Monday, Monday
Nothing strikes dread into the heart of a new stay at home mom like a rainy Monday morning.
.JPG) |
| Waiting patiently for class to begin before unleashing the crazy. |
It was 8:00. We were at the kitchen table eating oatmeal. The day stretched out ahead of us, gray and interminable. We needed a plan. Stat. And after some quick googling, we had one. The public library branch just five minutes from our house had programming all day.
Now, in my first week home, I had learned my lesson about one of the programs, Lapsitter Storytime. The word “sit” in the title should have been the first red flag, but I had foolishly assumed that Noah would quietly leaf through a book while Rory and the under-two crowd sang about the Itsy Bitsy Spider and shook maracas. Instead, he spent the 45 minutes alternately pouting at the door and complaining loudly about the volume of the “baby songs.” Rory seemed to enjoy himself, but was overshadowed by Noah’s histrionics.
So I knew I had to get Noah’s buy-in on Music Makers, the early morning program I was considering, before loading everyone into the car. I mentioned it casually.
“Is it for babies?” he asked suspiciously.
“No,” I said, reading the description. “Baby, 2-year-olds, preschool.”
He consented. We schlepped to the library in the rain.
The class was held in the library multipurpose room, and consisted of about 15 kids and their parents or caregivers. Songs were led by three different moms, all with enthusiastic daughters and colorful TOMS slip-ons. (TOMS shoes are, in my opinion, a prerequisite for the hip stay at home mom. They say “I’m stylish but comfortable, unfussy and socially conscious, too!” My arches are too low for them. I can only aspire to be the founder of a support group for flat-footed women in Easy Spirits. But I digress.)
The class was perfectly fun. Or should I say, it was perfectly fun for the majority of the participants, two- and three-year-old girls in pigtails and leggings and ladybug raincoats. They sat quietly during the story time and sang sweetly, with dainty motions, during the music portion.
Then there were my kids. Somehow, in an attempt to find an activity that suited both of them, I picked one that was wrong for BOTH of them.
Noah was slightly too old, too male and too…Noah. He swung from being “too shy” to introduce himself during the opening song to running wildly from one side of the room to the other during “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”
Rory waved and clapped during the first song, but spent the remaining time doing his Baby Frankenstein walk on a circuit from the emergency exit doors to the each of the non-babyproofed electrical outlets.
 |
| Missing shoes, sidling toward an escape. |
The curious looks from the other parents (yes, possibly a figment of my imagination, but I wouldn’t blame them) were like laser pointers calling out other things for me be self-conscious about.
How had I ended up with one child in a monster truck T-shirt speaking “Minion” to any toddler who came near him, and another with a mullet? (I just can’t get rid of these curls, even if Rory’s hair reaches halfway down his back when it’s wet.)
Was that dried cottage cheese in the mullet, or had his cradle cap (and at 16 months, let’s face it, it’s just dandruff) gotten worse?
And what was that smell?
The class finally, mercifully ended. We spent a few minutes in the library, but I got tired of trying to keep Rory from dismantling the tracks at the train table where all those sweet little girls were now playing.
The ride home was quiet. We watched the rain roll down the windows and listened to Def Leppard on the radio. I think we were all silently acknowledging the truth: we are just not organized activity people.
Then Noah piped up from the back. “Mommy, how many more days until the days stop going on and on?”
Excellent question.
