First Day of Summer Vacation, 2008

Today was the first day of summer vacation, and I'm not sure how much more I can take.

Blessedly, the day only started a little before 9:00 a.m. The boys screw around so much in their bedroom at night that they stay up pretty late no matter how many times I go up there and lay down the law. But at least they sleep in, and with no school today, I didn't have to wake them.

We started the day with homemade blueberry pancakes (the best recipe), which I made while Luke brainstormed a list of all the fun things we can do together this summer. He was very serious about this and even flipped through the pages of the latest Family Fun magazine for ideas.

Then he chose four of the items on our list to do today: make an obstacle course in the driveway, have a stuffed animal battle, play Wii, and make stuffed lizards (using a pattern from the book Mama gave me for mother's day). I suggested that they battle it up with their animals while I hit the shower so I'd be decent for the driveway.

After my shower, and a quick tour of the house across the street, which is being refinished as it is up for sale, I learned that Luke had only the slightest grasp on what an obstacle course is when he took me through his. So I designed one that involved a scooter, a wagon, a watering can, the hose, my garden, and a lot of chalk. It was pretty cool, but we all lost interest fast. I started weeding the bed of day lilies that runs the length of the driveway, and Luke decided we should add the kiddie pool in the back yard to our list of fun things to do. So I filled the pool, and Luke showed up with two bathing suits and our bag of beach toys. After I dutifully applied sunscreen, the boys splashed around for a bit while I weeded on (that is a really LOOOOOONG bed). Luke was very ready by this point to make lizards and complaining about my weeding, so I stopped about halfway down the bed (the ability to do so, by the way, represents radical personal growth that is a direct result of many years and thousands of dollars worth of psychotherapy...thank you very much). We policed up the obstacle course detritus and beach toys, and went inside for lunch.

After more cooking and washing of dishes (these creatures seem to need nourishment every three hours or so; it's endless), and discovering of clothes that had apparently been peed in before Teo took them off to put on his bathing suit, the boys each picked out fabric for their lizards, and we traced the pattern and started cutting. Mostly I did the work and the boys watched because the things are about two inches high and demand fine motor skills that challenged even me. Eventually, as I labored as if in a sweatshop, Luke repeatedly asked "Why do you always do Teo's first?" and "Are you finished with mine yet?", and the boys careened around the sewing room in their wheeled desk chairs from Ikea. Eventually they moved into the living room, where I heard Teo exclaim, "No, I don't want to do that any more!" to Luke right before he started bawling. I ran in to investigate, where Luke claimed that Teo had been jumping off the couch and Luke accidentally tripped him. Teo was very upset and his foot really seemed to be hurting him. He wouldn't put any weight on it.

Now it was time (of course) to have a snack, get dressed, and get our butts over to Luke's Tae Kwon Do promotion test. I carried Teo to the kitchen and served up snacks to them both, then ran upstairs to get Teo's third outfit of the day and try to get him dressed and get him to use the potty all without touching his right foot to the ground. This involved physical feats that I'm surprised didn't result in any new injuries to one or the other of us. Somehow we all ended up in the car and at the Dojo with ten minutes to spare before the test began. Of course, I had to hold Teo the whole time and he was starting to feel pretty heavy.



Luckily, reinforcements arrived when Teen met us there for the test. She and Ting clucked over Teo's now swollen foot. Then we tried to focus on getting some good video and pics of Luke's promotion test. He did a good job, even broke the board with the first kick! And I was proud because I got a great picture of it. After the test Wenlei looked at Teo's foot and she really thought we should get an X-ray. Yikes. We had promised Luke we'd take him out to dinner; but we decided we should still eat, even if we did have to go to the ER. So then it was out to our local diner/ice-cream restaurant, where I gave the boys a present I had discovered hiding in my craft closet when I was getting fabric for the lizards (must have bought it at Christmas time and then lost track of it): a set of activity cards made by Nickelodeon with over 50 cool games and other boredom-busters on them. I think they may come in handy in the coming weeks! We promptly put them to use playing a version of the old game we used to call "Quaker meeting" where someone who is "it" is asked questions by all the other players and he/she has to answer "SpongeBob SquarePants" to every question. If the one who is "it" smiles or laughs, he is out. We played that for about a million rounds and it actually was pretty fun to figure out what question would put an image in someone's head that would make him crack up. Some of my favorites: "What should we use to clean up Teo? (who had ice cream all over his face), and "Who do you call first when you're in trouble?"

After dinner we swung by the house to clean up the kids from the ice cream and put them in their pajamas. Then we headed to the ER. It was 9:00 by this time. Double Yikes. Luckily, they didn't keep us waiting at all, but we were still there for two hours getting the X-rays. The boys had a blast, riding through the hallways to radiology on Teo's bed, getting Mickey Mouse dolls from the radiologist, and reading funny books. By 11:00 they came in with our diagnosis: limp. I was reminded how crazy it makes you when you finally decide you really should go to the ER that you actually want there to be something wrong so that you didn't go to the ER for no reason. Is it terrible that a part of me was actually disappointed my kid didn't break a bone? A small part of me. Can you imagine me wrapping Teo's limb in plastic the whole damn summer so he can play at camp, go to the sprinkler park, take a bath, etc? Holy canoli, Batman. That would have been AWWWWWWFUL. They prescribed Motrin and told us to elevate his foot tonight, and said if he still won't walk on it in two days to see our pediatrician.

So we made the trek through the parking garage at 11:00 p.m. and headed home, where Teen helped me brush teeth and get the kids in bed before she headed home herself. Teo, of course, refused to keep his foot on a pillow regardless of our exhortation that it was "doctor's orders," and I was too tired to fight with him. To Teo, there really is no higher power.

I'm freaking exhausted. Is it still only June?