Gabe's First Day of School

Gabe started Kindergarten on Wednesday. Pretty crazy. Tuesday night we had a "meet your teacher" night at his school, and it took Libby and I both a bit of adjusting to the idea that he was already in school.

I mean, I know I spend most of my time bitching about the downsides of child rearing, and vocalizing my strong desire for both kids to be in school so I can finally regain a touch of freedom to pursue, well, pretty much anything. But that's just me putting on my "tough face," and coping in the worst way possible. But that's just my tough exterior. Inside, I'm a pretty sentimental, sensitive, romantic, thoughtful guy. Inside, where it doesn't do anyone else any good, like it's supposed to be.

Right before we left for his meet the teacher thing, the topic of Gabe introducing himself came up somehow, and Gabe's old introduction popped into my head: "I'm Gabe Albers from Big Boy." I loved that intro. I think it might have been my favorite thing that Gabe said--well, that he said regularly, like his catch phrase (it would be tough to beat him renaming Gatorade Hot Squirrel and giving an explanation of how much he loves Hot Squirrel for my favorite thing that he's said of all time). And it just doesn't seem like it's been long enough since he was so little that saying "from Big Boy" seemed like a logical thing to do when meeting someone new. Our little Bubbie (which we haven't called him in years, though that hardly seems possible either) actually IS a big boy now. And, though I appreciate the freedoms that his bigness will offer both of us, it is always sad to see the sweet parts of small childhood only from the rear view mirror.

Anyway.

These were our attempts to get a posed picture of the kids together before going. Gabe's backpack is stuffed full of supplies--a big binder and two reams of copy paper--so he was having a tough time standing up, much less standing still. And Norah was being Norah. She had no reason to be crying except that we had asked her to stand still and smile.

Remember those sentimental things I was saying before. Screw that.

Here's me carrying Gabe's stuff for him. I appear to be covered in a fine, thick, gray fur. Neat!

Gabe sitting at his table in what he chose to be his regular spot. This is the kind of attentive look I expect his teachers will see a lot of over the next thirteen plus years.

The reading corner in the classroom.

You'd think, based on how much he hams it up for the camera, that he'd have a better posed smile worked out by now.

The traditional first day of school picture on the front porch. No backpack because we left it hanging on his hook at school the night before.

With Norah. And a face.

Waiting in line at the bus. Because his school is outside of town, we have to drop him off and pick him up in the parking lot of the middle school.

The kid is a trooper. Something entirely new that he's never done before. Leaving the comfort of home and family into a group of strangers in a new environment, being asked to climb aboard a massive kid carrier without knowing the first thing about how the system works. And he was practically jumping up and down with excitement. It was kind of cute, actually. On our way to the bus stop, about five blocks from home, he said, "I need to pee! I need to pee!" So we stopped at the book store since it was right there and I went inside with him. He stood in front of the toilet for a minute without anything happening (he'd just peed a few minutes ago at home). "I can't go. Nothing will come out!" When we got back to the car I told Libby and she observed that it was probably nerves. He'd never really experienced "nervous" before and was registering it as a need to pee. Anyway, where I would probably have been freaked out and crying (in fact, that is what I was and did for the first few weeks of kindergarten, as I recall), Gabe jumped right in and loved everything about it.

And back home with the pick up. They're doing half days for the first six weeks and then switch over to full days. It will be interesting to see how he transitions to that. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, having him out of the house all day sounds pretty nice. On the other hand, just-five-years-old seems a little young to already be spending the entire work week out of the house. All I know is, as it stands right now, half days are making him kind of a dick. He's getting great stimulation and keeping busy for three hours and then has to come home and be around Norah and I again. He's been understandably disappointed by our level of interesting throughout the afternoons so far. With luck that will level off soon.

Probably a classic.

Siblings

Over the years, I've addressed the great sibling debate many times--sometimes on here and sometimes in my own head. The debate basically boils down to whether or it's worth it to have more than one child (of course, ignoring the debate of whether or not it's worth it to have kids at all). People come down all over the place on this debate. People who only have one child, of course, believe that they know what's what. People who have two kids think they have all the answers. People who have more than two children are clinically insane and should not be listened to under any circumstances.

The fundamental argument, distilled to its essence, is whether or not having two kids is: 1) more work for the parent, and 2) better for the child--and whether or not one or the other of these elements is more important to consider (for instance, "if it's best for the child, then it doesn't matter if it's more work for the parent" or vice versa).

After a little over three years of experience, I'm still not sure where I fall on the subject. I've been weighing pros and cons the entire time, and I still don't know which side has the tip of the scale.

But I do have more insight to share.

It is not less work. Not at all. Now, there MIGHT be less time that I have to spend actually, physically entertaining both or each of them as I might have to with only one kid in the house. They do kind of keep each other occupied. Kind of. If one or the other of them is hungry for someone to bother, then they have an immediate outlet. However, whatever time or energy I might save on entertaining them is more than expended in the time and energy I have to use breaking up whatever brawl their playing together inevitably breaks down into. 

. . . .

And this is where Blogger decided I was finished with this post.

And who knows what my train of thought was at the time.

So let's just move on as it relates to school developments.

Based on our first week of half days, I am going to go out on a limb and say that it's MUCH easier just having one kid in the house. Norah has been a dream in the mornings while Gabe is at school. Admittedly, I think she's pretty bored most of the time. Up til now she's been relying pretty heavily on Gabe to provide her with ideas for things to do. With him in the house, she will go off on her own and play, but as soon as she looks up and sees that Gabe is doing something mildly interesting, she picks up and tries to take over whatever he is trying to do. Sounds nice, right? Kids providing ideas for each other to do. In reality, it almost exclusively ends in whining and fighting and tattling and mutual irritation by all parties concerned. Because Norah is never satisfied with playing BY Gabe, or playing WITH Gabe, she is only interested in doing exactly what Gabe was doing, in the spot where Gabe was doing it, with the things that Gabe was doing it with. 

With Gabe out of the house, Norah has been a sweetie. We spend our mornings playing with Squinkies and dressing Polly Pockets and watching pre-K shows instead of Gabe's "boy shows." I'm not saying it is the "best" option for her, but it has certainly been a "nicer" option for me (and I think her since she isn't getting into trouble for pestering Gabe all the time). She, like me, tends towards inertness when outside forces aren't pushing her in one direction or the other. Meaning, there's a pretty good chance that she'd just lie on the floor or in the rocking chair watching TV or whatever without someone convincing her that there are better options available. Which, up to this point, Gabe has been doing for her with his pretty much constant activity.

So, there's the rub. In the end, I think it is better for kids to have siblings for various reasons. It gets them used to dealing with other people and exposes them to social aspects they don't get to experience when they are the only kid in the house. They get to experience someone else's ideas. Plus, presumably, they will have each other to fall back on throughout their lives and suchlike.

But don't let anyone tell you that it's going to make YOUR life easier. Because there seems to be little proof that anything of the sort is the truth.

Summer Recap

 Note: As I was logging in to put a First Day of School post up, I noticed that the last two posts I thought I'd put up in the past couple weeks didn't post. Also, one of them was only have finished now. So I'm adding some more photos on to this one and the one about siblings will just get finished when it gets finished. Again.

Summer is nearly over. Well, summer break is nearly over. I'm beginning to believe that the hot weather will be here forever, though. Gabe starts school on the 15th. Only a week away. It is staggeringly difficult to believe, actually. I mean, on the one hand, it's something I've been looking forward to for awhile now. But on the other, how can he possibly be five years old already?

But before we start on the school stuff, I figured I better go through and do a bit up an update on pictures and videos that I've been remiss in putting up on the blog for the past few months.

I know, I know. I'm a terrible person. There are like 30 pictures here covering almost the entire summer.  I have to admit, updating the blog has been a low priority lately. It's not that I don't want to, and it's not that the kids aren't providing me with ample source material--they are--it's mostly a complete lack of motivation to do pretty much everything. It's not been an easy summer and I'm very hopeful that school is the answer to the problem (the problem being that my children are raving, whining, screaming, teasing, not-listening, infuriating lunatics right now). 

Norah as leopard. Going down a slide, as leopards often do.

Yes, that's a snake. They found it in one of the plants in the yard (before all of our plants died thanks to the liberals discovering global warming).

Norah doesn't like to touch her food. She complains about little smudges of dirt on her hands or feet when she's in the house. And then she goes outside and plays with snakes and covers herself head to toe in mud. Though, now that I put that in writing, I realize that it pretty accurately describes Libby, too.

Birthday mugs. Libby took the kids over to our friend Hannah's studio and she helped the kids glaze these (Libby threw them) with colors of their choosing. They are precious to me. Sadly, they are also not terribly useful as they only hold a big shot's worth of liquid. One pound shot glasses, more or less. But they are pretty!

Norah dressed up like a bunny leopard? I don't know what's going on in this picture--it was on a Saturday while I was at the shop and Libby had the kids out "doing things."

Libby took Norah out for a Mommy-daughter date night right after Brave came out (see, it's been a long time since I've sorted through my pictures). It was the first movie Norah went to on her own, and she did great. She also ate most of a large popcorn on her own. And we wonder why she has a bit of a girth problem.

Wearing one of my ball caps. Gangsta.

We had a run, around early July, of her sleeping in weird places upstairs. There was a string of like five out of ten nights that she fell asleep somewhere other than her bed. Considering how much she flails about at night, I honestly don't know how she never rolled down the stairs.

Top of the stairs, between the bedrooms.

On the floor, next to the bed in the spare bedroom.  And then, unexpectedly, it just stopped and she hasn't done it for over a month now. Kids are weird.

Speaking of weird. Fairy wings, feather boa, green grabber thing and a sword.

Norah in farm equipment. Possibly at the county fair? Mostly I'm just posting this because she's wearing a sky blue Albers Brothers Gelbvieh shirt that was originally purchased for Ben to wear when he was four or five. It's a pretty awesome shirt, really.

Army helmet, feather boa, swimsuit, mud boots, sawed off nerf shotgun. The kid knows how to accessorize.

Perhaps this has something to do with why I'm getting eighth grade level attitude out of her.

I tried to teach them to play that dueling banjos song from Deliverance, but it was beyond the capacity for the Yo Gabba Gabba guitar. Also, nobody squealed like a pig. Thank god.

This is a picture from the night we went to see Gabe's kindergarten--the rest of which I'll cover in a separate post--but it was a cute picture so I thought I should put it on here.

Probably this should be a Norman Rockwell picture. Except maybe Norah should be wearing a shirt and Gabe should have on something over his underwear.

Graduation robe, gun holster, bead necklace (in his right hand) and sword. He has lots of other stuff, too. He was shoving stuff in the sleeves and using them like pockets.

I'm not even sure what to put as a caption for this one.

Or this one, actually. We are nothing if not classy, though.

This was the veil Libby's mom wore when she got married. If that tells you anything about the size of Norah's head . . . .

As we were waiting for lunch the other day, the kids decided they wanted to work on their poses. So here they are.

At least the holster wasn't hanging underneath the sword . . . .

 

 

 

And, finally, a video of them playing in the mud, classing up our barren yard. Seriously. We won't have grass left in most of it after this year--and we barely had any left after last year. After letting the sprinkler dribble for almost an hour for the kids to tromp around in, we only created a puddle about ten feet wide. It never spread. The water just kept soaking in. Pretty awful.