Who knew Cookie Monster was Jewish?

Noah attended the family service on Yom Kippur. It was crowded and a little warm, and people were edgy, hungry, and starting to smell just a little funky in that "I'm fasting, and furthermore I haven't brushed my teeth" kind of way.

We sat further toward the back of the sanctuary, near the door in case we needed to make a hasty retreat, and were quickly surrounded by friends. Noah ended up on my lap, which was fine because I expected he would be asleep soon.

The congregation rallied into song, and I was charmed to hear sound coming out of my boy, there in my lap. Then I realized he was getting the tune right.

And then I realized that he was getting the WORDS right.

And then I made the final and most fabulous realization:

He was singing in his Cookie Monster voice.

As the children's choir took the stage, I was awash in conflicting emotions. A combination of the bittersweet thought of Noah joining the choir, and anticipation of watching his little punim join the shining faces in the choir washed over me, battled hard by an overwhelming need to laugh at the growly little voice giving it his best from my lap. I restrained myself, but tears of love and overwhelming laughter coursed down my face.

My girlfriend, sitting next to me with her same-age daughter on her lap, turned to me with a look of concern. "Is there something I should know?" she asked. All I could do was shake my head and mutter something about having a Hallmark moment. And it was true. I just couldn't figure out how to explain that it was a Shoebox Greetings moment -- a tiny little division of Hallmark cards.

Noah's second joke

He's said a lot of funny things in his life, but this is the second time I can recall that he's made a discernable joke linking two unrelated pieces of information in a way that was funny.

Backstory: For reasons that I probably will never understand, when my stepson's mother enters our house, she greets our dog by shouting out "Goose Goose DUCK!" and then having a lovefest with the dog for a few minutes, winding up covered in white dog hair. How Duck Duck Goose got into it, I'll never know.

Last night was my husband's birthday dinner. We had chicken, salad, and couscous. As we were passing the serving dishes around, "Aunt Jill" asked Noah if he would like some couscous. A flash of insight hit him, and he said "Oh! Couscous-DUCK!"

We now eat "couscous-duck." Funny kid.

From under the sofa cushions, debate with a matchbox car.

Noah's having a conversation wtih his matchbox car RIGHT THIS INSTANT from under the cushions from the back of the sofa that's going just about like this:

Him: "You need to go poopy?"

Car: "Yes!"

Him: "Okay, you can come go poopy in MY house."

Car: "Thank you!"

Him: "Okay, get going!"



Car: "Okay."

Him: "Do you need to go poopy?"

Car: "No, I already went."

Him: "Okay."

Him (to me): "Car needs to go poopy in MY house!"

Him (to car): "Are you hungry?"

Car: "yes, I want some dinner!"

Him: "Okay, come and get some dinner already!"

Him (to me): "He wants to get some dinner."

Him (to no one in general): "Cars don't live in my house. Cars are too big to live in my house."

I'm just typing as he talks here. It's a complete riot. I know it's car talking because car talks in a funny voice.

Where exactly DO we live?

Saturday was Yom Kippur, and as we were changing clothes to get ready to go the children's service at our synagogue, I explained that we were going to leave home, to go see the rabbi, and then go see Nana for dinner. "This isn't our house," he told me seriously.

"What?" I replied.

"This isn't our house. Our house is the templogog."

"Where?"

He looked at me like I was an utter moron. "The templogog."

"Honey, do we live at temple?"

"Yep!" he said seriously.

I pointed out that things hadn't gone particularly well for the last guy to make this observation. But it's nice that he feels at home there. Even if he requests to go to the car within minutes of the start of services.

Preschool Day 12: The Tide Turns!

This morning, the unthinkable happened. We got up, we got dressed, we got ready to leave, and standing in the hall, sippy cup of milk in one hand and racecar in the other, my boy turns to me and says words I never thought I'd hear:

Mom? I don't want to go to Car-Car's house. I want to go to SCHOOL!

I kvelled inside, but tried to look serious and replied with a casual "Okay. That sounds good." Out to the car, into the car, and onto the road.... As we drove, he began to request that I open and close various windows, but was in absolutely jovial spirits.
Until we got there. When he reminded me that he didn't want to be there, and though he marched in gamely to school, he did wail one time as I left him. On the other hand, this time I left him standing by himself in the classroom, not in the arms of a teacher. He didn't follow me down the hall -- he stayed, but he let out that one "I WANT MY MOMMY!" of indignation as I made my way to the door.
I think we just hit the upswing. Two and a half weeks? Okay, that's not too bad.

I guess it's what I would have done too...

We just went to the park with our neighbor and his two kids to fly kites. Kite flying was a handful, with gusty winds causing attack kites. Mostly it was an exercise for the adults, and soon the kids wandered off to the playground. Once the adults untangled the kite strings, we joined them. They quickly wandered off into the bushes.

Five kids, two sets of bushes, a full jungle gym -- and the kids are in the bushes.

After a little while, I ventured up to see what they were doing, and do a quick scan for dangerous items like broken bottles (or worse), when it dawned on me that this looked like a plausible teenager hangout. I got up the hill, and Noah met me.

Noah: "Him, Mom!"

Me: "Whatcha doing?"

Noah: "I'm going into my house. Do you want to go into my house?"

Me: "Sure! Can I come in?"

Him: "Okay. Come on in!"

We walk in, and he tells me he's going to lie down on the bed, and promptly crawls up onto one of the horizontal branches and lies down on it. There's another branch in another area large enough to support me. I ask if I can sit on it.

Noah: "Yes! That's the couch!"

We sit there for a few minutes, when he adds: "Do you want to watch TV?"

He then pretends to turn on a TV, which is clearly the leafy area across from the couch. We sit and watch "tv" for a few minutes. Then it happened....

Noah: "Okay, it's time for you to go."

Me: "I need to leave?"

Him: "Yes. This is MY house. This isn't your house. It's time for you to go."

Me: "Okay, thanks for letting me visit you!"

I go outside of his "house" and he gets back on his "bed," and I sit down under a nearby tree. After a few minutes, he trundles by, looking like he's headed somewhere.

Me: "Where are you going?"

Him: "To my other house...." He goes into the other set of bushes.

About this time, my husband calls to me from the playground: "Honey! Come down here and play with me!" I explain to Noah that I'm going to go play with his father, and he says "Okay, see you later!" His father and I then take turns on the balance beam, while Noah goes back and forth between houses. And eventually the boys all come back down and take over the jungle gym.

The picture of things to come, I guess -- my first inkling of the day when he *will* have his own house, and be ready for me to go home and leave him alone. But I'm more charmed, really, by the fact that it's exactly what I would have wanted to do too, in those circumstances.

You know your preschooler's a redneck when....

I just heard the boys outside and went to see what they were up to. Hubby is doing yard maintenance. 15-y-o stepson is skateboarding around our pipestem and driveway. Noah is riding on one of those battery-powered 4x4 things. As I walk up and look out of our front door, I hear him yell to his brother: "Lucas! Watch this!"

He's very carefully positioned his 4x4, putting it in reverse and carefully moving, then into forward, inching himself to a particular location, so I know he's really thinking hard about what he's about to do.

I step outside to see what he's going to do next. He's facing Lucas's skate ramp, with a look of grim determination on his mouth and math behind his eyes. There is no question that he's trying to decide if he can go over the ramp, which is about 3 feet tall, in his truck. In that moment, I saw my son at 35, on a boys' weekend with his buddies, having left the wife and kids home so he can go try to kill himselfhave some recreation.

I've seen the future. In it, my son is one of those people who shows up at the hospital unconscious, his last words before the accident having been "Hey! Watch this!"

Preschool: Week 1-2 Report

Week 1

Day 1: Tuesday, Noah BURST out of the car, ran for the door, and by the time I got there, was pounding on the door to be admitted. He dashed for the classroom, and by the time I came from signing him in, he was already on a mat with some other kids playing with blocks. He held a hand up like "I'm busy, woman -- come back later." I heard him when he realized I'd gone, just as I stepped out the door. The director patted my arm reassuringly. "Call when you get to work -- he'll be fine."

I called. He was fine.

Day 2: Wednesday Noah was a little less exuberant, but still eager, though vigilant about making sure I stayed. Cried when I left. "Call" the director said. I called. He was fine.

Day 3: Now he was ready. He melted down the moment I moved toward the door. School request is for a bandaid-removal-fast departure, so I kissed and left him howling in his teacher's arms.

Day 4: "I don't want to beeeeeee here!" He sobbed the whole way into the school from the car. I had to peel him off me and hand him to his teacher, then slink away like an ashamed dog.

Week 2

Day 1: What? We were going there again? NOOOO! "I don't want to be here!" Crying and much gnashing of teeth. Teacher thanked me for being so resiliant with the "fast departure" policy -- that he's fine within minutes of my leaving and has fun and is already progressing during the day. He howls in her arms as I leave.

Day 2: He professes that he doesn't want to be there, and for the first time requests to go to day care instead, but walks in willingly holding my hand all the way into the classroom, where I kiss him and transfer his hand to his teacher. He whines, but does not howl. I arrive in the afternoon to find out that he's had two accidents and needs new pants in his storage bin; he's in the school's rather alarming pair of red sweatpants.

Today is Day 3. We went early, and he weakly objected that he didn't want his teacher, but left me signing him in and walked to the early-morning care room, and as I joined him, we found a bin of plastic alligators -- what's not to like? I kissed and departed, and heard him TELL the teacher that he wanted his Mommy, but not only no howling, but not even crying.

When I picked him up after lunch, his teacher told me that he had had another accident, and what she's doing about it. She also told me that where last week he had been in full-on wracking sobs when I left, this week he hasn't been nearly as upset, and I told her that he hadn't even cried this morning, and she practically high-fived me.

Already I see the changes in my beloved boy. He talks to me in full sentences in the car, and I'm cherishing the extra time to talk in the car. He responds much more verbally now -- something that the teacher is working on. When he was surrounded by younger kids, he had a less-than-ideal tendency to just whine, and not tell you what's wrong. She's working with him to verbalize what's bothering him, as I've been. So in the car, we discussed and quizzed and discussed again about "When you need to go potty, what do you do?" until his consistent response was "I find my teacher and tell her I need to go to the bathroom."

She tells me, too, that he's adjusting to the structure of the class -- standing and sitting on the line, sitting quietly during story time, etc. He hasn't had any of that structure, really, to this point, and that he's starting to get it in the first 2 weeks of school is just amazing to me. And yet, he went to the service for erev Rosh Hashanah last night and made it through almost all of a nearly 2 hour service, and also through the children's service today. This would have been unheard of before.

It's hard to take him from the warm, womb-like loving environment of day care and put him into a place with people he doesn't know and who don't already love him. I feel like I'm already having to participate in "hardening" him for the big bad world, and that maks me a little bit sad. But I also continue to feel that this is such a good environment for him.... If we can just survive the transition, I'll be happy.

Let's wait until the last minute, shall we?

My boy is the master of the last minute. Just about the time that I'm certain that something's terribly wrong with him and he's going to fall way off the developmental curve, he takes one last deep breath and does whatever he's due to do as if it's nothing. He walked like that. He talked like that. I was ready for teh showdown of the century over the pacifier -- and he just handed it to me and walked away. It's crazy.

And so we went to preschool orientation on Friday, where I explained that Noah's been slow to get the hang of pooping in the potty. And today, with 2 days to go, he got it. Got it. I mean, just completely got it.

And as a reward, he now has Lightning McQueen AND Mickey Mouse underpants.

I just wish there were some way that he could telegraph his planned moves a little more, so that I don't fret quite so much about whether we're going to get there....

Human again? Maybe.

Today, I realized that I felt like myself again consistently for long enough that it felt weird to NOT feel like myself briefly in the afternoon.

What?

Let me try that again. Somewhere around the time I discovered I was pregnant, I began to feel like, well, SOMEONE ELSE. Blame hormones, blame exhaustion, blame a whole mass of life changes -- but for nearly 4 years, I've felt like more than a bit of a stranger to myself. Dark moods. Angry patches. Frustration after frustration. Resentful that there was no time for me, once I'd done taking care of children and husband and job and family.

Its worst was probably shortly after we moved into our house, just about 2 years ago. I hadn't seen my own things for over a year, and I'd felt like a guest in my husband's home for that entire time -- and I was tired of living on eggshells. It was nice, once we got here, to think that I would feel like an equal participant -- and yet, it wasn't that easy.

And admittedly -- it's hard to make a marriage the way we did it. Never doubt that I love my husband, and married him because I chose him, and wanted to spend my life with him. It's just that so much happened at once, in part because of our ages -- and when I turned up pregnant, well, there was wedding planning and execution, not to mention packing and selling my house, then packing and selling his house after finding OUR house. It was, for all practical purposes, 2 solid years of packing SOMETHING, and the first things packed (my things from my house) were the last into this house (thanks to the convenience of Store-to-Door). And both sleep deprived while we tried to settle into THIS house, and make sure that neither child was slighted in the process... Exhausting, physically and emotionally.

And my brain wrote checks my aging body couldn't cash, frankly -- I simply underestimated how exhausting being the mother of a small child at my age would be. I'm always flattered by the shocked response when I tell someone that I'm 43, but as good as my eye cream is, HEY! I'M 43! With a 3-year-old! Someone get me a drink and a cushion for my feet! I've earned it!

I used to be proactively organized, prepared, and on top of things. The last few years have been an exercise in staying just ahead of emergencies, and in all honesty, resenting that my hubby doesn't seem to care about how many balls I have in the air, as he plunks down in front of the TV to watch some monster-creature devour half-witted city folk in a rural setting on the SCIFI channel. So I may have made a routine of cleaning the kitchen and bathroom every Saturday morning, but I ticked off on my list how long it had been since HE cleaned the kitchen or bathroom. And felt much less like myself, and much more like a scullery maid.

Today, all day, I felt like myself. This evening, I even had a moment of feeling as efficient and capable as I think I maybe used to be, and I really liked it. And I realized that perhaps I've come out of the long shadows of childbirth and early motherhood.

As I prepare my boy to go to preschool on Tuesday, and as I look in astonishment at his enormous feet, and try to figure out what size DOES come after 5T, and lament slightly that I won't ever need to lift his butt by his feet in order to slide a diaper under it again, I feel like an old friend has come over, sat down next to me, and asked if she can stay for awhile. And with delight, I realize that she is me.