Weekend Journal

The kids have been home for four days, because the schools were closed for two days for the New Jersey teachers’ conventions. 14 hours until the little dears return to circle group and spelling tests. Not that I’m counting.

Actually, it hasn’t been too bad. Everybody was in good spirits, and I even managed to get some work done.

I’m fleshing out my lectures for next semester now. I’m teaching four classes with three new preps this spring. If I think too much about it, I start to hyperventilate. It’s all stuff I know pretty well, but four classes are still four classes. We’ve been trimming down our weekend plans to give me more time to work and less time to obsess. No trips to the city or hikes through the woods. Today, Steve spent the afternoon entertaining the kids at home, and I ran off to the town library to write up a lecture on blogs for my Media class. Blogrolls, sock puppetry, trolls, flames, carnivals, counters, taglines, blogosphere, MSM, netroots. I’m going to get paid for this?

As I was driving back from IKEA on Friday, Jonah asked me if he could play video games when we got home. I said maybe and we chatted for a little while about his favorite game, Age of Empires. From Ian’s car seat, we heard “C-O-N-Q-U-E-R-O-R-S.” At first, I thought he was trying to spell computer, but then I thought about it and said, “what did you say, Ian?” And he did it again. Conquerors is a subtitle of Jonah’s Age of Empires game, and it flashes up on the screen when he starts it up. Not a lot of four year olds can spell that word. We’re not entirely sure which side of normal Ian is going to end up on.

Jonah had a rough month at school. He’s been avoiding his usual group of boys-who-play-sports during recess. After twenty questions one evening, I realized that instead of playing with Noah and Brendan and Dylan, he’s been playing every day with the girl with fetal alcohol syndrome who needs a full time aide to keep her on task. I’m glad that my kid is sweet enough to play with the learning disabled kids, but something must be up if he isn’t playing at all with old buddies. Actually, I asked too many questions, and he started crying that nobody liked him. He probably was just going through a sensitive stage and needed a little time on his own. I made a little thing into a big thing by asking too many questions. Parent of the year.

Steve and I worry that we’re going to make our kids too weird to make friends. Jonah’s the only kid in his class without a Game Cube and the only one whose dad spends his weekends making maps of famous battles with his kid. So, we’re adjusting a little around here. Steve spent the afternoon watching football with Jonah, rather than discussing the Battle of Hastings. We also may have decided to give in on the Game Cube thing.

I can’t believe that I’m worrying about normality again. I’ve been running from normal ever since my late teens when I discovered black clothes and poetry slams in the East Village. And then at some point, I stopped caring entirely. It’s rather annoying that I’ve returned to normal now I’m a parent. Keeping the kids normal is so important for school and for their peers. Can’t really talk about Ian reading at a first grade level. They might put him away in a special school. We have to give Jonah the tools he needs to blend in, even if they seem to stupid to us, because he just wants to be like everyone else.

I’m not going to live through their middle school years.