School Days

School is starting for my two oldest kids next Monday. That means it’s errand time at the little box house. Today we did haircuts. Well, a haircut for Ashton, and a virtually non-existent trim for Chloe. She wavered for a few minutes on whether she wanted it all hacked off again- last March, for her very first haircut, we chopped off 13 inches and donated it to Locks of Love. I won’t lie. It was heart wrenching to say goodbye to all that hair. All I could think of was the very ends of that hair being the hair she was born with, the hair I’d first put in tiny Velcro bows, the hair that had curled around her fat little neck... But I’d do it again, if she wanted to. Today, in the end, she decided to keep it long for Daddy’s sake. I’ll never understand the deal with dads and long hair. The first time my mom tried to trim my almost thigh-length hair, at the age of six, I squirmed mercilessly... causing her to have to keep cutting it to keep it even. In the end, she ended up taking about 7 inches off. I remember her crying, worried about what my dad would say. She laid the hair out on a sales paper- it was K-Mart, I remember, advertising a sale on bikes- and left it on the washer for him to see when he came home. He cried. I remember it. The whole “a woman’s hair is her glory” thing, I think. Lord knows, I haven’t embraced THAT particular scripture, having hacked off my hair at the age of fifteen and never gone back.

The rest of this week will be spent searching for an elusive Mario book bag- I knew I should have bought the one when I saw it, but I thought I had plenty of time. And now they’re all gone. Then packing said book bags, labeling folders and pencil boxes and every. single. Crayola in four 24 set boxes. That’s right. School requires that every crayon, every pencil, eraser, and glue stick be labeled with the child’s name. I suppose I understand to a degree, but it still seems a little extreme, to have to sit on my couch for an hour with a fine tipped Sharpie, laboriously writing “Ashton” and “Chloe” on four sets of crayons.

Part of me is ready for school to start back (the other part is screaming about my late nights being taken away and replaced with early mornings). My kids have been undeniably restless, Ashton especially. He gets bored so easily, and irritated at being the only boy- we’ve talked about this before, remember? There’s nothing I can do on that front, no matter how much he begs for a baby brother. He’s just out of luck there. So, school is his only other option to hang out with “the guys”.

Chloe, of course, has been asking for the past 3 weeks when she gets to start kindergarten. I know she’s excited... but I can’t really picture her learning anything. She’s such a little butterfly. It’s hard for me to imagine her coming home to do her homework, practice her reading... more than likely she’ll tell me what so-and-so was wearing, or how many people told her she looked cute that day. Not that she’s ignorant, by any means. Just... flighty. And used to playing the damsel in distress. She’ll always- ALWAYS- let someone else do the work for her. I’ll have to be careful with that particular little character flaw. She knows if she plays helpless long enough, I’ll get frustrated and do it for her. See? Not ignorant. Quite the opposite.

What are you doing to get ready for school? Hopefully not labeling 100 crayons... but if you are, rest assured that you and I are sharing the back to school experience.