Today is my oldest son’s first day back at school.  He’s attends a year-round school that we love…they go to school for 9 week blocks and have 3 3-week intersessions.  And summer vacation is only about 6 weeks long.  It’s a schedule he thrives in and we’re very glad that we have the opportunity for him to attend a school with a year-round calendar.

Last year he started kindergarten in the midst of much family drama…my husband had just been laid off, I was pregnant and still in the first trimester, and we (being the overprotective and slightly anxious parents that we are) were very worried about how he would do in full day school 5x a week.  As it happened, I woke up that morning with some symptoms of possible miscarriage and I was so freaked out that I didn’t get as emotional as I expected to…I was way too stressed about losing the baby to really register the enormity of the day mentally.

But today is the first day of 1st grade, and despite looking forward to him going back to school for about a week now, I just broke down crying because I miss him.  Since there is no other explanation for this, I’ll just say I’m hormonal.  It makes about as much sense as anything else, I guess!

My day was filled with more drama than the Temple Theater in the first 3 hours I was awake.  All of it centering around my 6.5 year old son who is quite possibly the most dramatic person I have *ever* met.  Anyway, just to get a glimpse into my morning…

I had big plans for a playdate with one of my best friends and was super excited…since I’ve put the running on hold, I haven’t seen her anywhere near enough and I really was needing some time with her!  I got everyone dressed and ready to go by myself (don’t laugh…it’s not easy, especially when you have a fabulous husband who helps out most of the time!) and as we were walking out the door my oldest announces that his stomach hurts.  This type of announcement is typically followed by spewage, so I ran through the list of possibilities…are you hungry, do you need to use the potty, have a little water, is that better, do you feel like you’re going to throw up?  I got nos (noes?) to all of them except the last one.  UGH.  And then he suddenly says “WAIT!  The water made me feel better.”  I’m skeptical, but I tell him to go on out to the car.  I heft the ridiculously heavy baby seat and carry it out and put it on the base, only to look at him in the back of the van and he looks distinctly unwell.  So I ask him if he feels OK and he’s shaking his head no and I have to admit to myself that in the unlikely event that he actually has a stomach bug, I need to avoid passing it to my friend’s kids.  So we all get out of the van and head back in the house.

I call her and leave a message letting her know that we won’t be there and settle in on the couch with the kids…making sure that our “puke bucket” is nearby.  She calls me back and we proceed to talk for a while, during which he mentions that he feels better.  By now, I’m fairly certain that he’s fine but still don’t want to take the chance so I tell him that we’re not going and he proceeds to throw a hissy fit the likes of which I didn’t expect to see until my daughter experiences PMS in 13 years or so.  So I told him that it’s OK to be upset, but that his behavior is not OK and if he needs to throw a fit that he can do so in his room.

Stomping, door slamming, screaming, crying…you get the picture.  I continue my conversation with my friend (yeah, I’m a crappy mom…I own it) and sort of tune him out.  Until I hear this huge crash and then screams of pain.  Bad words went through my head as I headed down the hall to figure out how bad this was.  I open the door and he is sitting in the middle of the room with his leg turned at a weird angle.  I’m thinking broken, dislocated, sprained…you know the drill.  I quickly get off the phone with my friend, because I really *am* worried about how badly he might be hurt, but he is able to stand up and walk without too much trouble.  I ask him what happened.

Apparently he was jumping on the bed while he threw this little temper tantrum and fell off.  Heh.  I like natural consequences.  So I kindly point out that if he wasn’t acting the fool, he wouldn’t have done this, now would he?  He crosses his arms and stands there and glares at me for a minute, then reluctantly agrees.  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  Oh, and because I am more than a little furious (but I truly did stay calm through the whole thing, never raising my voice and *totally* modeling appropriate behavior for someone who is upset) that he was jumping on the very old bed that my grandfather, who is no longer living, made with his own hands I remove one of his privileges and tell him to sit quietly on his bed until he is ready to act appropriately.

And then I return to the couch and call my friend back.  Because I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to have our playdate, too.  And we *really* like to talk!  Sometime during the conversation, he hops into the living room, joins me on the couch, and is complaining about his knee.  And he refuses to walk on it because it hurts so bad.  And it is now swelling and feels weird to me when I feel it to see if anything feels out of place.    Don’t you like my special medical terminology?  I am sure I will make a fabulous nurse and the doctors will love when I put the words “feels weird to touch” in a patient’s history.  Anyway…

I get off the phone again and make a call to the pediatrician.  They are winding up their morning appointments, but if I can be there within 15 minutes they can see us.  Fabulous, we are all already dressed and can hop in the van and be there in ten.  So we get there and he is jumping around and walking just fine.  And again, I’m feeling more than a little pissed because he is clearly OK and his drama has led to an unnecessary doctor’s visit.  They check him out and he’s just fine. (Of course!)  But I’ve kept up a running dialogue about appropriate behavior and how to handle disappointment correctly and how we treat people (since he was nasty to the nurse) even when we’re having a bad day.

It was a good lesson, I guess.  I just didn’t need to be forced into teaching it today.