Settled In and Worked Up!

We're all settled in our new house, and I am finding the boys not quite as infuriating as the week we moved in.  Of course, my pregnancy hormones are still raging hard, but the boys seemed to have calmed down in their new abode, and some of the novelty has already become commonplace.  I don't hear as much ruckus from the basement, they're not as obsessed as climbing on their bunk beds like some kind of poor man's jungle gym, and neither of my so-called brilliant children have yet figured out that other things can go down the laundry chute aside from laundry.  I mean, really, boys?  Little Teddy hasn't wanted a ride?  Nobody's thought to shove an iron down there a la "Home Alone" (one of their favorite movies)?  I'm almost disappointed I haven't had to pull Alex out by his foot.

Two intelligent, well-behaved (ish) boys completing a puzzle.

I took Andy for his kindergarten assessment yesterday.  What a feeling, to enter this big building and watch him get led away into a room as his first step to entering actual, real elementary school next year.  Of course, he passed the assessment with flying colors, the counselor or teacher or volunteer or whoever she was remarking that he "even knew rhyming words!"  The rest of the assessment, though, was pretty lame.  Based on their standards, I'm pretty sure Alex is ready for kindergarten.  Simple shapes?  Counting to five?  Knowing if they are a boy or a girl?  Come on, school district.  Give us something to aspire to already.  "Andy's very good at counting," you might say to me, "But he has no idea what the Krebs Cycle is."

As I've been hyping up the start of kindergarten next year (Bus!  Cafeteria!  Gym!  Tornado drills!), Alex is starting to get upset that he's not going as well.  "But you have two more years of preschool left," I try to reason with him as I think in equal parts, "Alex, you only have two more years of little boyhood left!"  and  "My God, he's still got two more years????"  Everyone's getting promoted around here, and while I fear that Andy will starve from not being able to open his own lunch at school next year (you should see him try to get a granola bar unwrapped; he's like a bear in the woods struggling with chips), I know that Alex's promotion from baby to middle child without his big brother around quite as much is going to be the hardest.  Alex, I am starting to realize though, is extremely intelligent, and I think he will get it and be just fine.  He understands a lot more than I give him credit for and has a memory like a steel trap.  He is also extremely hilarious in that not accidental/on purpose way that really works.  Yesterday, while building blocks, a single block fell over, very softly, with no big to do.  "This is the worst day of my life," he muttered to himself, straightening the block.  And it was in his delivery; I couldn't stop laughing for ten minutes or so.

And it feels good to laugh, as I had a sting of days in which I was only crying.  You see, it all started with hummus.  Hummus which I would later find out was part of a recall, as it was potentially tainted with a bacteria that could seriously harm my little unborn baby.  Oh, the spiral of emotions as I did everything in my power to fix the situation.  I called the grocery store to try to trace where my batch had come from.  I called the hummus people looking for specific answers.  I called my doctor and then my doctor's nurse to discuss if I could be tested and how I should proceed with life and pregnancy knowing that this bacteria was possibly festering in my body.  It was a rough couple of days, all because of a little dip on a chip.  But I guess I've been convinced that I'm probably going to be fine, as is my baby.  The doctor is so unconcerned by the whole debacle that it's basically insulting.  That being said, she is humoring me, and my hysteria has essentially worked me into "high risk patient" status.  I'm getting non-stress tests and ultrasounds to check for growth and fetal stress until she is born.  My next appointment, in two weeks for the 36 week check up, is going to be a doozy.  "Plan on being here for almost two hours," the doctor told me, a slight smirk on her face.  I guess it should all give me comfort, and it does.  But being pregnant is terrifying enough.  You can't see what's going on in there!  Somebody has to watch out for this little baby!  And that responsibility falls squarely on me.  On the upside, after several conversations with the hummus people, their insurance representative, etc, I think I may be getting free hummus for life.  Not that I'm ever going near the stuff again.  But the resale value has to be pretty good, right?

Anyway, we're almost there.  From here on out, it's the waiting game, which I am pretty awful at.  I'm about as bad at the waiting game as Alex is at Connect Four.  So maybe he's not quite ready to jump ahead to kindergarten after all.  Let's be honest, this whole starting school thing is definitely something that I CAN wait for.  Although let's see how crazy my house gets this summer with no preschool and a new baby.  My raging anger hormones are bound to be in check after delivery, right? Right.  For sure.