Me - losing, Judah - winning

This was Judah's first full week of kindergarten and he's off to a great start.

Me, not so much.

Noah's preschool doesn't start until after Labor Day so I've been running around trying to keep him happy all day and what can I say...the struggle is real.

Two and a half year olds be crazy. Totally irrational, megalomaniacal, certifiably crazy. He thinks calling people "poo-poo head" is hilarious and putting his hand down my shirt and "tickling your boobs" is the best thing ever.

And the hair-trigger anger issues. Oh. My. Goodness.

Even when everyone is doing their best to bow and scrape and cater to his every imperial whim, he capriciously melts down and puts people in time-out. That's his thing now. On a particularly grumpy day, Tyrant Noah put all the members of his family, at one point or another, in time-out in the course of an hour.

But enough of about Noah...where was I...oh yeah, Judah's first week of school.

The hardest thing for me each day is finding out what Judah's day was like.

I pepper him with questions about going potty, snack-time, recess, stories read, etc, but I always feel like there's a giant black-hole that I can't quite touch called "what you did during the rest of the 2.5 hours that wasn't covered by my too-specific questions."

But so far I've learned that he's really latched onto this guy named Anthony. Judah looks up to him. Judah tries to please him. Judah genuinely rejoiced when Anthony got a "good behavior" reward from the teacher. Judah thinks he's smart and funny, mostly it seems because Anthony taught him the "interrupting cow" joke. And Anthony is amazing on the monkey bars.

This makes me want to get close to this Anthony dude. Figure out what's his angle.

Is he a nice guy? Is he kinda manipulative? Is he a controller? What's his deal...

Too smother mother? Maybe...or maybe not...

Anyway, Judah's gotten into the habit now of "ranking" his day. So far, on a scale of 1-10, he's ranked his days a 10, 11, 9, 9, 4, 9, 9, 8.

Why the low scores of 4 and 8?

Because while Judah is winning, I am failing.

The 4-ranked day was because I forgot to give him his lunch and he was starving all day.

The 8-ranked day was because I didn't pack enough food for him and forgot his water bottle so he was mildly hungry and dying of thirst all day.

But my biggest fail thus far? I freaking missed the first school Open House. I swear I marked the date on my calendar well in advance, but it turns out I marked the wrong date. Seriously? Seriously?! I kid you not I checked THREE independent sources for this date.

My only explanation is I've finally done lost my mind. 5 years and 2 kids later, it's gone. Gone, baby, gone.

But despite his mother's incompetence, Judah is doing great. Today he was recognized in front of the entire school assembly as a positive role-model. He got the "Paws"itive slip reward which goes to one kid in each class and had to stand up while his teacher commented on the good behavior.

Judah gets recognized for vaguely "doing something for someone."

Apparently he helped some kid named Omar by sharing something with him. Seriously, that is the level of detail I had to settle for after grilling Judah for 10 minutes about what he did to get recognized. I am obviously the worst interviewer/investigative journalist ever.

But I totally remember this kind of thing from my own childhood.

I wanted SO BADLY during every assembly to get this kind of recognition all through elementary school but it never happened for me.

And there was Judah. His first week of school and he got a golden ticket.

Apparently kicking butt at elementary school is a generation-skipping trait in our family.