Off We Go

Tomorrow we're on the 7 a.m. flight to DCA (Washington National to old timers, Reagan National Airport to newbies). We're staying at the Sheraton Four Points downtown. I'm excited because it means that we can walk to the National Mall from the hotel.

We'll be staying downtown for two nights and then we'll drive up to Baltimore to take X-man to the Children's Museum and then to his cousins on Friday night, where we'll stay until Monday morning.

We usually go to their house every Memorial Day, but decided that rather than rushing back so X-man could attend 75 minutes of school to get his report card... we'd just leave the day after school got out instead.

So, Lily is off at Doggies on the Farm. Fetch is caring for all four cats, and Super Shanna is in charge of the gardens if it doesn't rain on Thursday. :-)

Me? I'm hoping to take X-man to the Natural History Museum, The National Museum of American History and Arlington National Cemetery (he is the kid who likes to picnic in graveyards).

We're also taking him to his first fondue restaurant in Arlington on Thursday night.

When we get back, X-man starts his twice a week swim lessons with a new instructor at the YMCA. We've also scheduled a couple play dates with some friends from school and I have to finish calling folks to do estimates on some of the jobs I have around the house. I already have a fix it man and a plumber coming to look at my list. It would be nice if all the stuff I can't do myself was all done by July. But we'll see. I know I'll have Picasso and Sons back in January to do some touch ups in the basement and take care of some nail pops upstairs in the hallway and master bedroom.

I'll also need to call Dr. K and ask him to schedule an ultra sound on my ankle. Wearing the brace and taking a lot of anti-inflammatories isn't doing much but making my stomach upset and wanting to me to eat more to try to make it less yucky feeling. Funny how that's always been my drive. Maybe if I eat more, my stomach will feel better rather than -- don't eat anything. Oh well.

Today, X-man went with me to pick up the books from the book drops and take them to the library. They were full, so it was a big job, but as always, he helped me out. Then when we got to the library, he took his special library bag with his big boy library card looped to it on a D-Ring and went to the Easy Reader section. Some brilliant person had finally divided the easy readers up by levels. Not that the various publishers have done us the favor of making a level 1 meet the same criteria across the publishing field, but it X-man knew he fell between the K and the level 2s somewhere. He pulled out all the books he wanted to read himself (because that's required this year as a first grader in the reading program), then he pulled out picture books he wanted to read to me and then he got some graphic novels (one Spiderman and one Pokemon) that he wants me to read to him.

When it was time to check out I knew I had two books on hold for me. He said, "Mom, there are kids on this side. You go to the other side." So I did. And he waited for two bigger boys to check out and then he dutifully pulled every book out one by one and talked to the staff member about his last day of kindergarten, how he could read most of the books by himself, but that he might need Mom to help put them back in the bag. And how he was excited because he was finally big enough to take care of himself at the library.

And it was nice, to sit at the library and have nothing to do. No books to search for my class. No jealous X-man wondering why I spent so much time bringing my classroom books than him books (to be fair I checked out 70 books per unit for my 19 students... and he got 15 books a week just for one kid).

But it was nice to see that independence. Sometimes, I wonder where it went. Because when he was 3 if I even tried to do something for him, he got angry. But the last year has been a lot of whining about how he can't do things. So, today, was a nice change of pace.