Today is the Day!

Back to School Day!! Yay!! Yeah, until he gets on the bus and waves good-bye for the day, then I'll be all sad and mopey, wanting my Bug back home with me, just because I'm crazy that way...Fourth grade. My baby is going to be ten next month. He's all legs, as skinny as I always was as a kid (gotta fight to keep at it these days!) Where did ten years go? A pre-teen!! He definitely has all the attitude he needs for the teen years...My sweet baby, so tiny I carried him around tucked in one arm, dark brown fuzz sticking up every which direction on his delicious, adorable little head. He cried, screamed, non-stop for the first six months of his life. Colic, I guess, or so the doctors said. That was the most unbearable time of my life--not being able to get him to stop crying...for five minutes...of peace...I had to sleep with ear plugs to drown it out at night. Bill would stay up with him 'til two or three, then I'd get up so Bill could sleep for a few hours before he had to go to work. I don't know how we survived, but we did. Babies can drain the will to live out of you at times...or at least the last viable shred of sanity. But, eventually the crying stopped, or diminished, or we just grew numb to it. He still has his bouts of screaming temper tantrums--yesterday's was over Angry Birds. I had to kick him off the computer then listen to him tearing up his room over being so mad that he couldn't clear whatever level he'd been on. Seriously...it's just a stupid game. He doesn't understand there are so many much more difficult circumstances he has yet to face in this life. Crying over Angry Birds?? I can uninstall that in a minute--game over. Chill already.

He's always  been an inquisitive kid. Curious about everything. He asks a million questions a day. Mostly when you're trying to watch TV. "What happened? Is he/she/it dead??" Dude, you're watching exactly the same thing I'm watching, if you didn't see him/her/it die, then neither did I!! How do I know?? It can be exasperating. He really should've had a little brother or sister--I think he'd be a lot happier to have someone to boss around, to show the ropes, to tease and torture as only siblings can do. Instead he tortures the dogs and thinks he's their boss. Mmm, nope--that's still my job. Everything is so unfair to him. Maybe if he experienced a sibling being punished for the same things he gets punished for, it wouldn't seem so unfair. I'm just guessing...I think kids still think everything is unfair. Life is unfair when you're not in charge and can't live by your own rules. Even if the rules are meant to keep you healthy and alive up until that point when you can be in charge and make your own rules. Who doesn't want that measure of freedom? We just have to remember how much we hated being ruled by our parents only to later realize how much we appreciated all that they did for us while we were growing up. Maybe, hopefully, one day he'll appreciate what we've done as his parents, when he's got a screaming temperamental almost ten year old trashing their bedroom over a stupid video game.

So, I'll send him off to school this morning to start a new year, a new chapter in his young life. I hope he'll make some good friends this year and have a teacher that he likes. He's brilliantly smart and always does so well academically. Makes his Mama proud. Soon we'll have fights about finishing homework and going to bed on time, relentless nagging to make his bed, brush his teeth, find his backpack, get his shoes on, where's his jacket...same thing, different day. We just have a bus to catch now--let's move!!

RAWR!!!

OH NO!!! There's a Squiggy on my chest!!!