Ups and Downs

So things are going better around here.

We got a babysitter willing to pick the kids up for us after school.  I feel a little on the fence about her, but then I remember that my kids can talk and I'm pretty sure they will tell us if she smokes (they are very judgey about smokers) or brings her skeevy boyfriends around (gotta love public facebook profiles).  Point being, for the moment, she seems nice enough and my kids are awesome tattle-tales so we're just going to go with it for now.  Also she was the only one willing to take the job.

In other good news Sam seems to be feeling moderately better about life.  He's still an asshole, just not an UNRELENTING asshole.  I don't particularly know what has changed.  Maybe he was having some beginning of school anxiety?  And who doesn't act like an ass-hat when they are nervous?

Owen has been extra touchy-feely since changing schools.  It's kind of hard sussing out Owen's wee little signs of distress when we are so used to ducking-and-covering from Sam's life of extremely loud desperation.  But I still try to take it seriously and pay extra attention to Owen.  Also because, seriously, stop touching me.  So if anyone wants to come over, Owen's giving out free hugs and rambling stories about nonsense!

I heard some friends of ours tell their 3-year-old to "stop making that horrible noise" and I was really, really, relieved because I say that ALL THE TIME to Lilly and I thought maybe she was broken.  But apparently 3-year-olds just make horrible noises.

To be fair, it must be really sucky to be a 3 year old.  The other day, I told her we could take a walk somewhere, but then it started raining so I cancelled the walk.  This is all totally reasonable to me, but to her it must have felt mean and arbitrary.  Did she give a fuck that it was raining?  She did not.  But since she is 3, and thus, not in charge, her only recourse was to make a horrible noise.

Lilly has been having a hard go of it since Owen left her.  She got into trouble at school last week.  I arrived to pick her up and the teacher came over to me, holding a "work" that she had broken.  This was a brand new work.  She was the first child to "work" with it.  There was a magnifying glass and a round shell with a hole in it.  The point was to use the magnifying glass to look at the texture of the shell but instead she put the round handle of the magnifying glass into the round hole of the shell and twisted.

I'm going to be real honest here and say any one of us would have done the same thing.

But you can't say that, right?  You have be all, "OH!  WOE IS THE WANTON DESTRUCTION OF MY CHILD!  SHAME!  SHAME!"

And also she stabbed a little boy with a push-pin.

Let's not talk about that.