Sarongs are not Weapons

Chris has been gone this week, learning how to make skis at the North House, a folk school on the shores of Lake Superior, in Grand Marais, Minnesota. He has been wanting to do this for years, and we finally made it happen. It meant that I took the week off from work to pull stay-at-home duty, and except for the fact that everyone got sick, it’s been a pretty painless experience.

Pulling off the morning routine single-handedly has been the most challenging thing about it, since mornings are generally hectic anyway, but with just me getting the kids ready, it's chaos. After the first morning on my own, I made a list of all the things the kids had to do every morning, to make sure they didn’t forget AND that I didn’t forget. It worked well, except that Ella can’t read yet.

So, by that, I mean, not so well.

Like, for instance, she may have gone to school without pants the other day.

And by that, I mean she did go to school without pants the other day. In my defense, she wore an old sarong of mine over tights, so I thought she was good to go. The first time she used the bathroom and couldn’t get it back on by herself, the sarong came off. And stayed off. Then she maybe used it to choke a classmate a little bit.

The sarong was confiscated by her teacher. Ella then flitted around her kindergarten classroom in tights and a t-shirt for the afternoon.

In my defense (again), she has been pressuring me to let her wear a loin cloth when we go out in public. Since I’ve refused, she has begun fashioning her own loin cloth, by tying long-sleeved shirts around her waist, one in front and one in back and roaming around the condo without a shirt. She would also like to own a spear.  

I thought the sarong would be a compromise of sorts, in terms of acceptable fashion. It turns out she interpreted it to be a compromise in terms of weaponry.

I had to fortify my list with pictures to make sure that everything was crystal clear. Pants, for instance? Mandatory. Weapons?  Not on the list.  Not even a little bit.   I printed it up and slipped it in a plastic sheet protector so that the kids could check each item off as they got it done. It turned out to be WILDLY successful.  Apparently, kids love, love, LOVE checking things off a list. It’s better than almost anything you can imagine. Especially if you are checking things off that your sibling hasn’t checked off yet. That just makes you a better human being. Clearly.

This week, aside from getting everyone to school, ensuring they were (mostly) clothed, and that we had a fairly normal bedtime routine, I have made all of our meals from scratch, which I proudly crow about, but the kids wouldn’t know that because THEY DIDN'T EAT ANY OF IT. Ella, I think, seems to have mostly subsisted on boogers (the ultimate food for those who are stubbornly self-reliant). By the way, do boogers have calories? This is a question a friend of mine, a fellow mom, and I pondered recently. And Jay…?  I don’t know. Years ago I blogged about staying home with the kids for several days while Chris went hunting up north. I wrote that I suspected Jay primarily survived on atmospheric dust. I am fairly certain he must still be existing on whatever he absorbed a few years ago, because I haven’t seen him take in anything. That leaves Jack, who likes to proclaim randomly “I’m a good eater!” which is true. Especially when there are bananas or cookies or red raspberries around. He did eat what I made, which makes him the favorite. 

Here’s our list which has helped the kids become much more self-sufficient this week:

See the picture of pants? That, evidently, is important to include.  See the bit about packing your weapons?  No.  No, you do not.  Because you should not take weapons to kindergarten, even if they are sarong shaped. I guess they have rules about that.