you see a statue for the rest of your natural life- it may or may not have slowed me down a teensy bit), and involved around half a roll of tape.

It also seemed really plain when I was done, so I twisted up and added some random sparkly pipe cleaners to the top.  I thought this jazzed it up nicely enough, until our children woke up and saw it this morning.

Adelaide's verdict was "It's funny," but Atticus looked at it, smiled, then turned to me and asked, "Why did you make my Valentine box look like Ms. Hollie?"

Ms. Hollie is one of Atticus's preschool teachers.  She is not red.  She does not have the shape of a Kleenex box.  She does not have blue eyes, nor does she have three eyes, nor does she have lazy or wandering eyes.  She does not have a gaping maw of nightmare teeth.  So I asked, "What do you mean, Bud?"

"It looks like Ms. Hollie.  You know," he gestured to the top of his head, "crazy hair."

Ah.  Ms. Hollie does have a head full of curly, corkscrewy hair.

This all gave me an idea for a terrific new reality show:  The 4-H'ers of [Washington, Cowley, Story, whatever] County, where you follow young 4-H kids as they get ready for the fair.  The tears!  The drama!  The animal excrement!  The sewing machine-induced injuries!  And- plot twist!- all the 4-H judges are preschoolers.

Makes about as much sense as anything that's on tv now.