Monday, October 25, 2004

About the Socks. And a Little About Trains.

Marguerite wants to know what is holding the socks onto the fireplace eight feet up. Good question.

My boys have discovered that cloth will cling to the fireplace bricks--kind of a velcro effect. They also figured out that the teeny-beeny-baby snake will also stick and have spent many happy moments flinging that snake at the fireplace wall.

Today was my husband's day off and I was truly jealous gratified to see him sleep in and laze around until 10:00 a.m. At that point, he came downstairs showered and bright-eyed and announced he'd be leaving to run errands. I gave him film to develop and TwinBoyB's broken glasses so he could see if Costco could fix them. (They could not.)

I kept the coughing and sneezing YoungestBoy home from school today. The twins worked extremely hard on their math assessment and then worked even harder on their writing. I gave the toddlers Brio train tracks and trains to occupy them. They hadn't seen them before, so this tactic was good for about twenty minutes of peace. The phone rang. And rang again. I have never been so relieved to lay down with Babygirl for her nap as I was today. Schooling kids, feeding kids, doing laundry for kids and trying to get kids to pay attention is wearing me out. Especially because I must stay up until midnight reading Jane Smiley's Good Faith. (Jane Smiley is a genius and worth losing sleep over.)

Then, the phone rang twice, the doorbell rang twice and my husband peeked in to tell me that the newspaper delivery-girl was at the door and needed a check and someone please explain to me why the newspaper can't seem to get my subscription information correct. I WANT TO PAY BY MAIL! I switched places with my husband, so he tricked Babygirl into finally falling asleep and then I discovered DaycareKid was softly crying as if his heart was broken. I paid the newspaper-girl, held DaycareKid awhile and then convinced him to sleep.

My husband had teased me with the tantalizing prospect of leaving the house for a bit when the toddlers napped, but as it happened, it took Babygirl so long to finally fall asleep that I ran out of time. At 2:45 p.m., I was sitting with my twins in a conference room with their "mentor teacher", a man with copper hair on his arms, dull copper and gray hair on his head and a beard that reminds me of my dad. He's a coach and science teacher and thwarted writer. He tends to go off on many tangents, which causes my boys to go off on many tangents, which causes me to wish I had my novel in my bag so I could open and read at such times. Today, at least twice I had to stop myself from breaking eye contact to dig in my purse for my cell phone so I could check the time.

I wanted to go to the library before returning home, but it was too late.

I am becoming convinced that TwinBoyB has some kind of neurological processing disorder. He's a smart boy, but his work does not reflect that. In addition to that, my boys require so much direct supervision. If I am not monitoring every move, they revert to smacking each other or sword-fighting with pencils. They can't stay on task. If they were a train, they would be forever falling off the tracks, spilling hazardous chemicals and shutting down neighborhoods.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, here is a photograph of our three mutant cats, enjoying the view from our hideous hand-me-down-couch.  Posted by Hello

3 Comments:

Blogger Suzanne said...

Just because it sounded like fun, I tried throwing socks at our fireplace bricks. But the socks don't stick at all!

Have you ever tried having the TwinBoys work in separate rooms?

Nice mutant kitties. :)

5:56 AM  
Blogger Heidi said...

Cute kitties!

6:27 AM  
Blogger Judy said...

Cute pictures, Mel!

My boys socks would have probably stuck to anything.

Your mutant cats picture reminds me of a Dawna Barton print I've always wanted of cats lounging on the top of a bookcase in front of a window. Did you pose them?

1:11 PM  

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