The first days

So we are on day 3.

 

Day 1

 

Actually went really well. I stayed with him the whole morning. We got there bright and early around 7am. We talked to the cafeteria and he got his first public school breakfast. Which we public school kids know isn’t all that great.

 

He truly is a spoiled private school kid. He was in a private day care for a year and in a private Pre-k school for another 2. His meals are all freshly made. Juice 100% freshly squeezed or ice cold milk. Meals are served in big serving dishes where he can serve himself. His dishes are real and just his. He has his own personal seat and sits at a ‘real’ table. I loved eating lunch with him. Sometimes the food was better than what I could cook. And I can really cook.

 

So when it came to breakfast he had the look of “You got to be kidding me. This isn’t real food.” He was irritated that none of the kids were sitting down nicely, quietly, and eating. The food of course looked micro waved, even the rice. The fruits, well of course there canned, so Nyx didn’t think they were real. So to say the least he hated breakfast. Even the carton milk, although it was chocolate, lacked any luster for him. He didn’t know how to open it, irritated he didn’t have a cup, and even saddened that he couldn’t get a straw. It got to the point where he looked at me with his beautiful brown eyes and said, “Mommy can we just go home.” No matter how much I wanted to say yes and flee faster any person before me, I held back and said no. I felt bad. As far as the food, I understood the feeling. I hated cafeteria food anyways. So I’m deciding home lunches might be the way to go for him. We are still undecided. But at this rate breakfast at home might be opening up. Now if I could only get him to wake up early enough.

 

After breakfast we made our way to his classroom. His teacher wasn’t there yet, so we waited. Next door he saw his Pre-k classmate Abby, which was a relief for him because he was becoming worried that he wouldn’t know anyone. Shortly after his friend David – who is in the same class with him – came waltzing in too. Mrs. T. finally opened the door and all the kids rushed in. Nyx was excited. Signed his name in, got his name tag and hurried to find his desk. It was almost as if the whole breakfast fiasco didn’t happen. Lucky for me, I was worried he was going to start crying. I took a few pictures, Not really much, I was more focused on make sure he was comfortable than taking much pictures.

 

In the end, we were both ok. I didn’t cry. I didn’t freak out. I didn’t even have a mild panic attack. I was ok. I was a big girl.

 

I walked away with a smile on my face, excitement in my heart, and knowing this is going to be a good thing.

 

Since it was a half day the bus wasn’t going to bring him to the youth center after school. I had to pick him up at noon and bring him there myself. I questioned him about everything. Maybe a little too fast because he wasn’t able to respond fast enough, but when I slowed down Nyx had only one thing to say,

 

“Mom, I’m so happy I went to Kindergarten. I want to say there forver.”

 

That’s all I needed to hear.

 

Day 2

 

Same spiel, difference? He gets to ride the school bus. My number one worry.

 

I took off from work early to go see a doctor and get some antibiotics and run everywhere to change my name.

 

While at my main bank I realized I got a miss call from the school at 1:15pm. I only noticed at 1:38pm. Weird, school finishes at 12:35 on Wednesdays. I have a voicemail.

 

Correction I have 3 voicemails! 2 from the school and 1 from the bus driver. My heart stopped.

 

Message 1.

“Hi Daniella, the bus driver called and doesn’t know where you son goes. Nyx said he doesn’t know where he lives.”

 

Message 2

“Hi this Irma, the bus driver, I have your son here. If you could let me know where he lives and I’ll happy to drop him off.

 

Message 3

“Hi Daniella, the bus driver still doesn’t know where your son goes. Your son has gotten on the wrong bus. Please call back.”

 

ZOMFG!!!

I’m in town a good 45 minutes away. I hurry the teller along and urgently call Preston. No answer. I call his coworker Ken to hurry and get Preston. I run out to my car and Preston calls me back and lets me know that he will rush over to the school.

 

Now my son has a great imagination so when asked where I lives, I wouldn’t be surprised that he would make up a place and that’s where he will go. I would hope the bus driver has better sense than that.

 

I called the bus driver, no answer. I called the school, they said he isn’t at the school. WTF!?!

 

I call Preston and he tells me, well the school said Nyx was brought back and sitting in the office. Why couldn’t they have told me that? I start to cry frantically.

 

Preston tells me not to worry. I should just finish my errands in town and he’ll pick up Nyx and figure out what happened.

 

Pssffttt. Like I’m going to do that, I rushed back. I wish people knew when things were urgent and just moved. Lol.

 

On my drive back I learned that Nyx did get on the right bus, but since he looked so confused the bus driver figured he was on the wrong bus.

 

You see he doesn’t take the bus to our house; he takes the bus to the youth center for The Company. So he had to get special permission for that. I guess we didn’t drill teach or explain to him enough as to what he should do when the bus stops. So when Preston picked him up he drove back to the youth center bus stop and walked him through step by step what he should do and where he should go.

 

It’s weird his other friend’s that go to the youth center got on the bus with him, but he never got off with them. I don’t know. It must be my fault and my horrible directions. Either way I FREAKED out.

 

Nyx wasn’t scared, he wasn’t mad, he was just confused. A teacher told us about another student, an older girl that goes to the youth center also, she will help Nyx get the hang of riding the bus and help him get off and walk to the youth center with him.

 

Day 3

 

So the first thing we did was find the teacher that will point out a new friend for Nyx. The girl that will help him get on and off the bus. Although she wasn’t there yet, Nyx stayed with the teacher until she introduced Nyx to his new friend.

 

What really sucked was that Preston made me leave early.

 

I didn’t get to eat breakfast with Nyx.

 

I didn’t get to walk Nyx to class.

 

Preston made me leave early. I was sour about that. But he is right. I need to start leaving Nyx at some point. I can’t walk him through everything. No matter how much I want to.

 

So today Nyx truly was on his own.

 

I’m not even sure he even bothered to eat breakfast. He still looked confused, but he was offered to sign in for the “Breakfast Club”, where they could just play games until school started. Which probably prevented him from eating because he heard the words “play games.”

 

So I hope it went well. I hope he walked to his class. I hope he ate something. I definitely hope he gets off the bus this time.

 

In all, the first week of school is almost over. I still want to hold his hands. I still hate dropping him off. And I’m fearful to get to the point where I can pull up to the school, he gets out on his own and walks off.

 

I’m still holding on to whatever small threads I have to be the overbearing/protective/crazy mom I’m allowed to be.

 

Tomorrow is another day, maybe I’ll grow up a little more then. Lol.

Do Work, Son!

And that I have, and man have I.

In 10 days I put in 134 hours of work. I asked for extra money in this rough spot of the year and I got it, 3 folds. Lots of overtime and double time. Very little much to complain about. I saw my son for all of 8 hours the whole time. I spoke on the phone with him every moment I could. I cuddled up for the nights that was possible for me to come home. It hurt, a lot.

I have been quite absent from everything, everyone, and even myself. I’ve been trying to prove myself, not only to my boss, but to myself. If that makes much sense.

In the months of pass, I’ve grown very weary of my job. Frustrated with feeling stunted by my every daunting task. And questioning my very worth as an employee.

Though I had to sacrifice my valuable time with my son, I received a rejuvenated feeling of worth. I was given incredible challenges and surprise attacks of “bam you got 1 hour to do this make it happen.” Truly it was grueling and i wanted to cry, but I needed my faith in myself to be restored. I needed to reminded that I am pure awesomeness at my job.

Don’t misunderstand me though. I hated being away from my son. I hated not seeing him off to school. I hated having to eat each microwavable meal with another coworkers in a cold building. I hated hearing the tone of much sadness in my son’s voice. It was hard. For the both of us.

Though I needed to be reminded why I enjoy my job, above all we needed the money. Expenses have gone up dramatically. Needs need to be met. Bills to be paid and roof to be kept over our heads. A boss needed to feel much confidence in to give me my raise. Of which prior boss had set up for me already, but new boss didn’t know and screwed that up.

So I’ve done work and things have started to slow down again. I’m back to 8 hours a day. Which leaves only 3 more days of weird hours. 3 days which my son doesn’t need to be in some sort of sad state. He’ll be at J.’s house and won’t really notice my leave.

And so goes for the work end.

Kindergarten.

Nyx had his assessment test yesterday (7/21) and it was about 45 minutes long. Really went through some basic things. His letters, upper and lower, numbers, colors, shapes, body parts, etc. I feel he went through with flying colors. He stumbled a little on the Q, R, G, and S. Skipped 14-16 while counting to 20. Didn’t know where his wrist and heel was, but in all he had awesome remarks.

I get to call in tomorrow or Thursday to schedule a parent-student meeting. That’s when we get to learn what teacher he will have and group he gets put in. We then get to place all his things into his classroom and he finally gets to see where he will finally be.

Might I add, labeling every crayon, erase, marker and book is really a huge pain in the ass Especially when he has 4 boxes of the same markers and crayons.

More updates of Kindergarten are soon to come.

And to end my entry with…..

Divorce.

Not much I can say here. I rushed to notarize some documents last week Friday. In return my lawyers response was,

“So looks like you’ll be divorce in a couple weeks.”

Not that the last 3 years of fighting for a divorce was a fucking breeze.

Let this week be over

because stress is something I have way too much of.

Let’s start with last week Friday night, it’s like after 12am and I’m off to bed. And guess what? I wake up an hour later with the most killer back pain. It was shooting up, down, left, right just damn near all over my back. I tossed and turn trying to find the most comfortable position. I ended up grabbing the floor futon and trying to lie on the floor. Nope. The pain then start spreading to my chest.

You know the feeling you get when you are going down a roller coaster or when you start going down on an elevator? Its that weird “my gut just shifted into my chest” feeling. Highly uncomfortable when you have it for over 4 hours and every breath you take you feel like chunks are going to fly out.

Around 7am Saturday morning I felt Preston got enough sleep and I cried, literally I cried, for a back massage. I finally fell asleep. He took care of Nyx for a few hours and I finally got up at around 1030am. I wanted to babysit my nephew Baby K that day. Get Nyx used to little ones and Preston to understand the feeling of 2 kids.

Let’s just say with a 4 year old and a 1 year old the day was not uneventful. It was more intense. Nyx was very competitive. Any time I gave Baby K a complement Nyx was sure to follow with, “I’m eating really good too mom.” . . . “I can take bigger bites mom.” . . . “I don’t use diapers mom.” I was cool with it though. I knew it was to be expected. Preston, well, he was a different story. He got strung out on having two wee ones. I had fun though.

Sunday was uneventful, but once again I had that incredibly monstrous back pains. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe they were sympathy pains. Ya know because of Mo’s pregnancy. Maybe that’s it.

Nonetheless, I had a horrible nights rest on Sunday. Oh wait let me add to the pain. Once I was finally able to fall asleep Nyx started crying at 430. No more than 2 hours after I finally fell asleep, crying might I add. Nyx tossed and turned in his bed, finally giving in and climbing into our bed where he then got fed up with sleeping next to us that he grabbed his stuff and migrated back to his room at around 530am. Keeping track here? My alarm is set to go off at 6am. I laid there till then. Nyx and I were not on good terms by then. Me with the lack of sleep and Nyx not wanting to explain to me why he was crying or what was hurting.

Off to school and work we go. I picked him up 2 hours later because he couldn’t stop crying he was literally in pain. Pain in which he couldn’t explain to me. By this time he has already been crying for almost 5 hours.

Monday was then spent driving around trying to find out what’s wrong with Nyx. His regular pediatrician wasn’t able to see him till 330 and I knew I couldn’t wait that long so we had to put up with Dr. Wotring. With a name like that it I reluctantly wanted to see him. He couldn’t find anything wrong with my son and suggested I see his dentist because Nyx claims the pain is coming from his mouth. But in case of a possible infection we were prescribed antibiotics.

For the last 8 years I’ve been going to Longs for all of our prescriptions and why is it that day it took them over an hour to find my insurance information?!?!! Do they not see my son and I are both extremely tired, my son is crying nonstop and we just want to make this FAST?!?!?! I found children’s tylenol and finally Nyx calmed down, it was as if nothing was wrong with him. Thank you tylenol.

We headed over to our dentist, same dentist he went to almost 2 years ago and refused to cooperate. It was bad enough where they remembered him. I was advised that if he didn’t cooperate they would send him to a “specialist.” But do you honestly think that things could possibly go smoothly? Of course not. Nyx screamed and yelled. All he had to do was say “aaahhhh,” no poking, just looking. Nope. He cried, and cried, and cried some more. Instantly an appointment was made for us to see the “specialist,” on Tuesday.

What do I mean by specialist? Why dentists and dentist nurses are specially trained to hold down kids and open their mouths. Doesn’t that sound like fun?!?!

We finally got home around 230pm Nyx is still crying, falling in and out of sleep, and no way of truly consoling him. He cried to much that he clogged his sinus enough that he couldn’t pop his ears. How do I know this because he started freaking out about “hearing voices in his head,” and that “he couldn’t hear his voice.”

It was a horrible Monday night.

Yesterday, Tuesday, was much much better. In some sense. Our appointment was at 930. Nyx promised to cooperate and open his mouth. I explained to him what might happen if he didn’t. And I really thought they were just going to take some x-rays and clean his teeth or something. I was wrong. They talk to us for all of 5 minutes. Had him in the seat with 10 seconds, examined his teeth and found out which tooth was the culprit in less than 30 seconds and were drilling at his tooth within 2 minutes of being in the room. Nyx probably thinks I’m the biggest liar in the world. Two nurses holding him down, the dentist holding his head, and me?! Me being forced to hold his hands. Nyx cried, kicked, and fought to hard to get out of there. They drilled down to the nerve of his molar, filled it with this white stuff and gave him that silver crowning thing. We then had a consult, set up his check up for June and were sent off on our merry way. We were out of there by 10:14.

Fast recap appointment at 930. I got there at 923. I filled out at least 10 pages of paper work, waited another 10 minutes, consult, drill, consult, set up another appoint and off I was sent by 10:14. I think it went so fast that Nyx was still in a daze.

I felt horrible, but ya know what? Nyx didn’t cry again, the pain was gone, the voices were too, and he was back to being his happy chipper self again. But now when he smiles, I feel like I ruined his smile. His right second from the back molar is silver.

He calls it his bling bling. Damn this kid sometimes.

Back to Square One

So for the many, or few, that have screaming at me to jump on Oovoo.com or at least update and let the world know I’m ok……I’m ok.

For those you figured, “eh she’s moving into the new house and working I can wait and things will be back to normal at the end of March.” You are wrong.

We are moving, again. But don’t worry it’s not that far. In fact it’s practically still in the same house. I’ll get to that.

At the beginning of March I will admit that we were all ‘gung-ho’ about moving and doing it swiftly. Our incentive: some of March’s rent back from the apartment. We neglected to read our landlords fine print, in her words. Only IF she found tenants to move in BEFORE the end of March. Fat chance. So rather than stressing each other our and working ourselves down to the marrow we took are sweet time.

We have been living in the new house for almost 3 weeks now. Which reminds me. It’s our 2 year anniversary. As of today we have been living together, parent free, completely adult like for exactly 2 years now. Amazing how fast the years have gone.

Yesterday we said goodbye to the tiny apartment we have grown to love. Our first place together. In fact our first place without our parents, or someone’s parents, to guide our way. We picked up our small TV and entertainment unit. Scrubbed down almost every nook and cranny. Dusted and swept the hidden dust bunnies. Then finally shut and locked the door one last time. I remember when we first got the place we were happy that someone finally said yes to us. We were 21 years old, no references, practically no credit and a 2 year old boy. Not a single person wanted to rent to us. Till we found our apartment. I prayed, crossed my fingers, and put on the biggest smile I could to impress the landlord. It worked. I think. I walked in, fell in love, and she said yes. Over the next two years, we grew (metaphorically and physically lol) and finally the place got too small for us. Which landed us here.

A cute pink house. Well extension of a house. $200 more from the apartment. But we get a yard, a garage, and near-perfect neighborhood. We dealt with the stress of March only begging for April to come. We were tired of running back and forth. Packing and unpacking, which just turned into throw crap into container and dump on living room floor. And now April 1st is here nonetheless. And we are moving again.

But it’s not across ‘town.’ It’s quite literally on the other side of the wall. The family that was living in the main house moved out this past weekend. In the middle of their moving they allowed us to roam around their house. Get a feel of it to see if we want to inquire with our new landlords of they would be interested in renting it out to us. Let’s say the main house is 2.5 times bigger than our side. In the process of viewing their house we found out the previous tenants of our house was paying $500 LESS than what we are. I was L.I.V.I.D. They paid $500 less than us?!?!?!?! Better yet the rent for the main house is only $100 more than our rent now. WTF?! It’s almost 3 times bigger and they pay $100 more?

So yesterday Preston called our Landlady, C.S., and inquired about the main house. She originally wanted to renovate the whole house and then offer it to us. But seeing that she renovated the extension and jacked up the rent I was scared she would do the same for the main house. But Preston was amazing. He was very adamant about wanting the main house. He told them that the house is great condition and would like to rent it out the way it is. She was sort of cautious about it. I’m thinking she had the feeling the main house was in shambles or something. Which it really isn’t.

As of yesterday, we now are renting the main house. With all our shit still sitting on the floor EVERYWHERE in the extension! We have till the 15th to move into the main house. We told her we won’t be moving anything till the weekend of the 11th. We have Nyx this weekend and I asked my sister K if we can watch Baby K on Saturday so Nyx can spend time with his cousin and I am able to start getting Nyx comfortable around little ones. I forgot to mention, she did jack up the price but only $100.

I love the main house. It’s 3bd and 2 ba. It’s BIG. Now if we can only find people we like to move into the extension we will be set. I don’t want to end up with shitty neighbors.

Man I have so much to update.

The shittiest utility to deal with by far, and so far, was the cable company. The guy on the 17th was a lazy bum and we found out he had no clue what he was talking about. But his stupidity was going to cost me 10 more days of misery. Another cable guy was to come on the 27th to run a new coax and install. But between the 17th and the 27th Preston hooked up the cable anyways. It worked stupid cable guys! We made 5 cat5e cable runs through the house so we don’t have cables running this way and that across the house. Good thing we didn’t finish it yet, because of course now it has to be pulled and rerunned through the main house.

I even upgraded to Road Runner turbo to get a whole whomping 8mb download speed. Bullshit there, speedtest.net only sees 2mb. I’m going to have to give them a bitchfest before the end of the week. Regardless I have internet, even if at some points it feels like dial up once and while. Another reason to bitch. Preston installed the cable himself and the cable guy on the 27th only plugged in the HD DVR and we STILL got charged $50 for installation. GRRRR.

Nyx has been doing pretty well. J’s parents came back from Africa for a month, just to do taxes, and will be going back eventually. J’s brother from California came down too so Nyx was getting the opportunity to spend time with cousin’s he practically never sees. In fact I don’t think he ever met them before this past week. The school year is almost coming to a near so you know what that means! Kindergarten in August!!!!

I’m becoming pretty adjusted to the idea of him going to public school soon. Not that I want him to. But I can’t wait for his sake.

I don’t know if it’s me, but he’s been getting on my nerves a lot faster than ever. Attention has been shortened by 10 folds, his attitude heightened the extremes and he just doesn’t listen to anything. Constantly back talking and giving snarky remarks. Maybe I’m the one that can’t wait for Kindergarten to start.

It’s nearing bed time, I’m tired, Nyx is settling in and I still need a shower.

But pictures of the new abode are below! Disclaimer all taken with my phone.