end of summer

Sooooo, it’s the last day of summer and tomorrow school starts … sort of. For some reason the school schedule here is retarded. For Wed, Thurs and Friday (the first 3 days of school) they are “minimum days” which means “we don’t really learn because we’re only in school for 10 minutes and of that 10 minutes 5 are spent in recess and at lunchtime”. Give me a break, if you’re going to start school, start it already! Don’t do 3 minimum days, just start 3 days later and do full blown school days. It’s almost not worth getting up at 6:45 am and getting the kids to school by 7:45 am, just to pick them up at 11:35 am! A waste, total waste. And don’t they know we moms are chomping at the bit to get these darn kids back into school??!

I don’t know how everyone else is doing, but I am fed up. I wonder some days what I was thinking when I decided to procreate. It doesn’t help that on this lovely last day of summer, my kids have been especially terrible. We’re going out with a bang here, by taking the car in to the dealership to get some recalls taken care of. Nothing worse than being in public, in a small room, waiting for hours for your car, with all of your children in close proximity to you. They said it would take 45 minutes, then 1.5 hours, then 2.5 hours after we were there the guy comes up to me and says, “I checked on your car and they said 10-15 more minutes and I even told them that you have all of your kids with you!” I had no sympathy or patience I just said, “yeah, whatever” and put both Liam and Noah on time out … for 10-15 minutes.

It’s not like there wasn’t stuff for the boys to do. They had an entire little room for children, with toys, seats, a magnetic wall, movies playing in Blu-ray and they even offered the boys snacks too! Granted, it was not a smart choice to give 3 boys chocolate muffins. There was chocolate on the floor in the children’s room and trailing out the door into the hallway for passersby to track everywhere with them. A little gift from me to them.

But a 20×20 room could not contain my boys, oh no. We decided to leave and take a walk after Ray started teetering on coffee tables outside of the children’s room and when I pulled him off, he fell to the floor (made it look like I pushed him too … total drama queen these days) and laid there in the hallway, face to the floor crying and kicking his feet. Thank you my little two year old. I picked him up, called for Liam and Noah to follow me and walked right out of the door and started down the street. We found a burger place within a few blocks and ate there for lunch …. also a bad idea.

I am beginning to think that there is no place for my children. They are wild, mean, ungrateful, loud creatures meant only for cages and the outdoors.

I thought getting some burgers in them would be good. I have to feed them right? Liam and Noah were ok, although, I can’t for the life of me get Noah to stop wandering around in large circles, knocking into people and things. Liam continues to say things too loud, whine and wander away in public places. My boys wander away from me everywhere – in stores, on sidewalks, in parking lots. Sometimes they just start walking towards the street or moving cars, with their heads down, staring at their own feet, mumbling. ??????! I have no words for this kind of behavior. It’s stupid and dangerous. I guess I do have words for this. Anyway, nothing more than the usual for Noah and Liam, but Ray was in rare form.

Ray has been in rare form for about 3 days now and I’m ready to sell him on craigslist. It’s pretty typical 2 year old behavior – yelling, “mine!” or “I do it!” or “NO!”, hitting, not sitting down anywhere at anytime, running away, throwing things, being wildly giddy then totally raving mad the next minute … it’s like they go insane for a year between 2-3 years old. Then their brain chemistry regulates and they act a little less mean.

Ray was doing all of this at the burger joint. He threw his drink on the floor and it burst everywhere, making a huge mess that the patrons had to step around and one slipped in (insert me apologizing and trying to mop up pink lemonade with 60 napkins while Ray keeps whining and yelling about his “deenk”). He refused to sit and when he finally did sit down to eat, he only ate fries, nothing else and then started pushing the stroller around, knocking into people and things. And while I’m playing defense on Ray, I look over at Noah and Liam, hoping they are close to done eating and I see them not eating anything, but staring out the window mindlessly. I had to snap them back into reality and set a fire under their buns to get eating or we’d leave and they’d be hungry. Finally, I had to go to the bathroom. So, I asked Noah and Liam to go to the bathroom and go potty and wash hands while I took Ray with me.

The bathrooms are right next to each other, so I could hear every bit of the shenanigans that was happening in the men’s bathroom. sigh. It just makes me tired thinking about it. Once outside of the burger place, I look over at the boys and they have ketchup and food all over their faces. Back into the bathroom to clean faces …

Once we walked back to the dealership I thought they would surely be done, since it had been 2 hours already and they had estimated 1.5 hours. Nope. We waited another 40 minutes before getting out. painful, just painful. And that was just half of the last day of summer. Right now I am listening to Ray, not sleeping, but yelling and crying from his room when he should be taking a nap. I WAS hearing banging and crashing about and yelps of pain from Liam and Noah until I put them on time out for the past 15 minutes. ugh. summer, just end already and get these unruly boys out of my house and learning, doing something useful! sheesh. And the fact is, they act waaaaaayyyyyy better for their teachers than they do for me, so get them out!