Falsies

This is going to prove how I  a) am easily influenced by others around me and therefore need to keep tabs on myself and b) should maybe not be left alone late at night.

Actually, it's okay to leave me alone late at night.

It's not okay to leave me alone late at night with new beauty products.

We (women) all know how it feels when you buy a new beauty product.  Okay, maybe a few of you don't care about beauty products at all and believe in "natural" beauty and I say kudos to you, you must be the type of person that can still look beautiful while tent camping after 3 days. If you are, please don't ever go camping with me because I disgust people like you. I actually wear foundation and a light lipstick when camping. And mascara.

Don't judge.

Anyway, when buying beauty products, it is normal to have the "I can't hardly wait to put this on my face!" feeling.

So let's go back to this weekend when I sent my husband on the Dad-Kid-Campout with the kids. My husband was quick to notice that whenever I talked about my friends and what we were going to do during the campout weekend, I always talked about us moms "sending" our husbands to the campout. Not "so and so's husband is going to the campout", but "so and so is sending (husband) and kids to the campout this year!"

This weekend I had a baby shower of a dear friend to attend. That would usually enter into the category of cramping my introverted "I get a weekend all to myself" mojo, but it was for one of my dearest friends who has been through a lot to get pregnant. I arrived in town for the shower about 45 minutes early and happened to spy a Target nearby. (I hear the collective gasp of my 8 readers!)

Whilst at the Target, I cruised through the beauty section.  (Note: I had already picked up a pair of very cute $14 sandals, dangling from my hands).  I could not justify purchasing new eye shadow, eye liner, or eyebrow pencil...because I just got those...but I could see myself getting...wait for it...false eyelashes. (There goes the collective groan of all 8 readers).

I could feel the false eyelash starter kit burning a hole through my purse as I sat through the baby shower. I could picture my husband coming home and saying, "Who is this mythological creature who has not only done my laundry, but also is tempting me with her beautiful eyelashes??" I could see myself at the upcoming work meeting- fully in charge, with gorgeous eyelashes. I could conquer mountains and manage my children better- all with beautiful eyelashes.

I had a headache driving home from the baby shower. It took me 3 hours to get rid of it.

It took me another 3 hours playing with paper art and watching movies to realize I hadn't even touched my false eyelashes.

Dilemma: How to watch movies and put false eyelashes on at the same time? (and after 2 glasses of wine and a carbohydrate coma, no less)

Not one to be deterred by the challenge of a beauty/movie dilemma, I grabbed a small lighted make up mirror ( I won it at my husband's work Christmas party! Huzzah!) and my false eyelash kit.

The instructions on the false eyelash kit were so tiny that women my age, who actually might need false eyelashes, can't read them without a magnifying glass or carefully placed sunbeam.

After trying to hold the words up to the magnifying mirror part of my make up mirror, then realizing the instructions were backwards (it's after midnight by now), I ran upstairs to grab my book light.

Book light carefully balanced on the table next to the make up mirror, I proceed to follow the directions which indicate that I need to open the eyelash glue and place a small dot on some foil (run and get the foil).  Unfortunately, although the picture on the instructions indicates that the glue just flows out of the bottle, I had to slam the glue on the tinfoil several times to get enough to make the recommended dime sized dot.

Next I take the tiny tweezers (that look like they could seriously do damage to your eye if you sneeze during this procedure) and pick up a teeny tiny group of false eyelashes that look like they come from a sugar pine tree.

I taught Outdoor Education for a year.

I dip the end of the teeny tiny grouping into the glue (not too much!) and then apply to the lash line (NOT THE LID) of the eye.

Thought: Aren't your eyelashes attached to your lid? Wouldn't your "lash line" be part of your lid?

As I pulled the tweezers away, I realized that the lash grouping had attached itself to the tweezers and not to my "lash line". Five more attempts did not prove much better.  After about 20 trials, I had managed to stick about four groupings as close to my lash line as I could and I had something that looked like longer, prettier lashes.

1:00 am. I begin to work on the other eye, only to realize that some of the lashes from my first eye have fallen off.

It's amazing how at 1:00 am a few groupings of lashes can look like a spider and although in your deepest intellect you know it's not a spider, the part of your brain that should have gone to bed a long time ago says, "Spider!" and so you jump and say, "Ee-yah!" or something like that and try and flick the spider (that once was false lashes on your eye) that is glued to your fingers off your fingers without much success.

2:00 am.  I finally packed up my failed attempt at beauty and went to bed.

The next morning I found that 4 of my lashes on my right eye were way longer than any other of my lashes and they were securely fastened to my lash line. I wore those lashes like a badge of beauty honor for the 2 hours that I took to take a leisurely shower, clean the kitchen, and do a load of laundry.  Then I removed them because I realized how ridiculous it looked.

I had to remove them following the instructions using the eyelash remover solution. Which poured out of it's bottle like water.

I also whitened my teeth with whitening strips. Those worked out okay. Except for the strip that is stuck to the carpet that I can't seem to remove.

Superhero? Super kid.

I was an Outdoor Education teacher for two years. I was a summer camp counselor for 2 summers. I taught in a classroom for 11 years. I have been an Education Specialist with a Charter School for the past 4 years.

I don't say this to brag. But I simply to say, "I've seen it all". And no, I probably haven't seen as much as the educator who has been in the classroom for 20 plus years, but I feel like I have seen it all.

I know what the initials ODD, GATE, IEP, RSP, SDC, ADD, and ADHD mean. I know how to spot signs of Asperger's or Autism. I know when to deal with an angry parent or student, and when to run away. I know how to make phone calls regarding bad grades, bad manners, bad upbringing, bad lunch, bad whatever.  I've melted parents like cold, hard butter on a hotcake with my sweet words of reassurance. Yeah, I'm that syrupy.

I have buzz words, techniques, books, and websites that I can pull out of my back pocket.

Until last Thursday, I was that Superhero.

Now I'm the "on the other end" Superhero. And it has driven me to tears. And to my knees.

I'm just being honest here, and it hurts to be this honest. Because now I have THAT kid.

And it's not just that he got kicked out of Day Care. As my husband said, someday we will look back on this when Ian is older, and laugh and tell him how he got kicked out of Day Care. We will look on it like a badge of honor, almost. As in, "I know I run a company now, am a great boss, and make enough money to send my parents to Maui every year, but would you believe I got kicked out of Day Care??"

And I will tell him about all the times he scared the heck out of me by throwing his head against the floor when he got upset when he was an infant. Or how he threw his head back so far when he was screaming when we were holding him that we were afraid we would drop him.

Or how he would throw things.

Or how we can't let either of his grandmother's watch him by themselves because we are afraid he would cause them injury. Or break something. Or just really freak them out.

And then there was that one time when the babysitter was watching him and he got so upset he took off all his clothes, threw them over the second floor banister and yelled, naked, "YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART!!"

But then...

There are the numerous phone calls that I have received over the past several months. The increasing desperation in the teacher's voice as I am told about all the screaming fits, the throwing chairs, and the scratching of arms as she tries to hold him down.

And I don't blame them for kicking him out. I really don't. He totally deserved it.

His teacher is on the "older" side.  The kind of "older" side that when she receives an injury it actually causes bruising on her arm.  And she called me the day before he got kicked out and said on the phone, "I won't give up on him."

I guess when he scratches enough to cause bleeding on another teacher's arm and throws a chair in the direction of other little day care kids, that negates the whole "I won't give up on him" line.

But, oh, how it hurts. 

Of course, his sister is in 7th heaven because it wasn't her. And I know she is thinking "I look pretty good compared to him", because that is what I used to think every time my brother did something stupid.

Oh, good. Now my parents are mad at him. That takes the pressure off me for awhile.

And this is what makes me angry...in my thought process. And now I can see how other parents were angry. It's not the teacher's fault that my three year old couldn't follow the routine and rules of day care. It's not the teacher's fault that my son might have ODD or a sensory processing disorder, or whatever the special needs flavor of the month is.

BUT...

I was never invited to observe in the classroom. I never saw what words the teacher used with him, or what tone of voice. And I know, as a teacher, you can't cater to every kid all the time and sometimes your patience wears thin and you say things you don't mean, or you use a tone you know you shouldn't use, or the bubble of words above your head suddenly bursts and comes out of your mouth.

I once told a class they were going to drive me to drink.

I once put a big L on my forehead in desperation when I was on recess duty. A kid said, "Did she just call me a loser?"

But still...why couldn't I observe what he was doing?? Maybe I could have helped. And I didn't ask if I could because everything about the place said, "No parents allowed past this point".

Why wasn't I given notice? They could have told me that they were documenting incidences so that they could kick him out. Instead, I was told they were documenting incidences to help us with information to give the counselor we were going to take my son to see. I wasn't given a "if we have this many incidences, than this will happen" type of speech. I was given a "come get him and don't come back" phone call.

Harsh. This is my baby we are talking about.

And now I get it. And that is why I am a different type of Superhero. I wish I could say that I was the kind of Superhero like Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, because then I would be so intimidatingly gorgeous with an invisible jet and a rope of truth...

I digress again.

I am the Superhero with the swollen eyes because I've cried myself to sleep about my son. I am the Superhero who has gained 5 pounds because of stress eating. I'm the Superhero who has gotten very little sleep over the past week because all of a sudden I was stuck with the "I HAVE to work! Now what do I do?" questions running through my head. (Another Day Care? Not an option. I can handle getting kicked out of one...barely. Two would kill me). I am the Superhero that interviewed five potential Nannies in a 6 hour period and prayed that one of them will see how awesome my son is.

Because he is. And I'm crying as I write this.

Stupid Day Care. They don't see what he is like when he comes to you at 6:30 in the morning, throws himself on you, smiling, and says, "Mommy! Wake Up! The sky is awake!"

They don't see how he can count to twelve...and then jump back to seven.

He knows all the words to "Let It Go" and "Do You Want to Build  a Snowman?"

He knows what a heart looks like.

He says "I love you" just because. He giggles when you pinch his little rear end.

He will only eat yogurt and Dinosaur chicken, but he can scream the ABC song at the top of his lungs.

At night, he can't go to sleep until my arm is wrapped around him.

He freaks out when he can't find me in the house.

He is not afraid of getting dirty, heights, squirt guns, monsters, or pirates. He is afraid of spiders. If you ask him how big a spider is, he will stretch his arms wide and say, "this big".

He demands your eyes are on him when he talks, not on the iPad, computer, or Facebook.

He could care less if laundry is in a neat pile. He sees it as an "opportunity to throw caution and clothes to the wind".

He knows how to beg for a donut.

I am a Superhero because I gave birth to this kid. And he is mine. Well, really, he is God's. But we get to borrow him for awhile.

And I am a Superhero because now I get it.  And I wish I could go back and apologize to all the parents that I talked to about their kid who was badly behaved. I want to tell them that I know how bad it hurts to hear those words. I want to tell them that it hurts for days afterwards and you want to scream at the person who told you your kid wasn't good enough because they Just. Don't. Get. It.

But I do. I get it. And I am in the club of Superhero women.

So my first idea for a blog since …forever…hit me at 10:30 pm and I was too tired to do anything about it then…all my good ideas probably got sucked out of my head by my pillow…

But here it goes anyway…

The other night my 3 year old son asked if he could take one of his wooden train cars into the bath tub with him. I stopped buying bath tub toys a long time ago because I found out that empty Johnson’s baby shampoo bottles are just as entertaining in the tub. I said no because I happen to be a teacher and know something about what happens to wood in water, but my son (not a teacher) has no clue and therefore thought I was just being mean.

Now here is where I should interject that my children have the gift of being a tattle-tale. Thank goodness they usually reserve that gift for each other. 

As parents, we have written filed all the typical parent responses to tattling on invisible 5 x 7 index cards in our brains.  If you were able to look in my brain under the file “Respond to Tattling” you would see the following statements written on my index cards:

·         I can’t hear tattling. Try to tell me another way.

·         Was it on accident?

·         I have an idea. Don’t touch each other.

·         I mean it. Don’t touch each other.

·         Honey, Mommy will take care of your brother/sister. You worry about what you are doing.

·         Knock it off

My husband has downsized his file to one card.

·         Knock it off

I’m exaggerating. I don’t know what his card says. If he’s in the room when the tattling starts, I leave to let him deal with it.  I don’t hear what’s on his card.

Anyway, back to the bathtub…

No wait…let me clarify something else. (This is what happens when you don’t blog for awhile, you pretend that no one cares if there is no fluidity- is that a word?- to your writing)

I don’t understand tattling because I didn’t grow up with it. I was an only child until I was sixteen. When my younger brother came along, my main concern was whether he was mistaken for my child.  I once tried to tattle tale on him and it was so lame, that I even sounded awful to myself.

Anyway, my son figured out quickly that tattling to Mommy about Daddy, or tattling to Daddy about Mommy would get him nowhere.

So when I said “no” to the toy in the bathtub and tried to explain that it would get ruined, my son got a very defiant look on his face and said to me, “Well, I am mad at you now. I am going to tell your mother!”

I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out who taught him to say that.  I am thinking back to all the times I left him alone with my mother and whether or not they began to plot the day he would be able to say that to me.

Because the thing is, my mom can be a very scary woman. You do not want to make her mad. Ever.

So if anybody threatens to tell my mom anything I’ve done, I sort of started to seize up and break out in a rash. Even if it is a three year old doing the threatening. The rational part of me began to tell myself that my mother lives a 5 hour drive away and that my son can’t drive, or operate my iPhone. I think.

I did what any person under that kind of threat would do…I interceded by telling on myself to my mom first. I texted her. That I wouldn’t let him have a toy in the tub. That I tried to tell him the toy would get ruined.

And then I told on my son.