Category: School

Yesterday turned out to be an interesting day. After dropping Cassie off for her first day of preschool, Michael took off for work and I stayed home with Sam. For the first time in a loooooong while, I only had one child to take care. One easy-going, fuss-free, sleepy baby who’s sole demand on me was to nurse once between the hours of 8 and 11:30 AM. The rest of the time, she was sound asleep. You have no idea how stress free that made my morning.

I couldn’t believe the stuff I got done yesterday while Cassie was in school. I finished the morning chores in under twenty minutes. I took Sam out for a half-hour walk. I solved a technical problem I’d been having, trying to convert one of my animated cartoons to an AVI file (no small feat to fix that either). I did some research for a few other animation projects I want to do. I even got to sit quietly and enjoy of a decent cup of coffee. Amazing.

Then at 11:30 I headed out to pick up Cassie. What a surprise I got when I arrived. The administrator told me Cassie had had a wonderful morning, but she was now in her classroom doing something no child had ever done in the entire forty-year history of the school.

She was throwing a fit because they wouldn’t let her lie down and take a nap.

Nap time at the preschool starts at noon. Cassie is only signed up for half days, which means I have to pick her up before noon; therefore, no nap for her. She was furious about this. When I walked into her classroom, all the other little tots were laid out on their mats, tucked up in their blankies, watching my child sob hysterically because she couldn’t curl up on a mat too. You had to see it to believe it.

As I tried to calm my screaming demon spawn, I had a talk with the administrator. It’s only a few dollars difference between the full day and the half day price, and Cassie wants so badly to stay for nap time. How can I say no to that? So starting tomorrow, Cassie will be going to preschool for full days on Monday and Friday, and a half day on Wednesday. We can’t do full days on Wednesday because that’s when the playgroup meets, and Cassie would never get to see her best friends (and I wouldn’t get to see MY best friends) if she didn’t go to the playgroup. I think that arrangement will satisfy Cassie. Of course, it means I’ll be forced to spend two full days a week taking care of only one child.

However shall I survive?

Here’s the artwork for today. I know, I know, it’s the Swan Prince drawing again. This version is the final pencil artwork, traced from the sketch I completed two days ago. I made some changes the the wing, one of the legs, and the background. Now that I’ve got it traced, I’ll transfer it to some nice paper and look at inking it. Don’t know exactly when that will get done, but it will probably take a couple of weeks. Meantime, I’ve got the gothic cartoon still to work on and another pencil drawing to finish transfering so I can start work on coloring that. So that’s three drawing projects on the board right now. Astonishing when you consider that one month ago, I wasn’t drawing at all.

The Swan Prince, Work In Progress, 7 September 2006

Man, I thought this morning would never get here. It’s 7 AM, and I am up and dressed, Cassie is up and dressed, Michael is up and dressed, and Sam is at least up and bathed. She’s nursing right now, but will be dressed as soon as she’s done. Yes, the entire Madden clan is up and moving this morning, because…

IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF PRESCHOOL! YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!

Cassie woke up half an hour ago, all tousle-haired and sleep-muddled, and started firing off vaguely coherent questions about today. “Mommy, mommy! Is it preschool today? Is it September yet? Do I go to school now?”

Oh yes sweetie, today is the day. My baby’s all grown up and going to preschool! (Sniff!)

Of course, the entire family is going to see her off on her first day. We leave in half an hour. Once Cassie has been placed in the capable hands of her teacher, Michael will head off to work and I’ll go home with Sam. What will I do with only one child to look after, hmmm? I’m thinking Sam will go down for a nap and then I’ll have the chance to exercise and work on some Flash animation. Ooooooh, exercise and work. What a wonderful way to spend my free time 😉

This won’t be a huge change for me. Cassie is only going to preschool for half days on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m not ready yet to send her off all day long, and half days on Tuesday and Thursday wouldn’t work with our schedule. But for Cassie, this is gonna be big. She’ll finally get to spend time carousing with other kids and doing exciting fun stuff rather than sitting around the house all day while Mommy breastfeeds and changes poopie diapers. Her whole world is about to expand, and you better believe she’s psyched about that.

I’m psyched too, come to think of it. And why not? I’ve got plenty of story ideas to work on, lots of artwork in progress, a fat happy baby to cuddle, an excited preschooler to cheer on, and a studly computer geek husband who loves me enough to put up with my moods. Life is good, and today nobody can tell me otherwise.

Here’s an updated version of the Medusa painting I’m working on. I discovered how to get the brushes in Corel Photopaint to blend more like real oil paints. The results have been very satisfying.

Medusa, Work In Progress – 6 September 2006

I had honestly intended to write about an entirely different subject this morning, but I’m so damned irritated today that I’ve just decided to vent instead. I feel like I’ve spent the last several weeks busting my ass while everyone else in the house does their very best to thwart my efforts to accomplish any work. Sam won’t go to bed without a fight. Cassie refuses to nap. And now Michael… First it was the paper he had to write, then the business trip he took to present said paper. Both these things required me to give up a lot of my time so I could handle most of the child care on my own while he worked. Now we’re just a few days away from the start of preschool and try as I might to get this family on schedule in preparation for what’s going to happen next week, nobody seems to care, and I’m the one getting screwed as a result.

I get up at 4:45 AM. No, I’m not joking. 4:45 AM, the butt-crack of dawn. I do this to grab an hour of work time before the rest of the family wakes up, because once they’re up, there’s no way I’m going to be able to sit at the computer and work. Not with a baby to nurse, a preschooler to dress and feed and a husband to prod out of bed. And let me tell you, I just love that last task. Why the hell is it that I’m the first one up and the last one to bed, and yet he sits there and complains that he’s not a morning person? He’s not even setting his damned alarm clock. He’s depending on me to nudge his ass out of bed! Hello! Can we say completely unfair? It’s not like he’s getting out of bed at 2 AM to take care of the baby. That’s my job too!

I’m so tired of this. I wish people (i.e. my husband) would show a little more respect for the work I’m trying to do. I wish it mattered to him that I’ve got a novel to submit and artwork to draw. But I guess my work just doesn’t make enough money to matter to anyone else but me. Grumble, grumble, bitch, whine, complain…

Sigh. I love my husband. But if he doesn’t start getting up on his own at 6 AM, I’m gonna shoot him.

Here’s the artwork for today. More work on that Manga Academy assignment, this time drawing champagne glasses. It’s not thrilling stuff, I know, but it does give me practice.

Champagne Glasses, 29 August 2006

It’s 6:45 AM and Cassie’s already thrown her first tantrum of the day. Lovely.

I decided two weeks ago that the whole family needed to practice getting up early and running through our morning routine the way we will once Cassie starts preschool. Up until yesterday, though, I’m the only one who’s been doing that. Michael claims he’s not a morning person, and has continued to sleep until 7 AM. I can’t get Cassie and Sam up and going at the same time, so I’ve been juggling between the two, trying to at least get Cassie used to the idea of breakfast first, then playtime. Now we’re in the final week before preschool. Michael has gotten up early two days in a row, but Cassie keeps protesting that she wants her Sesame Street first before she’ll eat. What she doesn’t understand is that come next week, she won’t be getting any Sesame Street at all, before or after breakfast, because she’ll be headed off to school.

At least Cassie got up early this morning. She came trotting into our bedroom at 6:15 while Michael was still in the shower. I was working on the dreaded novel synopsis so I let Cassie crawl into our bed while I tapped away at the laptop. At 6:30, I told her she needed to get up and get dressed. That’s when the tantrum started.

Cassie: “I don’t want to get dressed. I eat in my pajamas!”

Me, picking up a very hungry Sam who has just woken up and wants to nurse: “That’s not how it works, young lady. You get dressed first, then you eat.”

Cassie, pulling the covers up to her chin: “No! No no no! Eat first!”

Me, still holding a fussing Sam: “Cassandra, get up and get dressed, now!”

Cassie dives under the quilt. I pull it off of her. She giggles and grabs at the quilt again. I get pissed and yank it back.

Me: “Young lady, if I have to put your sister down to make you get out of that bed and get dressed, you’re getting a spanking!”

Cassie, now playing tug of war with the quilt: “No no no no no no!”

Naturally, I am forced to put Sam down, which only makes her howl. I march over to the bed, envisioning snatching Cassie by the ears and dragging her screaming into her room. Sensing her impending fate, Cass jumps out of the bed and runs for it. All that saves her from a butt-paddling is Michael going after her to get her dressed. I finally sit down with Sam and nurse.

I know this is a scene that’s going to repeat itself many mornings. No matter how badly Cassie wants to go to preschool, she’s still bent on dawdling and doing things her own way in her own time. I just hope I can find my patience before I really do have to catch her by the ears.

Here’s some artwork from Sunday. Yes, it’s a soccer ball. It’s part of an assignment from Manga Academy. I’m supposed to hunt through various manga, looking for drawings of simple objects and then copy those drawings, paying attention to tone and line thickness in relation to the light source in the image. Considering that manga mainly focuses on people’s bodies and faces, it’s taking me forever to find simple inanimate objects to draw. However, I like my little soccer ball. It actually looks like a soccer ball, with a light source shining on it, so I’m pleased.

Soccer Ball, 27 August 2006

This is just me thinking out loud this morning. After spending a chaotic weekend adjusting to having my husband back at home, I am now confronting the next big change in my life – Cassie’s first day of preschool – and am trying to decide how to deal with it. She starts next week, and will be going on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for half-days. The idea initially was to give me a little time off so I could get some work done while she’s at school, but now I’m starting to wonder if that’s going to work. Sam continues to be difficult at bedtime, and she keeps me up all night. That can really screw up my day, you know. This morning, as a matter of fact, she was up at 4 AM, spitting up and fussing like nobody’s business. I finally handed her off to Michael at 4:45, my usual wakeup time, so I could get started on my day.

Why do I get up so early, you ask? Well, I have this lovely schedule planned out that involves me getting up at the butt-crack of dawn so I can fit in a few hours of work amidst all the chores and childcare I end up doing during the day. The first block of work time is from 5:30-6:30 AM, the second is from 8-10 AM, and the third is from 2-4 PM. The first and third scheduled blocks work just fine. At 5:30 AM, I’m usually the only one awake. Sometimes Sam is up, demanding to be nursed, but that’s not usually a problem. I can nurse her and write at the computer for an hour if I need to. The 2-4 PM work time occurs during Cassie’s afternoon nap, and that works really well, because I can usually get Sam down for an hour or more during that time as well. Plus, if I save drawing for that block of time, I can sort of let the work bleed over into the time after Cassie wakes up. I have very sneakily dubbed this time to be “Craft Time,” so I can hand Cassie some markers and paper and tell her that she and Mommy are going to draw pretty pictures for an hour or so. Hey, we get to spend time together and I get a little drawing practice in, so I’m happy.

Anyway, my early morning and late afternoon work hours are happening as planned. It’s that 8-10 AM block that’s a bit of a problem. Technically speaking, I haven’t started using this time for work just yet. Until Cassie heads off to preschool, 8-10 is pretty much playtime, where I do my best to keep my rambunctious child occupied. I’ve come to realize already though, that planning on doing any work during this time, even after Cassie starts school, is going to have some problems. First off, Cass is only going to be in school three mornings a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m not going to be able to use those hours. Second, Sam isn’t exactly cooperating with me on this schedule. I’d like her to take a morning nap from 8-10, but she’s usually wide awake then, so I’m not going to be able to get much work done.

**Sigh.** I don’t know what to do yet. Maybe I could reschedule that second block or I could forget about it entirely. I’d really like to have three separate work periods so I can handle three separate types of work – writing, animation, and drawing. I’m going to have to think about it some more.

Here’s today’s artwork. I’ve been practicing more figure drawing, especially problem areas like hands. Don’t be surprised if one of these days I post a drawing of nothing but feet, because I really stink at drawing those.

Figure drawing and hands – from 22 August 2006

Okay, we haven’t even started preschool yet, and already we’re having problems.

I told Cassie we would be visiting one of the local preschools today to see what it was like. I have to send her to preschool. I just can’t keep her occupied and active enough on my own. Cassie is starting to feel the loss of my full attention now that Sam is here, and it’s making her cranky and jealous. I feel bad about that, but infants take a lot of time to care for. As best as I can, I try to set aside some time to play with Cassie each day, but until Sam’s tummy trouble and late night screaming stop, it’s going to be hard. A lot of times, I’ve been lying on the floor playing dollies with Cassie, only to wake up half an hour later and find Cassie waiting patiently for me to resume our games.

So I’m going to send Cassie off to preschool where she can be with other kids and get in plenty of playtime and activity. She’s very excited about this. In fact, she’s a little over excited. Even though I told her this would just be a short visit and that preschool won’t actually begin until September, she assumes that this is the real deal and she will be starting full blown preschool today. In preparation for the big event, she dressed herself this morning in her favorite pink outfit (“Don’t I look lovely, Mommy?”) and packed two bags of essentials to take with her. Her essentials include a handful of Little People, her Magna Doodle, and some costume jewelry. Michael and I have tried to explain that she won’t be allowed to take all that stuff into the preschool with her. “But I need it!” she claims.

We’ve already had one temper tantrum over this preschool visit this morning. She wants to go right now. However, we’re not leaving for our visit for at least another hour. Needless to say, that was not what she wanted to here. I can already foresee a lot of kicking and screaming when our visit is over and she wants to stay but I need to take her home.

I should have known this was coming. Back in March when I first talked to Michael about signing up Cassie for preschool, I asked him if he thought she was ready for it. Cassie immediately piped up. “I go to preschool. I get on bus and say ‘Bye bye, Mommy.’” Boy if that wasn’t a kick in the head.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get through this visit without any fuss from Cassie. Hopefully, after half an hour of touring the facilities, she won’t be so in love with the place that she’ll demand to stay. Hopefully, she won’t have a complete meltdown when I tell her it’s time to leave. And hopefully, she won’t spend the next six weeks demanding to go back right now.

Of course, you and I both know what ‘hopefully’ is going to get us.

Pray for me.