First Day

Wake at 5:45.

Power walk for 30 minutes.

Come back home and find Ajers dressed, fed, and watching TV.

“Hey mom, Mr. Rogers is on,” he says. We listen together:

It’s such a good feeling,
a very good feeling
To know you’re alive!
It’s such a good feeling…

(I do miss those tedious days of gauging my day by what show was currently playing on PBS; working my morning through Tellytubbies, Sesame Street, The Big Comfy Couch, The Wiggles, Calliou, Dora and Blue’s Clues, then lunching the kids, sticking them in their cribs for naps, and settling in front of The Learning Channel where I would watch back-to-back episodes of The Wedding Story and The Baby Story.)

Shower, shampoo, dry hair, even apply lipstick!

Whip up a batch of Hungry Jack pancakes and add chocolate chips, which will guarantee a pleasant morning with Diva. I throw in a load of laundry.

Look at clock, 50 minutes to go!

Hear Diva’s alarm go off. Am afraid to go upstairs as I don’t know if she will break out into tears at the thought of starting second grade.

Fortunately, she comes out SMILING!

I hug her. She’s excited! I’m excited she’s excited! There’s nothing worse than dropping a sad, pathetic, teary-eyed child off at the bus.

Breakfast, teeth brushed, lunches that were packed LAST NIGHT are shoved into new backpacks. The kids are mature now, they tell me, so the backpacks are not Bratz and Spiderman-emblazoned.

Tukey still asleep. Ajers says, “I’m not taking a picture today mom!” Which only reminds me to get out the camera, which annoys him, which makes him say, “NO PICTURE!” Which makes me say, “You’re breaking my HEART! You’ll love to look back on your first-day-of-school photos when you’re 16.

I.Force.Him.To.Smile… while Diva does Bunny Ears behind him.

At the bus, even fathers venture out to see their children off to school. With video cameras. I feel like a bad mommy.

Diva still smiling!

Now I feel like a good mommy.

Bus comes. Everyone jumps up and down in excitement. Okay, we parents do, not the kids.

Kids get on the bus. Moms and dads yell to their children:

“I love you!”

“Have fun!”

“Email us!”

“Quit picking your nose!”

The bus chugs away and leaves us in a fog of polluted smoke. I wave and blow kisses until it rounds the corner, and then...

they

are

gone.

I pop open the cork to the Dom I’ve been saving and we all get loaded, right there, in the neighbor’s driveway. Ha, Just kidding. But I do say, “Okay, men, you can leave now and go make a living or something!”

Come back into the house, not as melancholy as I was last year when I reflected on this first-day event.

I see Tukey’s door is open. He must be up. I told him last night: “If I am not in the house, this means I am outside at the bus stop and you can come out to see me.” He can’t read so I had left him a note outside his door that said his name cuz he knows how to read that, and I drew a picture of the bus so he would know where I was. I’m ingenious, aren’t I?

We hug. His little sturdy body is so nice and warm, it would be great to just hop back into bed and snuggle. Instead, he does a Color-By-Number picture while I finally, FINALLY figure out the evils of my Yahoo Group and download something called a Mozilla Firefox or Firewolf or Godzilla Fire Goddess, or some kind of browser thing that allows me now to enter my Yahoo Groups. I feel so techno-savvy at this moment.

I make Tukey some cereal. He drinks his milk. I eat a five-point WW breakfast of Boston Cream Pie yogurt and granola.

I ask him what he wants to do today.

“I dunno.”

“Do you want to go pick out your birthday cake for your party?”

“Okay!”

Then he tells me if he were in preschool, he would sing me Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; and then he sings it all cute, making his eyes look like the Puss in Boots character in Shrek 2 when they’re all big and cute and innocent.

We hug more. I can’t get enough of this kid today!

He gets himself dressed, I put the clothes into the dryer that have been washed. We leave.

I go to the Laundromat and drop off the snowsuits, gloves, hats, mittens and coats that have been piled onto coat hooks in the garage all summer. I have discovered they will wash and dry all my clothes for about $1 per pound. I don’t want to deal with all this winter crap so I figure it’s a great deal.

We go to the post office.

Tukey asks if we can go to the library, and it’s his lucky freakin’ day because the library just so happens to be RIGHT NEXT TO THE POST OFFICE, and this little guy didn’t even know!

He picks out two videos: Empire Strikes Back and some Ninja Turtle show. He is so happy. He tell me as we’re walking out of the library:

“I like when we’re together alone like this!”

Me too.

Haircut for him, and he snags three bubblegum Dum-Dum lollipops.

Lunch at SubWay. I have a turkey with NO cheese, baked Lays. He eats a meatball sandwich.

We go to the grocery store. I shop for some healthy stuff.

At home, I put the groceries away, do an hour’s worth of paid work on the computer, and soon, it’s time to get the bus.

Outside, there are only moms now, and one dad who works from home. We are all still as happy as when we sent out little guys out into the world.

It all depends on the look on Diva’s face when she gets off the bus… Is she? Could she? Is it possible? This can’t be my daughter…

SHE IS SMILING!

Yay! She is happy!

“I love second grade!”

Yippppeeeee!

At home, they bombard me with talk of the day’s events, and I love hearing this stuff, how awesome their teachers are, how cool the new playground is, how third grade is going to be ‘challenging but fun and we get to bring a fish home!’

Got the mail.

Not one, not two, but THREE rejection letters from agents. But it’s okay. Well, kind of. One was a rejection from an agent who requested the full, and her note said my writing was “fast-paced and charming” but she was bored with the mechanics of pregnancy, which I can understand.

Another agent, who I blindly queried, said their list is full.

The last agent was one I kind of thought would reject it because she doesn’t rep Mom-Lit but she took the time to write a really, really, really kind rejection letter saying she liked my main character right away and that I have a fun writing style and voice… but pregnancy books don’t do it for her. She then told me I would be welcome to pitch future projects to her.

So, these three didn’t really bum me out all that much; if anything, hopefully it will inspire me to write more.

Next, I helped Ajers get into his football gear, Diva yelled goodbye and ran to a friend’s house, and I made a bunch of sandwiches and froze them because that’s what I do to make making lunches much easier, and last year, the kids never complained about their sandwiches, so I’m going to continue doing this!

Okay, now it’s time for me to get Ajers from football practice, come home, make something sort of healthy for dinner, fill out class paperwork, pack lunches, and I think I’ll be going to bed early tonight.

Man, this first-day-of-school stuff is tough, but I think I got more done today than the whole summer combined! It feels good to be productive, and I kind of liked the quiet in the house, even though I did miss my babies.

Hope your first day of school is a great one! For your kids too!

Postscript: Okay, forget everything I said that was nice. Diva and Tukey are beating the hell out of each other, screaming, pushing, shoving -- well, not right this minute cuz I separated them and put her in her room, and she screamed at me: "BUT I'M HUNGRY!" WTF? Oh shit, she is slamming some serious stuff up in her room right now! I'm out.