Becoming Something-or-other....

The best part of my day- coming home and being attacked.

The semester is almost over.  The crazy summer of doom is threatening to wind down.

I am, of course, still too busy to write all the things I'd like.  So instead I'll share these little gems from the last few days...

You see, it was never my plan to be away from my kids every day.  Not until they were in school.  Not until they were grown up enough to WANT to spend most of their day without me.  I wanted to be home, to be with them, until they were in pre-school at least.  It just happened that this summer, that wasn't in the cards.  This summer, I had to focus on school, on making sure that my family can have a better, more comfortable future.  And now, it looks like that's probably going to be the case next semester as well, although to a lesser degree.

Yes, I have to take classes five days a week next semester.  I'm pretty pissed off about it.  Who the hell schedules absolutely mandatory classes for only 50 minutes at 8am three days a week?  What are they thinking?  I swear, the language program at my school is run by sadistic space monkeys with minions of grad students under mind control*.

I don't mind spending my first half hour at home in the foyer.

I have never been the sort of person who hated school.  I LOVED school.  What I hated were the other kids.  Well, I don't realy hate the other kids anymore.  And I don't exactly hate school.  I just hate it enough that on a semi-regular basis I smash my mouse into pieces while screaming my head off at my homework*.  It's really hard to have much love for a place when going there frequently means tearing your screaming children off of your legs as they cling to you, desperate for you to stay and eat breakfast with them, or watch Sesame Street, or read a book...

No, I've got a lot of angst about school these days.  From the pain of just plain going there to the selfish, stupid, incompetent jerks that I'm supposed to be working with on big projects.  Forty page term papers and the like that I have to do myself because places called "Jason's Deli" don't serve beer at four in the afternoon*.  But I digress.

Is she happier to see me, or my hat?

Back to the girls.  This week, my most excellent MIL watched the girls while I went to school.  She drove in from Minnesota to deliver us another hand-me-down (but very fine) car we're purchasing from M's uncle as our Kia is a barely functional death trap*.  She graciously stayed for the week since Our Mary Poppins is on an island somewhere learning how to blow glass.

Usually, I get home, catch up quickly with Our Mary Poppins, and then we say goodbye and she goes about her day.  My MIL has many more super fun details to share.

For example, the first morning that she was on her own with the girls, they expressed a remarkable amount of awareness and acceptance of their lots in life.  As she changed SI's diaper, DD began to babble vaguely, like she does, occasionally spattering in real words.  One of those words was, "Daddy."

Definitely happier to see the hat.

SI perked up a bit at the sound of her father's name, but rather than go looking for him or getting upset that he wasn't around, she responded to DD's diatribe.

"Daddy?  No," she said, shaking her head.  "Mommy?  No," she said, shaking her head sadly.  My MIL responded, "What about Grandma?"  "Ga-ma? Yes," nodding her head.  She could be patient and wait for me to come back.

A few days later, Grandma made the mistake of mentioning me over breakfast.  They kept craning around in their chairs, looking for me.  And once breakfast was over, SI spent the day carrying around my shoes.

How sad is that?

I love coming home

I just want this semester to end so I can spend my time with my girls.  I hate missing breakfasts and bedtimes and hugs and kisses.

I just want to go back to being happy with the sort of mommy I was becoming.





*This statement may not be an exaggeration