Today was Aliya’s first day of school. She woke up at 6 a.m. The bus was due at 8:33. In an attempt to kill time, I suggested that she take a shower “so her hair would look nice.” She was showered and dressed by 6:30 and wanted to know how much longer until the bus would come. I told her 4 Dora’s!!! Somehow the time passed and it was finally 8:15. So I loaded Norah into her stroller and dragged Adlani down to the bus stop. It’s about a 2-minute walk, even dragging a 3-year-old. We waited. And waited. And threw acorns down the storm drain. And tried to find matching caps for the naked acorns. And tickled Norah with a stick with leaves and acorns on it until she tried to eat one. Today’s experience will teach me not to show up at the bus stop 15 minutes early with no food again.

When the bus was 15 minutes late I had the brilliant idea to call Ben to look up the number for the transportation department on the internet, so I could find out if I should just give up and drive her to school. After he looked at the bus schedule for a neighboring town, the 2006/2007 schedule for our town, and the high school schedule, insisting each time that the corner I was standing on was NOT a bus stop, the bus finally came – 20+ minutes late. The bus driver made up for it by being 5 minutes EARLY this afternoon.

When the bus came this morning Adlani said, “She (the bus driver) has a seat for me!” The bus driver said, “I’ll be back for you next year.” Why does everyone think I have an immature 4-year-old, rather than a giant 3-year-old? Anyway, after the bus drove away he asked where Aliya was and I said that she was on the bus. He said, very sadly, “Well, I’m not going to see her again and I didn’t say goodbye!” He got over it pretty quickly.

Aliya had a great day at school, although in her words, “I didn’t learn anything – again.” Apparently the highlight of the day was when one of the boys “tooted” at circle time.

Update: I later learned that when the bus arrived at school there were no teachers outside to meet it because it was so late. The bus driver walked all of the kids inside the front entrance and set them free. Somehow Aliya found her way to her classroom on her own. She’s so self-sufficient. I wonder where she gets that from?
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Don’t get me wrong…we’ve had L/B family weekends before, but we’ve always had more than 600 square feet to spread out and get away from each other. For Hannah’s birthday we decided to take the plunge and brave the ultimate test of togetherness. Can 4 adults, 6 kids, and 1 psychotic dog coexist in a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom camp for 65 hours? We did it and we lived to tell the tale. Beyond multiple minor altercations, a few major crying jags, and a couple of close encounters with vomit, we all had a great time and are planning to make it a tradition.

We spent a long, hot day at Six Flags where Adlani peed behind a tree for the first time ever. Yay Adlani!

Who knew that I would someday be the nosy neighbor lady? Maybe some of you did, but I didn’t see it coming. It all started when 2 little girls (5 and 7) from our street ran away from home with a suitcase full of clothes and apples. They walked more than a mile and were found over an hour later, in a culvert, naked (they were hot), eating apples. Luckily, because of the emergency system we have in town, all residents got a recorded phone call from the police describing the girls, and calls started flooding in. People had noticed them all along their journey down Route 30 and Route 9. I couldn’t believe nobody stopped and asked them where they were going.

Not long after that happened, I was driving down our street and saw two little girls literally sitting in the middle of the road, using sidewalk chalk. I pulled over and said that it wasn’t safe to do that and they needed to stay out of the road. As I drove away I looked in my rearview mirror and was shocked to see the little sh*ts running back out into the road. I turned around and drove back, and more sternly said that it was dangerous and they needed to stay out of the road or they’d get run over. I pulled away again, and WTF?…they did it again! So I called 911 and tattled on them. A police car came right over and the next day one of the girls was playing in the road but her mother was sitting next to the driveway watching her. I guess that’s an improvement? One of the girls rides Aliya’s bus. I told her not to admit that her mother’s the NNL.

This weekend I was driving down a busy street near our house and I saw a little girl walking with no shoes. She didn’t look any bigger than Aliya. I almost kept going but I turned around and watched. She would veer away from the street every time a car went by, and she continued to walk. I pulled over and she came right up to the car. She said she was looking for her brothers and I said that I was going to turn into a side street and come talk to her. She answered all of my questions and basically she was 8 years old and out looking for her brothers – 12 and 15. She had no clue where they were. I ended up calling her mother and she drove down and picked her up. She didn’t seem overly worried about it, but I felt better. I couldn’t just drive away without making sure she was safe. Both situations made a real impression on Aliya.

Early in the spring, Rachael mentioned that it might be a fun summer project for the kids to have a garden. I have a black thumb, but I went along with it (and eventually beyond, of course). We bought seeds and spent an afternoon planting them in an assortment of yogurt cups, peat pots, dixie cups, and assorted plastic dishes, and covered them with plastic wrap. Much to my surprise, a few days later we started seeing some results. Within a couple of weeks we had 7-9″ seedlings – beans, zuccini, and yellow squash, and some smaller seedlings – cherry tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, and flowers. Around Memorial Day we planted everything in raised beds in the front yard; everything that would fit, that is. The rest (including additional plants that I couldn’t resist buying at Lowes’) we planted in the planter behind the retaining wall along the driveway. Everything started growing like crazy. The squash leaves were bigger than my head and there were tons of squash blossoms. We harvested beans, lettuce, at least 15 zuccini and yellow squash, and now we’ve got cherry tomatoes and carrots. It turned out to be a great project and I found out that I don’t actually have a black thumb, I just don’t have time to water plants. I feed and water my kids, myself, sometimes Ben, and the pets. How am I supposed to have time to water plants? Isn’t the rain supposed to do that?

I had the brilliant idea of going to Chef Orient for Adlani’s birthday. I mean, what could be better for a 3-year-old than watching a guy in a purple hat cook your dinner in front of you, including flicking shrimp tails with impressive accuracy, and creating a working volcano with only onions, a mystery liquid, and a flame? The food wasn’t scary – just chicken, rice, all normal stuff. Well, Adlani spent most of the meal crying and whining, “But I don’t LIKE fire!” He wouldn’t touch his food and he ate Norah’s bag of Cheerios and crackers for dinner. “Every time I try to do something for you kids, this is the thanks I get!!” 🙂

Luckily he enjoyed the Chuck E. Cheese pizza at his joint party with Shane the following week.