Major Design Flaw

When the weather permits, and the boys aren't dragging their feet, we walk my 5-year-old to school.  It's not quite a 1/2 mile each way so it would seem like an easy task.  Typically before we even get out of sight of the house, my 3-year-old is asking me to carry him.  When I refer to him as my husband's "mini-me", I'm not joking.  I'm pretty sure if I had the ability to carry my spouse home from the playground, he would ask for it as well.  I can't decide if it's a touch of laziness or if he just wants me to hold him [my 3-year-old, not my husband].  Somehow, though we always manage to make it to the school on time.  My kindergartner won't let me kiss him anymore, as he has to look cool in front of the other kids, so I have to sneak in my sweet lovin' before we get to the school grounds.  He runs off to play before the whistle blows to line up.  Now you would think that at this point we could leave, since my doddler typically takes a solid century to walk home.  But no, my 3-year-old will not leave the school fence until every single kid is inside.  We will watch his brother go in and you would think this was all he was waiting for.  Nope.  He's like the playground police.  Wants to make sure every straggling kid makes it in the door before we head out.

So what is my point?  Well, yes I'm a little long-winded about our routine on school days because it occupies a lot of my time and energy 2-3 days a week.  What I've noticed on these school days, is that a little bit of poor planning went into the design of the exit strategy for this elementary school.  Clearly I've shown that I have plenty of time to analyze the situation while I wait for my youngest to be ready to leave.  Alright, the school parking lot is a little ridiculous.  It is set up well, in that you pull into the lot, drive down a lane on the right, turn left into the parking area, and when you're ready to leave you continue out the other side of the parking area and continue on out of the school grounds (so you sort of make a circle).  This should work well for traffic flow.  It gets backed up a little at the entrance as children are crossing the street, so there is an understandable wait while this happens.  The real issue is that the lane you enter the school grounds on, also doubles as the exit lane for buses.  It's plenty wide for this to be accomplished.  Buses are given priority where the lanes comes back together, but some parent's decide that their time is too valuable to sit in the line waiting to get out, so they hop in line with the buses in the hopes of gaining priority as well.  This is a huge pet-peeve of mine.  The area is clearly labeled showing the appropriate traffic flow, but those who choose to ignore the signs (because the universe revolves around them), throw a wrench into things, slowing down the natural process.  It kind of makes me want to grind my teeth, and this is when I'm not even waiting in my car.  Apparently this bothers other parents too, as they are so stressed in dealing with this at the end of the school day, that they can't even wait until they get home to light up their cigarette.  Classy.  I think I'd rather pull my hair out and have a permanent eye twitch than subject my children to the effects of my nasty habit - but that's just me.

In addition to major issues with traffic patterns, there is a small issue (I feel) with the sidewalk.  I love love love that the sidewalk is wide enough for approximately 6 kids to walk side-by-side.  This works out great when everyone is getting out of school and there is a rush of people all trying to get off the property.  When we arrived at our first day of school, one piece of advice provided by a school official was to encourage kids to walk along the fence which would keep them as far as possible from the area where parents are driving out of the parking lot.  Of course!  This makes perfect sense.  Should be easy enough, especially since there's so much room.  Now does anybody else see why this might prove a little bit difficult with curious kids?  Do we really need a yellow stripe indicating where the edge of the sidewalk is?  Somehow we manage to stay off the street when we walk around the neighborhood, and none of our sidewalks have this stripe.  Is it to indicate not to park there?  A sign might help with that, or perhaps a little common sense.  Now maybe some children/parents really need that stripe there to act as a warning, but I can't believe that my preschooler is the only one who thinks it makes a great balance beam.

I love my kindergartner's school.  Love his teacher.  Especially love that he really likes going and learning new things.  But sort of wish that parents would set a better example at least while they're on the school grounds, and that maybe the stripe be scraped off the sidewalk - though I'm sure he would still like to walk on that part just to test fate.

But why Mommy? Why?

For some reason I thought the hardest part of walking my kindergartener to school would be getting there in time.  My 5-year-old loved to run ahead while my 3-year-old would doddle.  The 3-year-old would get distracted and want to collect rocks or point out cars as we walked by them.  We had done the trip to school a number of times before the first day just so I could get a sense of how long it would take and I could just feel that I would spend my mornings grinding my teeth as I tried to get us there before the bell.  Well school is now in full swing, and I have to admit that getting there in time has not been an issue.  If both boys run, we get there in 7 minutes.  If one of them doddles, we get there in 12 - and either way we aren't close to being too late or too early.

Okay so the most difficult part of getting to and from school seems to be in reminding the boys that it isn't safe to walk in the street!!  The sidewalk is clearly a different shade of gray, so it's not like they could easily be confused.  But every morning I get asked at least 5 times (by the 3-year-old) why he can't walk in the street.  Now I know he is familiar with the reason why, so what I can't figure out is why the question keeps coming.  Does he just like to hear my explanation?  Does he just want to ask me a question and can't come up with something else to talk about?  Does he want to hear his own voice?  Does he want to hear my voice?  Or is it truly that he is seeing how many times he can ask that same question (while standing barely in the street) before my head literally pops off. 

These boys definitely remind me why people who are mentally unstable might not be a good fit for parenthood - way too much patience required.  And why at the end of the day the only thing I really want to hear is the sound of... nothing. 

Hello!! I'm walking 10 feet behind you!!

Just returned home after completing a deathly slow walk to the school for an open house.  My 3-year-old likes to doddle, but doesn't every preschooler?  So we walked down to the school, dropped off our bag of communal school supplies, and met my 5-year-old's kindergarten teacher.  Checked out the music room, visited the library and found where Daddy is on the globe, inspected the basketball hoops in the gym, and then headed back to the house.  We had just turned out of the school grounds when apparently the mom (whose entourage rode bikes to the event) encountered a flat tire with one of them.  Without even thinking about it for a moment, she instantly started screaming at her kid.  I mean really barking at him.  Oh, because I'm sure he intentionally gave himself a flat tire.  We were about 10 feet behind them and other families were walking close by too.  She yelled at the kid to get into the bike trailer with his sibling as she tried to continue riding her bike and pull the other beside her.  Clearly this wasn't going to work.  I was even going to offer to help her walk the bike... but the yelling continued.  Now she was screaming at the other kids that were waiting at the top of the hill.  She managed to make it up the hill with the lame bike but apparently the kids should have known not to continue riding for home, because she screamed again!!

What's the point of my story?  Well first, didn't I wish we had driven to the school after having to listen to that crap the entire walk home.  As if walking slower than a snail wasn't enough, now my boys had to listen to this lady ripping each of her kids a new one (and naturally they stared at her like she was an alien each time we got close).  Second, we all have frustrating moments.  And I certainly have had days at the end of which I felt like a mean mom as I spent most of my time scolding and reprimanding.  But my goodness, could we maybe control it a little especially when out in public with other parents and kids walking nearby?  It made me wonder how loud the screaming was going to be once she got home if this was the behavior when complete strangers were in close proximity.  Especially since she informed the youngest child that she was going to beat the other one with his broken bike!  Shouldn't this be a happy time of year with a household full of school-age children?  On the verge of having their days fully occupied? 

I have given myself a mom-of-the-year award for being able to maintain my composure when out in public.

Penis Poop Penis Poop... Bagina

So now that you've read my boring comments on why I blog, let's take a sneak peak at today's witty conversation coming from my sweet little boys.  Apparently in the world of a 5 years old, if a sentence is going to be funny, then it has to have the word penis or poop in it.  Oh, wait "poopy" works too.  A knock knock joke is not truly funny unless we add poopy to the description.  For example, "knock knock... who's there... poopy car".  Oh, sorry, were you looking for the rest of the joke?  It doesn't exist since we only get this far before the giggling starts, and then suddenly I'm given the exact same joke from my 3 year old, in his broken English (which I have to admit kind of makes it sound a little funny).  I was also informed that "stinky" Daddy farts and poops - which is typically a given - so when I didn't respond with surprise, I was told this same fact 4 more times.  Trips to the store have to include the running penis/poop commentary so that everyone in town gets to enjoy it too.  My sister, who was visiting, got to hear from my 3 year old that Daddy has a huge penis - as he held up his arms like he was showing me the size of a fish he once caught.  Oh, young boys.  Everything looks that big when you're 3.  And last, but not least... bagina.  For those who are not seasoned with toddler-ese, this term means "vagina".  This would be the item that girls have whereas boys have a penis.  I don't think I could even count the number of times in a day that I get interrogated about possessing a bagina.  "Where is it mommy, is it in your butt?"  or "Mommy do you have a huge bagina?"  Well, I certainly hope not!!  I can't for the life of me figure out how they know that this is a sensitive subject for some more proper individuals.  Anytime they make comments about their equipment I certainly handle it the same way we would talk about their arm or leg.  So what is it in that male brain that drives them to focus so much on that one dangling appendage?  I can hardly wait to send my 5 year old off for kindergarten and have him question his new teacher about her lack of penis.  Parent/Teacher conferences should be interesting.