The Not-Fun Mom's Not-Fun Son

Okay, confession: One of my never-back-down non-negotiables for my children is getting dressed in the morning. They do not stay in their pajamas any longer than an hour or so after they get up, no matter how they feel about it.

How they feel about it is usually pretty negative, but I refuse to surrender to pajama-clad children for the duration of the day. It depresses me. Also, it makes it harder to get out the house on time if I'm trying to get them dressed right before we go anywhere.

So every morning, we do the dressing stand-off, which I always win because I am the adult. So there.

It's one of my Things, okay? We all have them as parents. Getting everyone dressed is important to me, no matter how taxing it may be.

The resistance that I meet every day when it comes to donning clothing, however, made me think that Cubby would be so excited about Pajama Day at preschool. You get to wear your pajamas to school, Cubby! Won't that be FUN!

No, said Cubby. I wear clothes to school, not pajamas. That's silly.

Uh.

I mean, obviously I agree and I'm the reason he's so rigid about this, but I still tried really hard to make it seem fun and convince him that he should join in the pajama party. I suggested he wear his beloved digger pajamas, sent by an actual Fun Mom (my mom). He agreed to this. Last night.

But this morning when I reminded him that he didn't have to get dressed this morning because it was FUN PAJAMA DAY at school (!!!!!), he once again flatly refused to wear his pajamas to school. This time he explained that not only was it silly to wear pajamas to school, he needed to wear his clothes because if there were to be a thunderstorm--which was orginally in our forecast and which I mentioned to him yesterday--he would need his clothes to be safe.

Oh. Okay. Guess we'll go get dressed then.

So we did. There were a couple of other kids who also opted out of pajamas, so at least he wasn't the only one.

And God knows, I can't claim I don't know where he gets it.

Bucking the Trend

This is the time of year when photos of lilacs and daffodils and greenery all around saturate the Internet. I might be posting more of those, if it weren't for the fact that this spring has been so goddamn cold and now wet that there is no pleasure to be had walking around outside admiring flowers. Plus, no leaves to be seen yet. And it's almost May. Craziness.

So I thought today I would instead post some pictures I took last month on our beach.

Looks like a balmy March to me.

Yeah. Balmy like Antarctica.

There. I feel better now about our current forty-nine degrees with rain. Because at least it doesn't look like that outside.

Happy spring.

Livin' Large

On Sunday mornings, A. gets up with the children so I can, uh, not. I rarely actually sleep any later than they do, but the important thing is that I am not downstairs at 5:45 a.m. answering questions and pouring milk.

This particular Sunday morning Charlie very unfortunately woke up at 5:30. Nothing good happens at 5:30 in the morning. The early-rising child is grumpy, the early-rising adult is grumpy, it's still dark outside . . . no fun at all. But A. dutifully got up and got dressed, then pried an unhappy Charlie away from me and took him downstairs, screaming the whole way.

Charlie was screaming, I mean, not A. Though I'm sure A. felt like screaming too.

Although I was awake for the day at that point (Charlie's method of cuddling involves climbing on my head and pinching my cheeks), I was not keen to go downstairs and be desperately clutched at like a mother chimpanzee by my Charlie chimp.

I stayed in bed and read my book. It's warm enough now that I can do that without freezing my exposed hands, so I read for more than an hour. Since I didn't hear any sounds of distress from downstairs, I figured A. had matters well in hand.

When I got downstairs around 7 a.m., I discovered just how A. kept matters in hand.

First, he gave Charlie an enormous spoonful of peanut butter and let him eat it standing on a chair at the counter. There was peanut butter on the coffee maker, peanut butter on the sugar bowl, peanut butter on the chair.

Second, he found an hour-long YouTube video about sheep and cattle ranching in Nevada. Charlie sat in A.'s chair by the woodstove (by himself, thankyouverymuch--he kicked A. out) and watched the whole. damn. thing.  I saw the last two minutes when I came down. That was about a minute and 45 seconds too much for me. But Charlie does love his cows and sheep. A lot, apparently.

And last, A. wasn't foolish enough to try to dress Charlie. This always results in screaming and tears, so to keep a happy Charlie, one must let the pajamas ride.

When I finally got up, Charlie was happy, A. was happy (if extremely sleepy), and I was happy that I hadn't been downstairs for the past hour and a half.

So apparently if I would just let a perpetually pajama-clad Charlie eat peanut butter from a spoon and watch YouTube videos about cows all morning, peace would reign.

Sorry, Charlie. You'll just have to wait until next Sunday for that.