Baffling Things

I walk Mila to her bus stop every morning. I hope she cherishes every moment because the timer on these shenanigans is going to go off as soon as possible. Other than the few minutes with one of my favorite kids, I HATE the bus stop. HATE. The very second I suspect Mila is mature enough to walk 100 feet by herself without running in front of a car, she's doing it. I will watch from the safety of my driveway.

It's that it involves people. I don't like people. I especially don't like people early in the day. I'm just really bad at peopling with essentially strangers and I am incapable of faking it until at least 10:00. I would have thought I would outgrow this inability to people thing, but I'm realizing right now that I'm at an age that would say HAHAHAHANOPE. I'm definitely not outgrowing it. THIS IS ME.

And there's a LOT of people. There are probably 10 kids at Mila's bus stop, and 8 adults who tag along. I hadn't really thought about those numbers much ... until today.

For real, there are probably 10 kids. Two of them are in kindergarten, which means the rest of them probably pass my "no running in traffic" test. Right? They have to. The other kids are, of course, older, ranging all the way up to 5th grade.

Oh, and the bus stop is in someone's driveway. A fifth grader's to be precise.

And four of the kids are from two sets of siblings. The older sibling is third or fourth grade while the younger are first or kindergarten.

So what we have here is a checklist. Mostly the checklist exists in my head, but let's write it out.

- Can he/she walk to the bus stop without getting hit by a car?

- Will he/she get distracted while walking and potentially not get to the bus stop?

- Is there some other kid who can assume responsibility?

- Can I see the bus stop from my house and get there in less than 10 seconds if there is a problem?

- Do I have better things to do? Like scrub a toilet because that's more fun than waiting at the bus stop.

I can't speak for anyone regarding the last item in that list, but the other four? WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PARENTS AT THE BUS STOP? Is it a thing and I just don't realize it? Does money sometimes fall from the back of the bus?

SERIOUSLY, WHY DO SO MANY PARENTS WALK TO THE BUS STOP AND THEN HANG OUT?

One of them, the one who LIVES RIGHT THERE BECAUSE IT'S HIS DRIVEWAY, walks his kid out to the bus, and then hangs out all day. Like, ALL DAY. He purposely exposes himself to other parents. And his kid is in fifth grade, so it's not even necessary. HE'S DOING IT FOR FUN!

I don't comprehend.

How is it that there are people who people FOR FUN?

She Worries Me Sometimes

We're still deeply entrenched in the portion of kindergarten that is all about setting boundaries. Every day Mila comes home with a fresh understanding of a new set of rules, all of which make sense and are probably for the best, but POOR MILA. Boundaries and rules hurt her head. Deep in her soul she feels a new to push against them, so this craziness where everyone tells her to stop is legit throwing her for a loop.

She spends a lot of time telling me about the rules. A LOT.

By the way, Mila does require that she is specifically told that an idea is bad. It's wise of the kindergarten teacher to often give very specific lists of "what to do and what not to do."

The school librarian made a game of "what to do and what not to do" today. It was a solid idea, but Mila was over here figuring out how to ruin it OF COURSE. It would seem that the librarian went through a list of things that you can do with library books, as well as a list of things you aren't supposed to do. Eating snacks while reading a library book is frowned upon, for example. Once the librarian went through her list, she asked the kids to chime in with good and bad ideas. They went all around the room with a variety of thoughts, all the while learning boundaries.

Mila volunteered a bad idea. OF COURSE.

"You can't stab books with a big knife and then feed them to the pigs!" she reported.

She's right, of course, but WHY WAS THAT SO ODDLY SPECIFIC? AND WHERE ARE THESE PIGS? I have to think there's a reason she said you can't fee them to the pigs. WHAT HAS MILA BEEN DOING IN HER ROOM WHEN I'M NOT WATCHING?

Priorities

Somehow we have managed to go to Cedar Point every September for a bunch of consecutive years. It's purely an accident - summer ends and we all go, "WTH? We didn't get to Cedar Point!" and then somehow squeeze it in right around Labor Day. We are terribly consistent at letting time escape us, I guess.

Each year it's the same story - Mila wants to ride all of the big rides and we laugh because LOLOMG she'll be 30 before she's tall enough to ride anything. The Tiny Human is still very much so tiny, but GUESS WHAT! This year she managed to juuuuuuust squeeze her way to a hair over 41 1/2 inches. It happened, literally, in the past two weeks. While she's still very close, with careful shoe selection, she's getting on a whole slew of new rides because she can pass for 42" tall. Barely. The flip-flops need to stay home, but normal tennis shoes are perfect.

We were properly shoe prepared at Cedar Point.

AND YET.

Mila did not ride a single bigger kid ride. NOT. A. ONE. Part of it was because she didn't want to, which THE HELL?, but also because she got so distracted by other things. She became OBSESSED with the leaf-eating tortoise and spent half the day hanging out in the petting zoo part of the park. She also became OBSESSED with picking out a new sweatshirt because it was a little chilly when we were there. The kid drug me to every store in the entire park trying to pick out the exact right sweatshirt, which was super special since there were only like two versions that came in her size. And then she rode a horse and FORGET IT. The kid didn't ride any rides.

For the record, I asked her if she wanted to 1359081309759813421 times. Possibly more. Each time she was absolutely positive that she wanted to keep doing whatever it was that she was doing.

Guess what she has asked to do 133789173202918305 times since we got back home? OF COURSE. Now that we're three hours away, Mila has a list of rides she needs to go on that's about a mile long. I'm not even sure some of them are real rides. She may have invented a whole new amusement park in her head just for the sake of being sad that she's not there right now.

She's going to make me nuts for the next month asking to go on the rides that I tried to get her to go on, isn't she?

Ugh.