I am excited beyond words.

But I am really earning my vacation this year.

My boss is currently in China.  He won’t be back until I am back.  So I am working on three implementations with him being in a different time zone.  Normally, implementations are hectic but this time around they are downright killer.

The two people I am working with are overbearing and micromanage like it is nobody’s business.  They will stand over my shoulder and dictate emails to me.  They will stand up from across the room and yell things at me.  They will ask me questions as soon as I walk in the door even though my computer isn’t booted up yet and I am still wearing my coat.

They make me feel stupid, inadequate and frustrate me so much that I want to cry.  I have developed headaches upon entering the office and I know that they are talking about me behind my back.  I may not do things the way that they do things but for the love of God, give me a minute to get my stuff in order before you start barking orders at me.

I am so stressed out that my body is turning against me.  My lips are covered in cold sores.  If I were to guess, I would say I have around three of them right now.  I get these crazy headaches where I can’t sleep because my head hurts so bad.  It feels like I have been punched in the head and there is this enormous bruise developing.  My eyes are dry and puffy and nothing I do brings my stress level down.  I have even started dreaming about work.

The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that in a couple of days this will be over and I will be with people I love, having the time of my life.

But in the back of my head, I will be thinking about how much I earned the good time that I am having.

It wasn’t a big bite, it was an angry bite because he and his buddy were fighting over something and Maks thought that by biting him, he would get that something.

He was right.

He got something.

He got me sent to the principal’s office.

I got a long “talking to” about how the daycare has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to biting and if Maks bit anyone again, he would be expelled.

So I took heed and worked with Maks to stop biting.

He never bit anyone again.

This week, he was the recipient of a bite.  And it was a pretty bad bite on the arm.  The little girl that bit him broke through the top layer of skin. 

Just some background into this story, there is a little girl in Maks’ class, she is special needs.  During drop off and pick up times, she gets agitated because of the increase in noise and people.  When she gets agitated, she bites.  She does have a teacher dedicated to her, but at drop off and pick up times, because things are so hectic, sometimes her helper loses track of her.

So on Monday, during drop off time, she bit Maks.  Maks knows that she is “special” and didn’t go to the teacher with his bite because he didn’t want to get her in trouble.  It was his friend P that went to the teacher because Maks was crying and P could see that the bite was bleeding.

The teacher cleaned him up and they went off to the director’s office to make sure he was OK.

Now, I’m upset.  Not at the little girl, obviously, but at the teacher that is responsible for the little girl.  I can understand her wanting to help the other kids during this hectic time but this isn’t the first time that it has happened.  And today I told that to the director.

I have been told, that they are going to be getting another helper for the little girl and she will be responsible for only her.

I hope that is the case because all this biting has got to stop.

Millhouse:  definitely.  That’s why I married you.

Me:  You didn’t marry me for my charm or intelligence?

Millhouse:  no, I married you because you could cook.  You being hot was just a bonus.

Me:  …

***

Me:  Millhouse, why do you love me?

Millhouse:  Because you have a nice butt.

Me:  Anything else?

Millhouse:  because you make really good grilled cheese sandwiches.

Me:  …

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the secret to why we’ve made it this long, asses and grilled cheeses.

**It was around this time, 10 years ago that Millhouse and I started dating.  It seems like a lifetime.

This is something that I have wanted to do since I was 18 years old.  And after many, many, many years of coming up with reasons to not go, I am finally going.  I am beyond excited.

I wake up thinking about it.  I go to sleep thinking about it.

I am freaking beyond excited about it.

But I don’t want to leave my kids.

The thought of boarding that airplane and leaving my children behind reduces me to tears.  I generally don’t leave my kids for more than a night and even if I do leave them, I am only an hour away.  This time I will be leaving for four nights and I will be 6+ hours away by plane!

The thought of that is killing me.

I know that there are a lot of parents out there that leave their kids for extended periods of time and in the greater scheme of life, this is not such a big deal.  They will most likely forget about me as soon as I am out of their direct line of vision but I won’t forget them, especially if the last memory I have of them is them crying as I leave them in the airport.

Now there is the possibility that they won’t cry when I leave.  Hell, most likely they won’t notice that I’ve left them because the spoils of the airport gift shop will have them thoroughly occupied.  Now if that happens the departure will be bearable for me.

It will still hurt though.

As excited as I am to go, I am so dreading leaving.

He doesn’t fight me when I put him down.  He still goes to sleep like he did on the sleep program.  The only difference is, now when he wakes up, instead of self soothing back to sleep, he screams.  He stands up in his crib and jumps and screams for his bottle until someone comes to get him.

When he gets his bottle, he will drink all eight ounces and go back to sleep.

Only to repeat the same process two hours later for the entire night.

It is killing me.  Millhouse and I are exhausted and Mat is unbelievably cranky because he is not getting any sort of restful sleep.  According to the daycare, he has started sleeping for three hours a day because he is so tired when nap time rolls around.   I don’t want to call the sleep doula in because she is so damn expensive and even though her results are outstanding, her cost acts as a major deterrent.  I would rather not have Mat cry it out.  I find that to be traumatic on everyone involved but I might try the sleep doula plan from the very beginning again and see if that works.

Because not sleeping sucks.

Maks is adapting well to the transition curriculum from junior kindergarten to senior kindergarten.  He has a penchant for numbers and math, that I know he didn’t inherit from me.  He works really well in groups and his writing is progressing at a good pace.  The “Tiger Mom*” in me LOVES that.  Hearing from his teacher that he is doing well academically strikes a chord with me.  I am such a huge believer that education is empowering and that it is something that he needs to survive in the big, scary world, that hearing he is doing well brings me a sense of relief.

I come from a household where academics were a huge deal.  My dad used to make Beanz and I do math drills over the summer holidays.  We always had to be the top of our classes.  I am first person in my family to hold a university degree and that happened because my dad told me from a young age that I was going to get that.  I was going to do what they didn’t and I want the same for Stinky, Maks and Mat.  I want them to surpass everything that Beanz and I do.  I want them to smoke us even, leave us in their dust, make us look like underachievers compared to them. 

Because I think that would be awesome.

*Tiger Mom is a term that a blogger coined to describe herself.  It is a mom that places a whole lot of emphasis on academic success.  Playing and “fun time” come after education.  Now while I am not completely a Tiger Mom, there are some parts of me that firmly believe in the value of education.  And if that means that some “fun time” is sacrificed to ensure that academic success is achieved, then so be it.

It was one of the coldest days of the year.

The repairman fixing the sprinkler system set off the fire alarm at the daycare.

At nap time.

The kids were in there socks and no sweaters because they were asleep in the cots and cribs with their blankets.

The teachers, thinking there really was a fire, grabbed all the kids as they were and bustled them outdoors as fast as they could. 

The big kids didn’t have any time to grab their shoes, coats or even blankets.  They ended up standing outside in the snow in their socks, huddled in groups, trying to stay warm under their teacher’s sweaters for 10 minutes.  There were tears, flushed cheeks and really cold toes.

There was no time to grab snowsuits and boots for the babies.  So they were wrapped up in blankets from their cribs and carried outside.  The teachers carried all the babies, even the ones that could walk so that they would stay warm.  The babies thought it was great fun.

The director was away on holiday for the week.  The assistant director had gone out for lunch, so had about a 1/3 of the staff.  The people that were designated to be the leaders and arrange for the kids to go back into the daycare were not there.  This meant that the teachers were scrambling and no one knew what was going on.  It wasn’t until the repairman, told them that it was safe to go back in, that they went back in.

That’s why the kids were out there for so long.

I brought Maks and Mat home and gave them a really warm bath.

Because they were really cold.

It was a not so funny comedy of errors.

His report card was just as I expected.  His teachers like him.  He is a loving child that isn’t destructive or rambunctious.  He likes to look at books and play with balls.  But his teachers noted two big areas of improvement.

1.  They would like him to speak more.  Right now the only word he says is baba.  But in his defense, his baba (bottle) is the most important thing to him.  He loves his baba more than anything else out there.  If he wants or needs something else, he just yells at you in baby babble until you can figure out what he needs.  If you ask me, he has it pretty good.  But hey, these are the professionals so I will work on getting him to articulate is 16 month old self better.  O_0
2. They also want him to interact more with the other kids.  They say that he interacts very well with the teachers and that he is very receptive to them but they want him to play with the other kids.  Now it should be noted that with the exception of DJ Cheesy, none of the other kids can walk yet, nor can they really speak yet.  They just sit where they are placed and do their own thing.  And by their own thing I mean, they sit where they are plopped down and usually just sit there looking around, sometimes crying and occasionally falling over.  I am not sure what exactly Mat’s teachers want him to do or how he is supposed to interact with the other kids but they suggested that the interaction would be beneficial for him.  So I am going to encourage him to “play” with the other children. 

If Mat was older, I would have pointed all this out at the parent / teacher conference because really, you can’t force a child to socialize, they will when they’re ready.  But that’s just my thinking though.  Since Mat is just in the infant room, I don’t get a parent / teacher conference, which I think the teachers do on purpose.  This way they can make suggestions and evaluate without any real repercussions.  I can always bring up my concerns to the teacher when I drop Mat off but I am not too concerned.  Mat is surrounded by older kids and adults when he is at home and because of that, that’s who he feels most comfortable with.

I’m not going to stress over his report card,

Too much,

Yet.

Maks’ teacher prefaced handing me the report card by saying that Maks has gone through a crazy change over the Christmas holidays.  He has matured and is focusing a lot more.  She is very pleased with how he is working on his workbooks and that his interests in books are greatly improving.  She wasn’t sure where all this was coming from, because he wasn’t learning this behavior from school (her words not mine) but she was pleased.

So that being said, the majority of the report card no longer applies (once again her words not mine).

Now I am not sure what to do.  The majority of Maks’ report card talked about his lack of focus and his immaturity.  But none of that applies anymore.

I go in for my parent/teacher conference tomorrow.  I am not really sure what to expect.  Usually I go in with the report card highlighted and armed with a list of questions on how to make improvements or clarifications that I need but this time I have none of that.  I am not sure what comments actually apply to Maks now.

And because of that I don’t know how to prepare for the parent teacher interview.