Bobby is seven

Yesterday, Bobby turned seven. We celebrated with a giant and chaotic joint (with Theo) birthday party at a trampoline place. As always, I thought I would die from overstimulation and stress. But I did not die, and neither did anyone else, and everyone had a grand time. Phew!

Seven to me is an important age. It’s the age I remember most acutely from my own childhood. It was the year (1979) we moved from the suburbs of Boston to Boston proper, the first year I went to sleep-away camp, the year I started at The Boston Ballet, the first time I started to fantasize about killing myself. Bobby on the surface looks so young, but I know from my own experience how deep those waters run. They are not to be underestimated. 

As is tradition, my sister and I got a plain Costco cake and had fun decorating it to the theme of Superheroes:

The boys lost their minds a bit with all the excitement of the weekend - their behavior went sideways, and Bobby started pooping his pants again, and Theo peed on the floor last night and peed his pants at the park today. You’d think these kids would be old enough now to not become completely discombobulated by a birthday party and a visiting aunt...but apparently not. I sure hope things settle down this week as things go back to normal.

The boys got huge amounts of LEGO sets and are currently putting one together without adult supervision, which is great. At this rate we have enough LEGO sets to entertain them for about a year! 

Kindergarten, here we come!

The moment I’ve waited for for ages is here - Theo is registered to start kindergarten at Bobby’s school in August. On the face of it, the changes are small - I get to sleep in 15 more minutes; I have one less drop-off and pickup location; I pay one less location for afterschool services. But even those small things will make a difference. I often think about how life would be today if I were still doing the preschool shuffle with Theo - noon pickups on Tuesdays and Thursdays, entertaining him alone for four hours on Mondays, driving him to two different schools on Wednesdays and Fridays, keeping him busy an hour and a half every day after dropping Bobby at school. Oh, it would have been terrible. I would have been so over it by now. Not to mention the $800 a month!

I *think* yesterday was the last day I’ll have resentful workers tromping around my house (I say resentful because they complained endlessly about how none of this finishing up stuff should have been their job - contractors just love denigrating each other). The job is not 100% done - I believe the outside of the windows still need painting. Final (hefty) payments still need to be made. I was waiting for them to clear their trash away from my yard to start this year’s edible garden...but I’m afraid it may already be too late. It may have to wait until fall. Oh well! 

Each day I clean things, rearrange things, and sort things. It’s a ton of work and half the time I just get fed up and start shoving things in drawers and closets because my brain can no longer handle any emotional decision making. I’m also in the process of separating my business and personal bank and credit card accounts, which is such a huge and tiresome job I can only devote an hour or two to it per day before I get fed up. 

But the kitchen is grand. I finally have a spot to display my collection of royal commemorative cups from the 1800s-1950s; I have a charming cuckoo clock that delights the children; the whole kitchen is bright and sunny and feminine and beautiful. 

Tomorrow my sister comes into town for the boys’ birthday party Sunday, and we’ll continue our tradition of improvising a theme cake (the theme this year is superheroes - super easy!). I don’t know when to separate their parties, if ever. Maybe next year with two full classes of kids to invite? Still, with Bobby’s entire class invited I think only about eight kids are actually showing up. Most parents didn’t bother to rsvp at all. Meh. Typical. 

Theo is five

My youngest child is five.

A lot will happen for Theo this year. He can attend spring and summer camp with his brother, and he’ll join him at school in the fall (even though I’ve already had the school experience this year thanks to LAUSD’s extended kindergarten program). Depending on what his maturity level is like, I may start him on an instrument at some point. 

What is Theo like, on the day of his fifth birthday? Extroverted, full of life, friendly, funny, can’t sit still. It’s hard to remember his brother at this age - was Bobby the same? I tend to think Bobby was more mercurial and delicate. Theo is Mr. Popularity everywhere he goes. It amuses me to no end that his friends at his afterschool program are a lot older than him - he asked to give a birthday party invite to his ten-year-old friend William. 

Theo looks nothing like me nor Bobby, but enough like my mother that I know our genes are in there. Today for his birthday present he gets to go to the doctor and get shots. Good times. But after we’ll pick out a small cake and have a little family party before the big joint party on Bobby’s birthday on the 24th. 

I wonder if I’ll ever tire of squishing him or kissing his little cheeks. 

So close

Tomorrow is Theo’s last day of being four. While I feel like I’ve been a parent of under-five kids for an eternity, I am also acutely aware of how fast time goes. But this is what I wanted - the experience of raising kids. Sometimes it drags, sometimes it flies.

It’s hard to experience this time of year - blossoms blooming, rain, warming temperatures - and not think about the heady days of the end of both my pregnancies. What a time that was. Scary and urgent and buzzing with magic. 

...also, today I tried to put in contacts for the first time, and I can honestly say the experience ranks up there with childbirth. I never did get them in my eyes, btw. 

A couple of important things happened last week. Did my taxes (I am a-ok thanks to lots of generous pre-payments) and came to the conclusion that I need to clean up my messy finances - really separate business and personal expenses, and use their accounting services every month. So I’m applying for a separate credit card and will start the process of moving all my personal auto pays off of my business accounts. It’ll be a pain in the butt BUT next year’s taxes will be a breeze - no more being tortured by weeks of tax prep! I’ll still have to issue 1099s and do the band taxes and business licenses, but the big one, my taxes, will be just an issue of going in to sign returns. Yippee! 

We also closed on buying the registration system. Money sent, contracts signed. Tomorrow we meet to discuss next steps (including getting my event up, hooray). We still haven’t figured out how to handle the two proposed partners. Eeesh.

Also, we adopted a cat from a friend. Her name was Lily. We named her Samantha. I call her Kitten Mittens, as it is the rule to name a pet and then never call it that name. She is sweet and cuddly and the boys, who have never had a pet before, are being very gentle with her, which is great. 

Kitchen still looms on - windows still being laboriously painted, last few details like thresholds and final painting still to do. I’m reluctant to really put anything away in there until everyone is out for good. I’m SO sick of having people tromping all over here every day, ugh. The good news is - I absolutely LOVE this kitchen. It is positively gorgeous and everything I had hoped. Pictures to come when it’s better set up.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve had more than one older woman tell me her one regret was not having kids. Which fills me with feelings. I know many child free people will never feel (or rarely feel) regrets. And honestly if they got a snapshot of the worst moment of any of my days they’d probably say, “uhhhh...no thanks.” But the most common comment made by the thinkers that visit my SMC group is “I don’t want to have any regrets,” and to me that’s a legit reason to do this crazy thing. 

So, no regrets here. Ask me tomorrow, though-! Ha.