Dinner In Thibodeaux

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Harmony

This weekend, we traveled down to the little town of Thibodeaux, LA. The landscape between Baton Rouge and Thibodeaux looks exactly like what you saw in last season’s True Detective (if you watched it). Sugar cane fields and old plantations, with a bayou running alongside the winding highway. It’s so beautiful, in that strange Louisiana way.

We went so I could see my friend Laure, of Finding Fresh. We stuck our husbands in front of a football game and watched our boys run around like wild Indians while Pepper crawled around and looked cute. All was well — my kids didn’t break anything that I am aware of, and no one said anything wildly inappropriate. This should have been my first clue. As we packed up to head out to dinner, I thought to myself how happy I was that we could visit someone’s home and be a totally normal, non-destructive, polite family of five.

Dinner was wonderful. The restaurant was thankfully almost empty except for the nine of us, and for whatever reason they decided to seat our party right in front, directly next to the hostess stand. Aside from Pepper throwing an absurd amount of food on the floor, we almost got through dinner without incident.

And then it happened.

The boys started getting a little stir-crazy. Asher was burping repeatedly and Maverick must have been laughing with too much food in his mouth and he started choking. I sat there staring at him, trying to determine if this was a real choking incident or if he was just being dramatic. Since I wasn’t taking action, Robbie came from behind me and started pounding him on the back. This is when I realized, hello, my child is actually choking. But he was definitely getting some air because he was able to cough and eventually puke it up. I then went to the weird place moms go when they have to deal with something they don’t want to deal with, and I held out my hand so he could cough masticated chicken nuggets into it.

He coughed with such force that it caused a nosebleed, which I wiped at with my other hand. By the time it was over, his shirt was covered in blood and ketchup and the entire place was silent. Laure and her family huddled on the other side of the table, staring. Later on, she commented on how calm Robbie and I were, but I don’t think it’s calmness. I think it’s desensitization.

When the bar gets set to a certain height, it changes things a little. When Asher fell in glass last year, I was beyond traumatized, so anything that is less serious than that (you can read about it here, or maybe NOT) just doesn’t faze us apparently. But wow … dinner with the Hobbs is kind of exhausting. And dangerous, apparently.

Sunday.

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Harmony

The face Maverick made when I told him he has school tommorrow.

Googling.

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Harmony

Robbie just found Maverick sitting on the bathroom counter, looking at his nose in the mirror.

Robbie: What are you doing?

Maverick: I’m Googling my nose.

Robbie: … Do you know what “Googling” means?

Maverick: Yeah! It means “to look up.”

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Six.

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Harmony

Suddenly, Maverick is six.

He rides his bike without training wheels. He stands at the end of the driveway alone and waits for the school bus while I watch through the kitchen window. He insists on wearing boxer briefs.

On his birthday, I offered him a special pin to wear to school. He insisted on putting it on himself and I was silly enough to argue, warning that he might get poked, but he wrested it from my grasp and pinned it directly in the center of his belly. “I’m SIX now,” he said. “I can do things myself.”

He can. And he does. Maverick has always been fiercely independent, and it’s hard to find that line between being available when he needs me and backing off when he doesn’t.

Being a mom is hard.

His room is scattered with Legos and he keeps the door shut at our request, so the baby won’t sneak in there and eat them. A few nights ago I found him sleeping on the floor, surrounded by tiny helicopters and fire trucks he built from his stash, and I tried to pick him up to put him back in bed. But I can’t anymore — he’s too heavy. I stood in the dark realizing, this is it. This is the end of the little years for Maverick, and the beginning of the bigger ones.

I try to embrace all the stages — some have been easier than others — but this boy has a way of making me SO mad, and laugh SO hard, I can’t imagine him belonging to anyone else. As much as I struggle at times to parent him, I know I was specifically chosen to be his mother.

The other morning before I pushed him out the door to meet the bus, I whispered a prayer in his ear. He looked straight at me and said “Thank you for doing that, Mommy. It makes me feel less nervous.”

And then, he was gone.

Hair.

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Harmony

Maverick: Mommy, you have beautiful hair. Daddy, did you marry Mommy because she has beautiful hair?

Robbie: Yes.

Maverick: (after thinking quietly for a few minutes) Let’s cut Pepper’s hair off.

Me: What?! Why?!

Maverick: I don’t want anyone to see her pretty hair and want to marry her. Let’s just cut it off.

Me: NO.

That big brother sure loves his little sister.

Maverick Got Control of My Phone.

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Harmony

Goodbye, Carpool.

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Harmony

Carpool is terrible.

That’s right. I’m writing a blog post about carpool. The people of this world who are doing real things, like anything related to accounting, delivering babies, or the Ebola virus, are entitled to roll their eyes. A friend of mine from high school (Hi, Genya Dana!) has a PhD and is now a Senior Science Policy Officer at the U.S Department of State. She sometimes reads my blog, and if she reads this post I would expect her to roll her eyes. I’m totally fine with it. I would too.

But … silly as it is, this is my life. Right now my world is wrapped up in figuring out the public school system and potty-training my middle child, and those two things pretty much leave me spent by the end of the day. It’s a damn good thing I’m not working at the Center for Disease Control or the U.S. Department of State. Just the thought of it makes me panicky; the stress of it all would render me asleep under my desk by noon.

When I first became a stay-at-home mom, I had all these ideas of what certain mom-like things would be like. Carpool was one mom task I figured I’d be doing eventually. It sounds so fancy: carpool. You hear of parents sitting in the carpool line, and I never quite got a grasp on how horrible it really is. After three days of waiting for 30 minutes, twice a day, in an ass-long line of cars with small children screaming from the backseat, I mentioned to Maverick that maybe he could ride the bus.

The bus!!!!!! His eyes lit up with excitement. Desperation eroded whatever worries I had about putting my 5-year-old on a big yellow school bus, and on Monday morning I got us all dressed and began the long walk to the end of our street. We stood at the busy corner and we waited. Not ones to waste time, Maverick and Asher spent the longest 8 minutes of my life throwing pine cones, sticks, and rocks at cars (NO!), into the street (again, NO!), at houses (NO!), and at each other (NO!). They then proceeded to stand in ant hills, peel bark off pine trees and dig holes in someone’s yard, all while I tried to stop them and keep the baby out of harm’s way and smile and wave to the people who drove by as if all was well, so they would not notice that I was completely losing my mind.

And then, the bus arrived. The driver took one look at us and asked which house we live in. When I told her, she said “I’ll stop in front of your house from now on — it’s much safer there.” And I thanked her for making my life exponentially easier as I tried to keep Asher from boarding the bus behind his brother.

I planned to get a picture of Maverick as he climbed into the school bus for the first time, but it was too late. As I was talking to the driver, he found a window seat and waved excitedly as they pulled away and Asher sobbed.

At 3:40 that afternoon, the bus came back and deposited my child, as if by magic. He’s been taught and fed two meals — breakfast and lunch — and transported to and from our home without me doing anything except getting him out the door. Public school is the bomb, y’all. So far I am completely a fan, definitely the mom who goes overboard with appreciation to everyone who plays a part in my son’s education because I CANNOT DO IT WITHOUT THEIR HELP.

So THANK YOU, Mrs. L the bus driver. I would have hugged you, but you said you had to go.

First Grade.

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Harmony

Today I bravely held Maverick’s hand as we moved with a flood of strangers into the elementary school. I looked at the other children and their parents, laden with school supplies, and wondered who else was terrified.

People tell us the East Baton Rouge Parish School System is broken. They say private school is the best option, that things aren’t what they used to be. They say we can’t trust our public schools, that children know too much, too soon; they warn of the dangers of drugs and guns and that my child will be exposed to sex by the time that he’s 8.

But I’m choosing to trust this school.

As we walk through the doors, I note that some parents look just as nervous as I feel. I look away from the big sign that says NO GUNS and I focus on the smiling teachers who are greeting us. They all seem genuinely excited for the school year to begin.

We walk through a maze to find his classroom. Most of the other boys in his class are bigger than him. He’s young for a first-grader. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he’s too young. He’s still 5 years old, and most boys his age are entering Kindergarten this year or even next.

Maverick quietly introduces himself to Ms. Johnson. He answers her questions politely and shakes her hand. We find his desk and he sits and begins to color carefully inside the lines. “I love you,” I say. “I am so proud of you.” He begs me not to go. He says that he’s scared. I am, too, but I don’t tell him that.

“I have to leave you,” I remind him. “If I don’t leave, then you can’t learn. And because you want to be a scientist, you have to learn, right?”

And before the tears started, I gave him one last hug and turned away, leaving my little boy alone in a sea of faces, sitting at a desk with his name on it.

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