I had lofty goals of writing a treatise on the state of special education in America this week, but then I remembered it was spring break. I think the only person in this house who handles change in routine remotely well is Sparky. He’s also the one who’s routine doesn’t really change this week.
In anticipation of having no time to myself this week, I signed both boys up for farm camp. It’s only three hours in the afternoon, so there’s plenty of time left for free play. The theme is barnyard animals and they were both really excited about it.
Until they got home on Monday. Well, Zoo Keeper is still excited about it, but BamBam refused to go back on Tuesday. When we picked Zoo Keeper up that day, he took BamBam and me to a clearing where two streams meet. He had discovered it last summer when he attended a similar camp. BamBam thought it was hella cool, but was mad that I wouldn’t let him step into the stream like his brother because he was wearing Crocs. With socks, because that’s how we roll in Seattle.
BamBam agreed to go back to camp on Wednesday because he wanted to wear boots back to the stream afterward. I probably should have told him that we could have gone back to the stream even if he didn’t go to camp, but I was concerned about what he would do with that information.
As we walked toward the camp building, he said, “I’m wearing my Batman boots to camp so I can go jump in the stream, but I’m not going to learn anything about animals because I’m allergic.”
“You’re allergic to learning about the animals or allergic to the animals themselves?”
“Um, I don’t know. I don’t actually know what allergic means.”
I explained what allergic meant and that you can’t be allergic to learning about something, then dropped them off at camp. We went to the clearing and BamBam was in it all of two minutes before the running water did it’s trick and we had to go find the bathroom. Except the bathrooms are closed for the winter, so BamBam had his first port-a-potty experience. I held the door open and coached BamBam on what to do while Zoo Keeper complained about the smell. BamBam was worried at first because there was “stuff” already in the toilet. I told him that was because you don’t flush a port-a-potty, to which he replied, “I don’t have to flush? Cool!” and did his business.
It’s now Thursday afternoon. BamBam is home from camp again. After he finished yelling at the Angry Birds Go app on his iPad (“Hey! No Fair! That’s cheating!” repeated at full volume several times – his volume goes to 11), he moved from the living room to the chair next to my desk in my office treating me to a stream of consciousness monologue about how many minutes are passing. They’re going really slow. Part of that may be because he’s counting them out of order.
My mother’s response to hearing this was, “Not sure why, but I seem to have a picture of you, at his age, in my head.”
Have I mentioned that I hate spring break?
