The Narcoleptic Burglar

I am flat out exhausted these days. I can trace the cause of my tiredness to several things including having two small kids, TAKS time at school and a sick little one. Oh, and the tiny fact that my four year old snores like a 65 year old man with severe sleep apnea.

This is not a new problem, but it is getting worse. Connor has always been a loud, mouth breather when he sleeps, constantly snuffling and grunting accompanied by some light snoring. We were all pretty used to it and it sure as heck wasn't bothering him. But I would say over the last few months that the decibel level has increased dramatically, and although our bedrooms are not that far apart, we can still hear him as plain as day through two bedroom doors and down a hallway.

A couple of nights ago it finally woke his dad up. I had been laying there awake for a few minutes listening when my dear husband, who is not known for being especially coherent when awakened from his nightly coma, jumped out of bed and announced frantically, "There's someone in the house! Melissa, there is a man in our house!" He started to tear through our closet for his home defense weapon of choice, a fake samurai sword purchased off eBay in 1999 during an unfortunately nerdy Japanese phase of life. This is a sword whose blade is so dull that the only way it could harm someone is if he bludgeoned them to death with it and they would have to be standing very still for that to happen. Let me just add something here, totally off topic, in defense of Matt's ridiculous faux sword, since I know he is reading this and I don't want to seem like an unsupportive wife. That sword has tasted blood, People, it has experienced violence. It was once used to kill a tiny snake that made the mistake of wandering into our laundry room. Granted, Matt and I both were perched on top of our washing machine totally scared while he killed it with the sword (it was also possibly already dead), but the point is that the sword has been brandished. Anyway, back to our "home invasion". I interrupted Matt's search for the sword (which is locked in the garage by the way) to let him know that the noise he was hearing wasn't coming from an apparently narcoleptic burglar, but from our son. It is just that loud.

We asked the doctor when Connor was about two what he thought the problem was. After looking down his throat and up his nose he declared that his nasal passages were just small and he would grow out of it. Well, I am not buying that. How can a kid who is the size of a six year old only have one tiny part of his body that is growing at a delayed rate and why is that tiny part responsible for such a gigantically annoying noise? I'm taking him back in and this time I want some definitive answers, barring that I am expecting some kind of prescription that will knock me out so that I no longer care. That seems reasonable and I don't even have a medical degree.

My little fish

My goodness, I can't believe how long it has been since I've blogged! We have had the craziest month, but now that our most stressful week of school is over, I feel like I am finally getting a chance to breathe and maybe get caught up on what has been going on with our family!

This week I officially enrolled Connor in "big boy school" for next year. On Ms. Karen's recommendation we looked around for a place that we hoped would challenge him and keep him from getting too bored while waiting around for kindergarten. This was hard for me. I love having my boys at Ms. Karen's and I am constantly amazed by how much they are learning. I also trust her judgement and respect her opinions, so when she said she thought he would benefit from a more challenging environment, I had to admit she was right, although my first impulse was to cling to her and beg her not to make us leave :) Ever.

It all fell into place though, and we found a great little private school where he can go four days a week and then back to Karen's on the fifth. Connor could not be more excited and I could not be more worried. He is thrilled that he gets to take his lunch every day in a real lunch box and carry a backpack that he hopes will be full of homework. He has never seen a cooler classroom or so many "beautiful computers" all in one place. I know my intelligent, self-motivating first born is going to love learning there. So what is my problem?

I have over thought this entire situation and come up with my list of top worries. I worry that his hyper competitiveness is going to kick into overdrive because now instead of one or two kids to compete with, he will have fourteen to compare himself to. I'm worried that the other kids are going to think he is kind of weird because more often than not, his stories at the playground center around the meanness of Pharoah or the awesomeness of the earthquake that freed Paul and Silas from prison (complete with body convulsions to show what he thought it felt like). I am afraid the other four year olds might not think Connor the Evangelist is quite as cool as his Dad and I do.

I worry that he will be too arrogant (he is the best and most amazing person he has ever seen at anything and everything he has ever attempted) and I worry that he will be too hard on himself. Most of all I think I am worried that my craziness is going to make him feel crazy. I am sure he will be showing this blog to his therapist one day :)

My little fish is moving into a bigger pond on his way to the ocean that is kindergarten. I just thank God that he is "most definitely the awesomest swimmer I have ever seen in this whole entire world, Mom."

He'll be ready and as for me, well, I'll get there too.

My sneaky smart son

I hope I don't sound like an annoying braggy parent when I say that we think Connor is pretty smart. Okay, I know that is annoying when parents say that but at least we aren't those parents that credit their child's smartness to themselves. Matt and I can freely admit that we are idiots. Our commentary on Connor's intelligence usually goes something like this,"How did he get so smart, it didn't come from his mom, or it didn't come from his dad." We must have some majorly smart recessive genes that skipped us over and landed in our child.

We are currently working on not letting him know that he is really smart for several reasons. First, I don't want him to ever think that he is better than anyone else for any reason, academically or otherwise. Second, and this reason ties in with the first, I don't want him to realize that his parents are two people he is undoubtedly going to be smarter than. Yes, I realize that we are living on borrowed time with this resolution, but I am going to hang on to my superior intelligence for as long as humanly possible. Luckily at age four, we aren't dealing with any smart alecky-ness yet. It is pretty much a straight forward case of our child is mentally gaining on us and no matter how much sudoku and Words with Friends Matt and I play, we are just not making enough headway.

Unfortunately, his intelligence means that I have to be super specific when laying down the rules around our house. He is literally the most literal kid I have ever met, it is much more likely for something to go over my head than his. For example, right now we are focusing on a "no climbing on chairs" rule at our house. Connor had gotten into the bad habit of pushing over a chair anytime he wanted something he couldn't reach in the kitchen or playroom. Well, this set a dangerous precedent. Before we knew it, baby brother, copycat extraordinaire was pushing and climbing right alongside his big brother minus the superior height and balance. After several real and near miss falls, we had to enact a moratorium on chair climbing. We cut them off cold turkey. If Connor couldn't reach it from his already unnaturally tall height, it wasn't meant to be.

It was going pretty well, after a few reminders and some alone time to think about what they had done wrong, it seemed like the had reconciled themselves to being earthbound. Yesterday, I was in the kitchen and the boys were in the playroom when I heard some weird grunting and talking. I walked in to discover Connor trying to hoist his little brother up above his head in order to make him grab something from the top shelf of our 6 foot high bookcase (which luckily is screwed into the studs). Connor kept saying, "Reach Mushy, get the firetruck puzzle. Try harder Mushy!! I need it. Use your arms!" Hudson, in true Mushy fashion,.

was just waving his arms around above his head and yelling out, "Kay, kay, kay guy, kay!" He wasn't even close to the firetruck puzzle and I am positive that he had no idea what he was doing up there. He is just game for anything that his brother suggests without thought to his own personal safety.

The pair of them looked ridiculous. Connor weighs 39 pounds soaking wet, but he is scrappy, and I was a little impressed that he managed to get at least half of Hudson's body lifted above shoulder level. But feats of strength aside, I told him to set his brother down and come have a conference with me. I asked him why he thought it was okay to use his brother as a human claw to reach things on high shelves. His response, "Well, mommy you told us that we couldn't climb on chairs anymore." And so I did. I completely forgot to consult with my attorney and add in more specific conditions such as, no using your brother as your own personal robot arm. His closing argument on his way to the time out step: "But Mommy, Mushy wanted to help me." Yes son, your one year old brother who likes to eat ketchup out of a bowl with a spoon would agree to jumping off our house if his big Bubby thought it would be fun. That didn't help his case.

So, did he literally break our rule? Nope. But if the devil is in the details, Mommy is now in possession of the pitch fork. I did, however, have to give him some secret points for creativity.