Monday, August 31, 2009

the witching hour

I can tell time by Bug these days. When he's somewhere like school, he runs on High Power and uses up all of his Good, leaving only remnants of our usual child to return to us in the afternoon. We knew it would be like this, starting kindergarten. I had prepared, somewhat. We'd gotten him used to going to bed at a different time from Pook-- a mighty feat I may add, considering they share a room. I'd also prepared him for the return of regular naps once summer ended; it looked like there'd be time for naps on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and that seemed like it would do. Unfortunately, it takes him longer to settle down after school than it did Pook and where Pook had a baby brother taking a nap when he came home and soon joined his brother in napping, Bug isn't settled enough to sleep until about 3:30 (home by 2:30). In my house, no one has ever been allowed to nap past 4pm, so I had to make the decision to scrap naps this fall. That, I knew, was a recipe for disaster.

So here we were, both boys practicing magic tricks I helped them learn today-- Bug while Pook did homework, and Pook while Bug... annoyed Pook. I was doing some PTA project on the computer and suddenly Bug fell to the floor, melted. If you know the book Knuffle Bunny, I'll call it "boneless", if you just want to picture a puddle of crying five year old, that'll do too. "I can't do it." It's all your fault!" "I'm never doing this trick!" I looked at the clock here at the bottom left of my screen... 4:58.

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