Big Boy Beds

I spent $4.25 vacuuming my car this morning, and while that is a ton of quarters, I think it's a real bargain. Last time I vacuumed my car, I used (and broke) my central vac and had to pay $425 to get it fixed.

Under Jack's chair, I found 3 entire cookies and an in-tact piece of toast. Also at least 400,000 Trader Joe's fruit flakes and enough Annie's bunny crackers to feed 8 preschools for a month.

My car is gross.

Harry and Jack (and, in turn, Ben and I) slept until 7:30 this morning, which was completely awesome and also the teeniest bit inconvenient because their babysitter came over at 8.

Which is how I came to be in Panera in my gym clothes with sopping wet hair, looking totally dreamy, working on some odds and ends for fall, and contemplating the end of an era. Today is the last day I will be hanging out in a coffee shop for awhile. The rest of my summer childcare is extremely limited (or nonexistent, really), and I imagine I will spend any hours I can scrounge on campus, furiously sorting out my life for the end of August. I need to copy stuff for my TAs, make packets of books and syllabi to send to out-of-town TAs who want a jump start on course prep, ready my materials for my rhetorical criticism class, and finish reading the common book my university has chosen for its 2010-2011 reading program (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which I started yesterday and am in love with so far). I also need to prep my rhetorical criticism lectures and finish finding speeches for the class to practice on, although my syllabus and course schedule are complete, and instead of a pre-made course reader, I am having students bring in journal articles every week, like my rhet crit class at Miami that helped me master the art of scholarly research, find my way around a library blindfolded, and learn to worship research librarians. So I am ready for class, and if it started tomorrow, I'd be a-okay for at least 2 weeks. The only unknown that's keeping me up at night is the small course I direct-- I have no idea when I am going to squeeze extra meetings into an already packed week before classes start. The large class I direct is set up to run like clockwork and really only needs the finishing touches like photocopies, packet assembly, etc. These tasks would be so easy and mindlessly appealing if only I had help with my rambunctious children, who make the logistics of the whole thing terrifying. (Also, page numbers. I need to update all of the page numbers on all of the course materials because I revised our workbook for this semester, but the revised workbook is still being printed, so I have no page numbers. I am sure it will arrive the day our beloved babysitter moves to Colorado. Because Harry and Jack will be big help with a detail-oriented editing task, I am sure.)

Anyway, today's my last coffee shop work day for a while because when the boys start school in the fall (after Labor Day, which is NOT GOOD FOR ME and why can't preschools run on the University's schedule??), they will be at school while I am on campus, so no more odd hours mid morning or in the endless expanse of the weekday afternoon for me to be rescued by their sitter and turned loose with a plate of oversized pastry and my laptop. I am excited about this milestone-- both of them in preschool-- and nervous about it, too. What if they get sick a lot? What if Jack cries? What if my school schedule doesn't fit as neatly into theirs as I think it will? What if they miss me too much? What if the don't miss me at all? You know, the usual.

These boys. So fast.

Truth be told, they have been cramped in their crib and toddler bed for quite a while now, but Ben and I have done our best to ignore faces bulging between crib bars

And the banging in the middle of the night caused my giant feet colliding with a plastic fire truck or a long leg jammed over the side of the bed

But Jack started asking to nap in the "beep beep," and Becca set up the cutest little big-boy bedroom for her boys, so we figured what the hell.

Waiting for the Company Store outlet to open up at 10 am so I could find matching quilts that incorporated the fire truck theme in their room, we went to Target on Monday to buy Harry some Star Wars sheets and pick up a few pillows, a mattress pad, a dust ruffle and assorted other bed-related stuff.

We never made it to the quilt store, though, because they both fell in love with Target comforters, glow-in-the-dark rocket ships for Harry and robots for Jack (who says robot in a monster voice and splays his fingers like little claws), and even though they don't have anything to do with fire trucks, I bought them because Harry and Jack were so proud and excited to choose their own bedding.

Yesterday's nap was a little dicey. There was much thumping and little footsteps pounding over my head. I did not investigate until Jack opened his door and shouted "Mom!" at me down the stairs. Here is how I found him, wearing some of Harry's soccer shorts as a shirt:

I asked him where he was supposed to be, and he showed me:

Still, there was much escaping and eventual screaming when I put the baby gate up outside his door. Jamie came over and played Legoes with Harry while I took a shower and got ready to head to the doctor for my annual physical. Before I left, I checked on Jack and found him passed out in a heap just inside his bedroom door with a Buzz Lightyear blanket clutched under his chin and a Sleepy Time Tales book next to him.

Last night, we went to the pool for dinner and stayed until 8, so both kids were wiped out when I put them to bed. Jack got up once, but I told him not very nicely that he needed to get in bed and stay there (because Ben was working late, and I was more than ready to clock-out for the day). When I tucked Harry in 30 minutes later, we found this:

Harry went to sleep on a Storm Trooper pillow, all smiles, snuggled up with the crib quilt he's had since birth that only overs his torso, but used to be 3 times his size.