Back to Normal

It's Monday morning, and it's 2011, and the pre-school has reopened its doors.  Life is back to normal now that the Boy, grog in his eyes, returns to his teachers' care three days a week and my days are freed up to tackle the laundry and sweep the floors and vacuum the rug and run the errands without a suckerfish attached to my leg. 

I mean that nicely. 

Since switching careers from a 9-5 desk job to a 24-hr a day "home business," I've enjoyed being able to spend hours on end watching Go, Diego, Go! and building Train City (which, incidentally, only seems to get built on top of exploding minefields and never makes it to sundown.  I imagine the Lego sized city-planner-men writhing with spastic grief as their newly minted empire comes crashing down around them - destroyed by the same hands that had helped craft it mere hours earlier.  If they had knees, I'm sure they'd be on them, wallowing.)

These lengthy school vacations make me miss routine.  We had a wonderful Christmas season, but my 34.5 year old back cannot tolerate air mattresses and guest beds like it used to.  This year, our trio did the traveling - first to Duluth for an all inclusive, 3-day 2-night stay at Uncle Pete's B&B, where I added 38 pounds to my waistline and shriveled a good percentage of my liver with Guinness and/or Baileys, and then on to Northfield the next day, where we were entertained (and terrorized) by a daycare-sized and -aged cohort of cousins.  The Boy has eight cousins on this, his mother's side, and at age 5, he is the second oldest of the 9.  The aspirin craving adults walk around Grandma's house with eyes cast down, lest they step on a toddler. 

But now the holidays are over, the Christmas tree cruelly tossed to the curb awaiting its Walter's Recycling woodchipper destiny, the Boy in school and the routine restored. 

His most time consuming routine is definitely Bedtime.  As is true with most 5 year old boys, Bedtime is to be avoided at all costs, as it certainly means the end of the world is nigh and if one falls asleep, surely the sun will not rise again in the East. 

And so, motivated to save mankind from imminent destruction in his mind, he has mastered the Stall.  His strategy for rescuing the world?  Hugs.  And more water, please.  And I need to go to the bathroom.  And OneMoreSnack?  And WheresMyBear and LetsTalkAboutOurDay and ReadMeaStory?  Eventually, he succumbs to his eyelids' demands and drifts to sleep, snuggled in with a cornucopia of animals and Transformers and blankets. 

It's good to be back to normal - I'm off to clean the carnage that once was Train City.