I had such grandiose plans for this week. I was going to schedule an eye doctor appointment, buy some of my uber-expensive fake cheese (which I consider to be a staple for lunch, despite having run out of it over the weekend), get my hair layered (so it doesn't poof out and make me look like an electrocuted poodle--no animals were harmed in the making of this statement), and run out to a few stores I have not had the chance to visit in a while. Naturally, this is in addition to my normal grocery shopping, laundry, house cleaning, attempts at exercise, and kidlet routines. Unfortunately, I completely forgot that the kidlets' school Book Fair is this week.
Last year, Book Fair was a breeze for me. All three kidlets' classes were scheduled for the same day. All I had to do was show up, help them shop, cough up the cash to pay for their purchases, and then kill time until the next kidlet's class was due. This year, each kidlet has been assigned a different day to visit the Book Fair, and all at wacky times, thus killing my ability to schedule other appointments or run to the store for three days this week. Oh, and the fourth day the kidlets all have off from school, thus preventing stress-free errands, and the fifth day I have to get the groceries. So much for the best laid plans.
Horse's Book Fair was yesterday. She suffers from an extreme inability to make decisions. Throw her in a room with a few bucks and a bunch of books, and she will shut down and be incapable of determining which book or books she wishes to purchase. Her teacher more or less cornered me to tell me how wonderful she is doing in class, which is great to hear but does not allow me to help my daughter shop. I finally scared him away by asking why they cannot access their reading books online yet. (He laughed about forgetting to enter the students' information online, and then fled.) Eventually, Horse picked a couple of books for me to buy and borrowed against her allowance to purchase a few more. At least that made the choosing part easier, since she did not have to leave any books behind.
Rooster's class visited the Book Fair today. The first thing that happened with her was that she shut down due to the noise. Ah, the perks of taking a kidlet with sensory issues and cramming her into an enclosed area with a class full of boisterous chatterboxes! She clamped her hands over her ears, tried to huddle into me, and pouted. Eventually, the crowd of kidlets parted and she had some space to look at books. I managed to steer her to books at her reading level, but she was not overly impressed by the selection. She wound up finding two extremely girlie girl books and then stopped looking for herself. Rooster's teacher had a wish list of books for the classroom, and my daughter chose one of them to donate to the class. Naturally, it was the only book with the word "underpants" in the title. A girl's got to have standards, you know. Sigh.
Tomorrow, I get to visit Pig Jr. as he hits the Book Fair. It will be interesting to see if he hides from the sensory overload like his sister did or if he is in a sensory seeking mood and dives right into the fray. The last few Book Fairs he has attended, he has only been interested in one book, and it cost more than all of his sisters' books combined. He's got his standards, too, apparently.
Even though I have had to postpone every single goal I had for the week, I must confess to enjoying meeting up with my kidlets during the school day. They were also excited to see me in their school environment. Heck, even kidlets who weren't mine seemed interested in seeing "Rooster's Mommy" show up unexpectedly. I hope Pig Jr. will feel the same way tomorrow. Looking like a blind, electrocuted poodle and missing out on fake cheese at lunchtime are small prices to pay for seeing my kidlets' eyes light up when they spot me at their Book Fair. Those errands can wait. My kidlets' experiences growing up will not.
No comments:
Post a Comment