It’s the second full week of school and we’re all settling into our new routines.
We’ve been opening with Little Night Owl ‘s Morning Song, during which Sunny whines warbles that I’m torturing her with sleep deprivation, followed by a refrain of loud denials that her refusal to stay in bed—or her own bed, anyway—between 8:30 and 10:30pm has anything to do with it.* She’s still a little pitchy, but we’re working on it.
This is followed by the Breakfast Quiz, in which Jane is starving for a food item she can’t name or identify, except that it doesn’t appear to be present in our kitchen and nothing else will do if we expect her to consume more than one slow, reluctant molecule at a time.
After a brief bathroom ballet, we segue into the Small Sock Opera, during which Sunny cries that she has no clean socks—the ones she chose the night before have disappeared or are now inexplicably yucky—until someone digs through her drawer to find several pairs,** none of which she would be caught dead wearing, until her parents inform her through gritted teeth that she really doesn’t want to put that option on the table, when we should have left ten minutes ago.
And no morning commute would be complete without the Packed Lunch Review Revue, in which I’m reminded*** about the foods that were their sole acceptable form of nutrition not twelve hours ago and now cannot be touched with a ten-foot pole and the Poison Control Center on speed dial. So can they have five bucks for hot lunch instead?^
But behind the scenes, Jane is busy doing her homework on time and seems to be keeping good track of her scheduled assignments—her part of our agreement that she can be on the volleyball team this semester.^^ She reported yesterday that she needs two shark-fin headbands by Thursday—if she can keep her mother and aunt from going overboard with the construction paper, it’ll be a piece of cake.
Sunny is not only enjoying her PE classes this year—“We’re gonna do gymnastics, Mommy!”—she may have a small crush on the new teacher. She’s also on top of her twenty-minute daily reading assignment, with her grandmother’s enthusiastic help.
And so far, despite the always-complex and slightly risqué Wesson Improvisational Dance of the Schedules, the forms have been (mostly) filled out, the required parental meetings have been attended, and someone has always remembered to pick up the kids.
Vaudeville ain’t got nothing on us.
How Routine are Your Routines?
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*I’m so open to suggestions, here, since our old bedtime routine (warm bath, stories, cuddles) isn’t working. She claims she’s too bored to sleep, which is frankly bizarre, as is her insistence on seeing what we’re doing—we’re not that interesting, either. Maybe music?
**I.e., “of the same general length,” because wearing socks of the same color is apparently only for formal occasions, unless you’re a total dork.
***I.e., “told for the first time ever.”
^No, If I had cash, I wouldn’t be schlepping Campbell’s Bag o’Soup and microwave popcorn to work every day.
^^ Our part of that routine is calling her pediatrician every day to get her physical form signed so the coach can legally coach her, trying to remember about kneepads, and worrying about the Concussion Information Form we were given.
Earful of Cider 