Full Days and Flat Gabe

Gabe started full days at school last week. It's kind of a big deal, for all parties concerned. For Gabe it represents a total shift in how his life works. He's having lunches away from home. He has no opportunity for naps. He has a full day of focusing and interacting with people. He is, in effect, growing up fast.

They are going to start reading within the next month or two. READING. In kindergarten! Everyone! When I was in kindergarten, it was a half day and we had a nap time. Only one kid in our class could sort of read by the end of the year (I won't drop names, but I can give a hint: the shortened version of his first name spells "tap" with the letters mixed up). We didn't do anything but play and color and occasionally create an art project. Already Gabe has made pretty huge steps towards reading. He's recognizing letter sounds and he's asking us to point to words as we read them so he can see what they look like. And he's subtracting and adding. It just seems impossible to me. Less than three months ago the kid was picking his nose, eating it, then proclaiming, "I LOOOOOOOVE boogers!"

For Norah and I Gabe's absence means something else. Norah is handling it pretty well. She had kind of a tough go of it the first month or so that Gabe was gone during the mornings. As it turns out, Gabe has been our activities organizer for the last few years. His high energy and need for constant movement and activity kept everyone else in the house busy and occupied, too. There was always something going on, and Norah was able to reap the benefits of that activity. Gabe thought of something crazy and usually loud to do and Norah joined in the fun. With Gabe gone, Norah was forced to rely on her own imagination--or, worse, mine--to come up with things to do. Sadly, our brains work about exactly the same way. I'm great at coming up with things for my brain to do, but I'm pretty terrible at coming up with things for my body to do. Norah is the same way. If left to her own devices, she might sit in the same chair for an entire morning, talking and singing to herself or watching TV or playing with a handful of squinkies or lalaloopsies (her two favorite toys for well over six months now, remarkably enough) and her Batmanmobile.

And the attitude. She was throwing SERIOUS attitude. All the time. Agonizingly so. Then, when Gabe came home, they were pretty much at each others' throats the entire time. That part, actually, hasn't changed all that much, but at least now there is about four hours less of it.

But this last week has been kind of different. For one, she's getting good naps again. Gabe hasn't been much of a napper for at least the last six months--probably more like the last year, really. And, obviously, if Gabe wasn't napping, then Norah felt she didn't need to either. She still got a few a week, but the days when she didn't nap, she was a terror. Now, without Gabe keeping her awake and setting an example of not napping, she's settling down easily and taking nice long naps. After the naps, she's as cheerful and pleasant as can be. And, in the mornings, she's getting better at keeping herself occupied. The nicer weather has allowed us to play outside some, which helps, but even when we're inside she thinks of things to do and keeps us both busy. So, it's been good.

We'll have to see how long it lasts, though. One of the other side effects of having Gabe out of the house for such a long time each day is that I feel obligated to work at the bookstore more during the week. Up til now, I've pretty much only been available on nights and weekends. It was just too tough to have both kids in the store for extended periods of time. I still DID have them in the store for about 6 hours a week, but god those 6 hours were a misery most of the time. Every five minutes I was going over to them and telling them to be quiet or stop fighting or stop whining or whatever. But now Norah and I are going to be spending two full afternoons together in the store--from the time she gets out of preschool until we go to pick Gabe up. They are two big stretches of time (longer than she's ever had to stay in the store) each week. I brought a sleeping bag and some pillows to put in the little "kid hole" closet we have here, in the hopes that she'll lie down for a bit and nap (which, besides providing her the nap she needs to not be a Betty the rest of the day, will also make the time go by much more quickly, for her at least).  Hopefully it works and she adapts well.

In other news, Gabe has a project that he's doing for school. They read a story called Flat Stanley, about a kid who gets squashed by a chalkboard and then is sent around the world on various adventures. The class was then told that they would be making a flat version of themselves to send to friends and family members for adventures. And we heard through the grapevine (from the parent of another kid in Gabe's class) that Gabe FREAKED OUT about this project. Full on freaked out. I guess he misunderstood what was going to happen. He was under the impression that, instead of a picture being taken of his face, his actual head was going to be detached from his body, flattened, and attached to a construction paper body. Eventually it was straightened out (and he would never really admit to us that he had freaked out, though he sheepishly admitted that he thought they were going to squash his head), and Flat Gabe arrived at our house Friday.

Flat Gabe, with non-real head attached.

So that project is underway and, more than likely, most of you will hear from us someway or other to find out if you want to participate in the Flat Gabe project (which is also the name of Gabe's band).