This afternoon Graham was all out of sorts. Finally, as I was helping him with his socks, he started talking to me very slowly and carefully. This was big stuff, whatever it was. “Last night… Granny. Told. Me. That she. Is getting on a big airplane. And going to. Going to go. Far away.”

“Yeah, that’s right, she is. A BIG airplane.”

“I loved her,” he said, “I really loved her.”

“I know, we do love her.”

“We ALL loved her…” His lip started to quiver.

God, I am stupid. It took me a full minute to get that he thought she was gone forever. When I told him that the airplane was going to bring her back again, his eyes welled up with relief and delight and the whole thing was so sweet I almost cried. But then instead of crying I finished putting his shoes on him and went to run errands.

Nicolaus was wearing a frog-prince t-shirt, a fancy cape, and a belt with a dagger hooked to the side. He was a Nature Prince today. He’s decided that it’s not wrong to plunder and conquer land if you then give it all to animals. It’s morally very complicated and basically comes down to wanting to have riches and land and power and cool weapons, without that pesky business of being a bad guy.

Meanwhile, at various points this afternoon Graham declared himself:
A baby bird
A kitty
A funny dog
A really good cooker
The pizza man
A rocketshipper
The kiss man /hugger

The last one is the most accurate, although he does tweet a lot.

He also counted to beleven a few times, sending Nicolaus into hysterics over whatever he guessed his fiendish brother was about to do. With this in mind, once we were in the car I called off most of the errands. There are times when your best move is to just skip the battle, give the land to the other guys and go have a drink somewhere. You know? So instead of going into the library, I drove through and dropped off our books without going in.

Dropping off books usually makes Graham cry loudly, but today he politely asked, “Why did the library need to take away my book?”

His sentences are very carefully worded all of a sudden. Two or three words at a time. You have to be patient to hear it all. So finally I was able to explain what the deal is with libraries. And finally, this once he didn’t cry. Although he does want to go back and get that dang Elmer Elephant book before some other grubby kid can get to it.

Next, we didn’t make it to the post office, because I realized I was way too hungry to stand in line without passing out. So instead we went to the pizza buffet, where we sat and looked at Nicolaus’ favorite library book: Arms and Armor. It’s a history of weapons around the world, and it perfectly combines his interests in history and in pointy things that his mother won’t let him have.

After lunch we went to get keys made. The new keys don’t work or anything, but I got them made and am proud of the accomplishment.

Finally, we drove in the direction of the grocery store and then just kept right on driving because Nicolaus declared the store a bad idea today. It doesn’t take much to convince me to skip the store. Instead we went home and there wasn’t anything to feed them for dinner on account of not going to the store, so I made them scrambled eggs and bacon and waffles. And Graham told me that I am his favorite cooker of the world.

Graham has a new thing. We don’t know where it came from.

He starts off counting in a normal voice. “One, two, three, four!” his voice goes up in pitch with every number. “Five! Six!” By now it’s a painful squeal. “Sevvin! Eight!”

At this point, we can barely hear him but can just make out the words, “Niiiine! TEN! Beleven!”

Then he resolutely says: “DO IT.”

Then he does something awful. He hits someone, or throws a toy, or knocks over a tower. Or maybe just throws himself down.

It’s the same way, every time. He counts to beleven, says Do it, then fucks somebody’s shit up. Gleefully. Which, the nice side is that you have plenty of time to get away from him once he starts counting. But then there are times when he was just counting for non-punk reasons… he always smiles, because really — everything is funny if you think about it and you use Graham’s brain for thinking. So you never know! And not knowing is half the excitement.

Speaking of excitement: The boys A) were entertained by grandparents all day yesterday B) stayed up until midnight and therefore are C) wired beyond all reason today. And! I have to take them to run no fewer than three (3) boring errands: grocery store, post office, home depot so I can have keys made because I am a ditz and I got home and into this house somehow where the hell are my keys??. Plus they want to go to the library, where I saw in a movie once people are supposed to be quiet. Is it too late to issue Valium to the general public in preparation for our arrival?

…which is not to say that I am preemptively defensive or bitter or anything like it. Just as I was surfing for useful information, I keep coming across cute little answers for common questions. They’re all utterly adorable and utterly safe to forward to your grandma, and after reading a bunch of them I was smiling and wishing that they were more in line with my similarly adorable but slightly less forward-to-your-grandmaable humor.
Like: “Hey shouldn’t your kids be in school today?”

“Why don’t you go stick a corn cobb up your ass?”

(Bonus points if one of your children adds: “Sideways.”)

Because I’m obnoxious and not very mature.

But the truth is that I’ve never been asked any interesting questions because we’ve only been doing this for um, a week? And nobody knows except Nina and Alisha and my parents. And the internet. Besides, this is Georgia, and we live in a town where there are more churches than squirrels — people sort of assume that there’s a good chance you’re homeschooling.

Not that towns with an overabundance of squirrels are necessarily against homeschooling. My point was more that — oh, nevermind.

So! Anyway. Yes. Um. The only need for silly defensive responses to hard questions is in my own mind, mainly as I imagine what will happen when my father in law notices what we are doing.

Q:
Why are you homeschooling?

A:
Well, we thought a lot about it before deciding that — hey! OMG! Did you see that car? That was weird. Woah. What?

Q:
Wow. Homeschooling. I could never do it with my kids.

A:
I know. God, I couldn’t homeschool your kids either.

Q:
“How do you keep from getting overwhelmed and frustrated?”

A:
Well, I get up pretty early and get started. So by 9:30 or 10:00 when we’re working on math — which is the subject we have the most trouble with — I’m already pretty drunk.

Q:
“You’re homeschooling? But aren’t you worried about social skills?”

A:
“Fuck you, buttface!”

(Thanks to my dad for that one. Even though I went to public school, I am proud to say I learned most of my social skills at home.)

I think a lot about homeschooling. At first we sort of waved it away as my mid-30s angst left over from my suburbanite trauma of being bored at school a lot when I was a kid. But I’ve toured the school Nicolaus would go to and really, it’s fine. I don’t worry that he will be treated with anything but wonderful teacherness.

But it’s still there, this idea that I want to be his teacher. That and the deep feeling that full-day kindergarten is just crazy. A full day? Seven hours?? I can’t bring myself to go to work that many hours a week — heck, I can’t do anything for seven hours straight except maybe watch Heroes. So how can I ask Nicolaus to do the same? Especially since oh my god, Heroes is totally inappropriate for a five year old.

So we’ve been talking about it. Kevin is skeptical, mainly because he’s noticed that if we sit down and try to overtly teach this kid anything he gets up and walks away. A minor obstacle I say, easily overcome with a little duct tape. His other concern is bigger and harder to articulate… it’s that a lot of the time, for all the awesome hours we spend together exploring his many exciting interests in depth and listening to music and stories and finding out about the world… about a third of the time, Nicolaus seems like a really unhappy person. It makes us wonder what we are not giving him that he needs. Is it something that school would be able to give him? I suspect not, Kevin wonders if. We both overthink. That’s how we roll at the house of Ard.

And I see his point. And really, the public school option seems absolutely fine. But still the homeschooling idea is there and doesn’t go away. It’s like a big noisy fly buzzing around me. And Kevin’s all, “Ahhh a fly! Kill it! Or go shower or something so flies will stop buzzing around you.”

And I’m like well maybe I don’t want to kill it. It might be fun.

So Kevin is open to giving the Ard School of Arts and Sciences a fair shot before public Kindergarten starts in the fall. We already registered Nicolaus for public school, and even if we are doing great at home, we might send him to school for a few weeks to make sure we aren’t being selfish assholes for keeping him away from the magical kindergartenwonderland.

As we’ve been processing all of this, I swear I’ve been nothing but cheerful and excited about the very cool exciting kindergarten coming soon yay! We took Nicolaus for a tour of the! Very cool! And wonderful! School!

But still, he asked me the other day if he could just do kindergarten from home. He pointed out that I am allowed to work from home sometimes. So why can’t he?

Nicolaus has always been sort of a homebody. Still, I was surprised that he wasn’t excited about going to school, because he likes his various classes and lately he really enjoys meeting other kids. When I asked him why he would prefer to do school at home he said, “I just don’t want to go where there are like swarms of other kids. Five or six kids would be okay. Best would be ZERO. Hey, can you COUNT to zero? Hahaha. But. So I don’t want to go to that school because the kindergarten classes all had swarms of like millions of children and if I? Spend too much time around a whole bunch of other kids? Eventually? I will die.”

Dang. He’ll DIE? That deserves some consideration, right? Even though he probably just means that school looks potentially stressful and really, it probably would be fine once he got used to it. Same goes for me.

So we’re giving homeschooling a try starting — well, now. I am nerdishly, freakishly excited. What’s the worst that happens, right? RIGHT?