Back to the Future

I am obsessed with the blog entries being dated for when the event happened. So, although I blogged about the first day of school this past Wednesday, I marked the date for August 20. Which is really annoying for people reading it, I figured out. So, here are the links to a few recent updates.

http://thehickeyfamily.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post_24.html
http://thehickeyfamily.blogspot.com/2007/10/after-big-first-day-second-day-can-be.html

Children of a Lesser Actor

You know that you're not the typical midwestern parent when you find yourself saying to your child:

"Oh, he's what's called a drag queen. He's a man, but he dresses up as a woman."

The backstory:

We've spent a lot of time *not* acting as though differences between people are significant. It took until last year until someone brought the word "black" into our home as a description of another person. The kids first noticed there was a child in their class in pre-k that looked a little different.

Maddie (age 4): "Mommy, there's a new boy in our class. He is really tan."

Kat: "Oh, you mean like Grandma Hickey?"

Maddie: "No, WAY tanner than Grandma Hickey!"

Kat: "That's cool. People have all different color skin."

Maddie: "But his hair is different than mine. It's really squiggly."

Kat: "It sounds cool. Isn't it funny how hair comes in all different colors and textures?"


So, here we are, four years later. Last year, we had to have a conversation that "gay" was not an adjective that they could use to describe a game they didn't like, ie. "that game is gay." We talked about what gay really means. Maddie always remembers the girl in her class in pre-k who has two moms.

Today, we were listening to music and a song from RENT came on. The kids have seen bits and pieces of it and they know the basic plot line: "AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS... Everybody has AIDS!" The kids were asking about the characters and Liam said that lots of them were gay. I agreed. They asked the characters names and what they were about. And, that, my friends, is how I came to define "drag queen" for my nine year old.

What are you gonna do?

Grandma Dot came to visit this weekend, to help us out with the kids and to go to Liam's "Grandparents Day" at school. Today, the weather was amazing, so while John and I watched football at BW3's, the kids played outside. Maddie was riding her bike and one of the neighbor kids came up to her.

Neighbor kid: "Why are you wearing a helmet?"

Maddie: "Oh, my grandma's here. She's all about safety."

I'm a real boy!

The time had come. That baby had been sleeping in a crib attached "side-car" style to our bed. I loved it and we were all sleeping well, but the time had come for us all to move on. I could have stayed like that forever, waking in the middle of the night to him sliding over and laying his head on my pillow. But, it is important to allow him to develop his independence, and important for my husband and I to have our bed to ourselves again.

Grandma Dot had bought Jackson a darling toddler bed from Pottery Barn. We took down the crib and set it up. It's absolutely adorable. That baby seems to like the idea of it a bit more than actually sleeping in it all night, but it's growing on him.

He just looks so darn cute in it. And old. Really, really old.

That first baby seemed to like the new big boy bed too.

Joining the "boys with their own beds" club earned Jackson a big ol' "high five."

This is how he looks first thing out of bed in the morning and after naps. He slides down off the bed, stumbles out of the bedroom and says "hi!" "Hi!" It couldn't be any cuter.