Mr. Cranky Goes to School

On two days a week, I watch Jr. It is always fun to go to school those mornings. Even though I have been doing this for over four weeks now (trips into school), someone always stops, counts the boys, looks at me, has a weird questioning look on their face and walks on. Kids don’t. They come right up and ask me, “what, you have another baby? How many more you gonna have?”

“Just my nephew”, I say.

“Huh, you should have some more kids. That’d be fun.”

“Then you would have to move in with us to help me take care of them all.”

The little boy looked at me, thought it over, and then said “No, I think your four is enough.”

We make quite a scene at school anyhow. All the boys are in full boy gear. We drop S3 off at kindergarten, then we all move down the hall to drop S2 things off in his locker and then we walk down the other hallway to drop S1 off at his locker. That’s when the hugs begin. They all must hug S1 goodbye. And not, “oh, here is a hug because I love you”, they must do it with full boy force. In order to hug your brother, you must pick him up, squeeze him till his eyes bulge and then drop him on the ground. If you have been in a silly mood to your brothers, all three jump on one. If you are one of the little brothers who gets hugged, at times you may get knocked to the floor.

We do this every morning.

Yesterday morning, S4 woke up cranky. He was in a bad mood from the moment his eyes opened. He whined and cried and stormed thru the house. When we got to school, I was hoping he would ‘behave’. I was carrying Jr, I was holding onto S4’s hand, I was carrying S3’s back pack because he had run off with out it; I had a vase of flowers for S3’s teacher. In front of me were two boys; in back of me was one. This is part of the reason we cause a scene. There is a bunch of us.

And they are always loud, always racing, usually singing some Johnny Cash or Buck Howdy song on the way in.

Jr loves morning school runs. He firmly believes that all the kids and parents in the whole school are there to view him. He coos and smiles and is the cutest little guy a little guy of nearly five months can be. He is adorable. He also screeches. If he thinks he has your attention, he will screech hellos. If he does not have your attention, he screeches to get your attention.

S4 stormed into the kindergarten room. I stopped to chat with S3’s teacher while the rest of the boys began the daily trek. S4 ran to go after his brothers, decided he had better ask me first, got my permission, ran to catch his brothers but they were too far ahead of him so he came hollering back to me.

He hollered all the way down the hallway. “The guys left me!” he wailed.

Jr screeched his happy hellos.

Everyone, I kid you not, parted the hall and let us through. Every child stared. Every parent ushered their children away from us.

Once we caught up to the guys, S4 gave them all a piece of his mind. There were hugs and then we went to drop S2 off. S4 decided he would not hug S2, he had left him behind in S3’s classroom. We took five steps away from the room and S4 begins a high pitched wail “I didn’t hug him! I didn’t hug him!” I hissed to my son, because by now school had started, to come out and hug his brother. The teacher, a dear friend who could see my frazzled look as I tried to balance cheery Jr, hold S4 up because he was in such sorrow over no hug he had fell to the floor and keep S4 from hopping from floor square to floor square on the schools patterned hallway floor as he obliviously waited for the drama to be over so he could be off to his friends in class, offered a shiny pencil to S4 in hopes to cheer him.

S4 hid behind my leg (hooray for getting up off the floor) and hid behind my leg. “No thank you” he mumbled.

S3 was all over the pencil. “I’ll take it! I want one!”

So, S3 got a shiny pencil. I made sure that S4 hugged S3 goodbye when we got to his class (very late), pulled the hood up over Jr’s cute little red head, and walked out the door. S4 sweetly put his hand in my hand and said “Where to now, Moma?”

“Home.” I felt like Dorothy in that moment “there is no place like home…..”

Upon arriving home, Jr was sound asleep. I looked at the clock, not quite 8:30. “Honey,” I tried in my sweetest voice, “How about we go lay down for a little bit. You can sleep on Daddy’s pillows.”

He complained, crawled into bed and we all took a nice long nap. All before nine in the morning.

This is why I always have coffee at my house.