A Bloggy Sandwich

When I was still taking art classes, I had a session on how to construct a portfolio. One of the tips was, of course, make sure EVERY PIECE is good. And if you’re doing sequential art, show that you actually can DO sequential art, can tell a story through art, not just have a bunch of splash pages and pin ups. But specifically, we were told to have your strongest piece as the very first one, and your second strongest one as the last one. That way, you set the tone with the first piece and then you end on a high note, so people viewing your portfolio are impressed right away and also leave with a good impression.

Then Nesko and I watched a pop sci show about how the brain works, and they just said lead with positive stuff and people gloss over the negative. First impressions super matter, apparently.

But I’m going to stick with what I was originally taught, and I’m going to sandwich some grossness between cute stories.

THE FIRST CUTE STORY

Niko no longer says “yes.”

When I say that, I don’t mean that he’s become suddenly and overwhelmingly negative. I mean that while he agrees to things, the word “yes” no longer passes his lips. Nor does yeah, or as he says it, “yay-uh.” No, it’s suddenly all “Sure” and “Of course.” As in, “Niko, would you like some milk?” “Oh, of course I would!” “Niko, would you please pick up your blocks?” “Oh, sure!” “Niko, would you like a hug?” “Oh, of course I do!”

WHAT EVEN IS THIS.

It’s like he has a secret handbook on being cute.

The other day, I asked him if he would like some applesauce and he said “Of course.” And then he said “Actually, I would really appreciate it if I would have some pudding instead, please.”

Actually.

I would really appreciate.

OH MY GOD.

Can I have another kid who’s just, like, a copy of him? Because he’s basically perfect. Except not as the next story will reveal.

THE GROSS STORY

At the age of four years and 5 months, Niko has decided that it is HIGH TIME he learns to wipe his own butt. He’s been using up flushable wipes at an alarming rate and we’ve been dealing with random poo fingers here and there. But then yesterday he apparently decided it was TIME TO STOP FUCKING AROUND. He approached wiping his own butt with a grim seriousness. LET’S DO THIS THING, he resolved.

And he started going in the bathroom every half hour to squeeze out some pathetic tiny turd nugget.

He’s kind of obsessed.

And suddenly, we’re back to having pants accidents.

“Mama,” he says sternly. “I had a little bit of a poop accident.”

He is not proud of these.

So I’ve been picking up flecks of feces from the bathroom floor, doing a lot of hand washing, reminding him that he can’t use an entire package of flushable wipes in one go, etc.

And then, just after Nesko got home, I was in the dining room when I saw what looked to my weak eyes to be a a brand new knot hole in the wooden floor. Wait. There was no knothole there before… was there? I prodded it with my toe. It went squish.

Look.

I don’t have a lot of expectations out of life.

But one that I cling to is the expectation that I can walk through my house without stepping in shit.

Nesko launched into a long story about how HE was working at a house with DOGS and they had to RUN A LINE and the yard was FULL OF POOP and I’m like, ok. That’s horrible and gross. But that, at least, is outside. In nature. Nature, you know, that thing that is a toilet for wild animals. THE GREAT OUT DOORS IS ONE HUGE TOILET. My house? Not so much. My dining room floor? NOPE.

I just… no.

So then I patrolled the rest of the house, squinting at every smudge and speck, armed with a bottle of disinfectant and paper towels.

And then Nesko gathered Niko into his lap for cuddles and finger nail trimmings, and we discovered a motherlode of poo on Niko’s heel.

THE SECOND CUTE STORY

Niko has a baby.

His baby is named Baby.

Baby is a girl (a DWIR-OLE) except for when she’s a boy.

Baby currently lives in the bouncy seat that he used when he was an infant, that we’re holding on to until Nesko’s sister who just had a baby returns from Europe. At this point, we will have to evict Baby from her perch, her soft and cradling throne.

Niko sometimes carries Baby around, and feeds her cookies (wooden blocks, string, etc) or shares things he’s eating with her. “One little nut for me, and one for Baby. And one little nut for me, and one for Baby.” He invariably eats Baby’s portion, of course. He also brings her small toys, books, and shoes (?) for her to snuggle with so she doesn’t get lonely. And from time to time he decides that baby is taking a nap so he walks around and shushes us all because Baby is sleeping. Then he decides that Baby is fully asleep so we can be loud again. “Baby sure is sleeping hard! She’s a hard sleeper.”

Sometimes Baby needs a diaper change, or Niko decides it’s time to potty train her. He’s very encouraging. He cleans her up and cuddles her and says kind things.

It is the most adorable thing.

It almost makes me forget that I stepped in poop in the dining room.

Technorati Tags: 4 year old, parenting, poop, potty training

Mirrored from Now Showing!.

That Time My Mom Forgot Me At School

Mirrored from Words, words, words, art..

When I was in 1st grade my mom realized from something I said that I’d been stuck in Special Ed classes. They hadn’t discussed it with my parents or anything, as far as I can tell they didn’t actually test me other than the Kindergarten teacher gave me some smudgy photocopies of what I think was the Porteus Maze Test. I’d actually been doing mazes for a year or so and didn’t like them. They didn’t make SENSE to me. If I could see the entire picture, why did I need to stumble through the pathways? If I were IN a maze, I could just climb up onto the wall and walk along it, skipping the blundering about portion. So I used to “solve” mazes by just drawing a straight line from the start to the end, a sort of “fuck you” to mazes in general. When I entered Kindergarten, I was reading at a 3rd grade level, writing, and doing addition and subtraction. Class time was taken up with identifying the Alphabet… a letter a day. I was bored out of my mind, and over thought things. FOR INSTANCE, we covered what patterns were. So XCXCXC is a pattern. MVDMVDMVD is a pattern. They’re things that repeat. I claimed that ICLGTWVD was a potential pattern… all you had to do was repeat, just because you didn’t SEE something didn’t mean it didn’t EXIST, all things have the POTENTIAL to be patterns. Soon after that I started my Special Ed career.

My mom found out and raised hell.

I was forced to read out loud to several different teachers to prove my skills, and I was given some placement exams or something and they talked about skipping me a few grades which was ridiculous… I was in no way emotionally ready to skip a few grades. I wound up visiting the Principal regularly (weekly? daily?) to read to him privately which filled me with terror although I can’t say why. Nor can I say why he wanted to meet with me privately.

Anyway, I wound up starting 2nd grade at a different school, making the jump from public school to private… to a small Catholic school.

Kindergarten and First Grade I took the bus to and from school. It was free, part of having a public education. But private school? You have to pay extra for the bus. So my mom dutifully dropped me off on the first day of school.

It was a really weird experience, starting school in a uniform, a tiny class full of people who’d known each other since they were born, whose parents had all gone to school together and attended Mass together. They sang hymns in class that I was unfamiliar with despite attending CCD regularly and Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation… hymns I never encountered anywhere else… and I never learned the lyrics to them. I was really far behind the rest of the class thanks to spending a full school year doing nothing but glue cotton balls to construction paper and sort tiles by color and pet fluffy bunnies. I was overwhelmed and awkward and the nun who taught religion class (and English also? She taught us a lot but I don’t remember exactly what) was very physical and would snatch people by the hair, would lock them in the dark cloak room.

And at the end of the day I stood in the parking lot and waited for my mom to come get me.

She didn’t.

Our school calendar was way off when compared with public school. We started school earlier in the year, earlier in the day, and ended earlier in the day. I think we ended later in the year though… we had more holidays than public school did or something. But we got out about half an hour or 45 minutes or something before public school. I waited and waited and waited and finally, at home, my mom looked up and saw the bright yellow buses dropping off the neighborhood kids and didn’t see me and remembered that she was supposed to pick me up from school.

So she piled my brothers in the car or dropped them off with a baby sitter or whatever, I don’t remember, and went to get me.

At that point I was pretty convinced nobody would ever come get me and I would die there alone. I was kind of a morbid kid.

But looking back on it, it’s really weird that no teachers or staff or anybody noticed me.

As it turned out at that school, the staff managed to not see a lot of stuff where I was concerned.

(this post brought to you by the fact that my kid is starting school at the end of the month.)

Related Articles:

• That Time My Mom Forgot Me At School
• Books, a Love Affair
• Nutella
• Hoarding and Purging
• I took a step back, and wound up in 1996.

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