Conquering Canine Consternations

The school year is -- thank goodness! -- coming to a close. This means that I will be home with the boys for the majority of the summer, minus a few days of professional development. And I have now entered into a zone that I am a bit apprehensive about -- the Play Date Zone.

Here's the weird thing. As a full-tme working mom, I have never had to schedule play dates. I just take my kids to school and they play there. And when they get home, they play with each other. But I am slowly beginning to understand that two months confined to our (new and improved!) backyard with my three children will not go over too well. This is likely because I refuse to buy a kiddie pool that one of my two youngest children will pee in as soon as I fill it up. The local park is great for Owen but a death trap for Nicholas. I can't bring all three boys there during the hours that are optimal for them because that is when the slide and swings have zero shade. I can't join the local pool because the kids are not potty trained, and, well, Nicholas is, as I have lovingly dubbed him before, a heat seeking missile.

This leads me to the latest. Last week, Jason was out at the Yankee game. Jason goes to a game with his friends about as frequently as I get a pedicure: biannually. Yes, that prom pedi will only last so long, and then it'll be man feet again until right before I go back to school. Not having Jason around on a weekend is not unusual, since he works Saturdays quite frequently. But that's different. He walks out the door dressed for work, and he doesn't cross a bridge. It's like they just knew... Late in the afternoon, I went upstairs to put Peter in for his nap. I changed Peter's diaper, dressed him, put his down in his crib, rubbed his back and high-tailed it out of there. Just as I was closing the door to Peter's room, the doorbell rang. I walked down the steps, looking out the window of my front door to the porch and saw the top of Nicholas' head. Of course I freaked out, assuming that he had unlocked and opened the front door, walked out onto the porch and rung the doorbell. Then, I opened my front door fully to see our neighbor standing behind him. This is our neighbor from three houses down the block.

Nicholas ran barefoot and got halfway up our street in the time it took me to walk his brother upstairs and put him down for a nap. Owen sat on the couch and took it all in, it would appear. I am now seriously sorry that we did not buy a ranch, since an adult heading for a staircase appears to be an open invitation for Nicholas to put himself in imminent danger.

I texted Jason. Who came home immediately. That will be his last Yankee game for a long time.

Nicholas' thirst for adventure is understandable. If I look at the glass as half full (no sneers please), the kid just wants some independence. The problem is, when you're two, there's only so much of that that one can handle. For example, on Father's Day, he thought nothing of just picking up a bee in his hand. He was curious. Not to mention, he had picked up and annihilated about five other insects in the past week. But this time was obviously different. I know he has learned his lesson. He keeps saying "No touching the bees." The only thing is, I don't think he is getting the holistic lesson. It's going to have to come one at a time for Nicholas.

Peter suffered from coxsackivirus last week. Yuck, I know. He had a fever for three says straight and I tried sneaking him into day care for three days (he got the virus there, after all!), two of which I got the call to pick him up since he had a fever. So, during exam week, Peter ended up with me in my classroom. I set up the Pack and Play, threw him in there and gave him the remote to my LCD projector (minus the batteries). This is what happens when you have taken all of your allotted days to care for sick kids. I was lucky that I didn't have kids in the classroom and I COULD bring him in with me. Of course, the ideal time to have a fire drill is during exam week when students aren't in the building. We all evacuated and then when everyone wanted to come up and touch Peter I had to tell them to get away since he was sick. One of the science teachers asked where Peter's shoes were. I told him that Peter needs no shoes since he isn't walking yet and since he pulls them off his feet and chews them like a cocker spaniel when we do put them on him. What's the point?

It's been a crazy year. Crazier than I thought it would be. I'm happy to see summer here, and I'm happy to have my children be on a routine of their own, not living my schedule. There's nothing to make you feel like a crap mom more than telling your kids to put a hustle on it at 6am. This is why I am doing that which I never believed possible in my lifetime. Jason and I are hiring a nanny in the fall. We have found a perfect match for our family, which we discovered came through a great combination of praying as if everything depended on God and networking as if everything depended on us. It's going to be new and different, but in the end, we believe it is what will be the best for our children at this stage in their lives.

My goals for the summer include potty training Nicholas, helping Owen conquer his fear of dogs (no, this will not involve getting a puppy -- but it will involve a fantastic local volunteer and her service dogs), planning my new theater course, collaborating with three colleagues to design a new humanities interdisciplinary course, and overhauling my current college preparatory curricula. Now more than ever I am determined to be the best teacher I can be. After all, I am working for the future, my future is right here in my own back yard, and I am my children's primary educator! I'll be writing. Frequently. Get ready for Summer Oona.