For the last 3 consecutive years, I’ve had kids in some form of preschool. We went from “big daycare” all day while I was still working full-time to ½ day preschool a few times a week when I decided to stay home. My boys will be 5 and 7 this year, and the last nine months have marked a gradual fade-out of the preschool age. It’s a bittersweet mixture of “good riddance” and “Good God, where did my babies go?”, but these are the things I’ll be leaving behind as the preschool experience comes to a close.
The indoor playground at the mall. Every ounce of energy kids don’t expend outside is one that has to be absorbed by a less forgiving interior space—the car; the living room; the cereal aisle at the grocery store. The mall’s indoor playground was my go-to on rainy week days when both boys were home. It’s basically a padded rink with climbing structures disguised as random items, like a stack of giant books 2-and-a-half feet tall or a high-top sneaker the size of a Smart Car whose “tongue” doubles as a slide. More often than not, my kids would just run in circles and love every minute of it. But this past fall, I noticed the velocity of their laps had increased to break-neck speed. Structures they once struggled to conquer, they now casually stepped over like giants in Smurf Village. As they streaked past the entrance where the rules were posted, I realized they now clearly exceeded the height limit. Welp. Guess that’s the end of that. I mean, as a mom, you do what you gotta do. If you’ve got a litter of kids with a broad age-range and nowhere to go, who am I to judge? But when I see my youngest nearly clothesline an 18-month-old, it’s confirmation to this particular mom that my boys have overstayed their welcome.
Sippy cups. Fuck a fancy straw cup, first of all. If the kids don’t eventually gnaw clean through the plastic and end up ingesting micro-bits of rubbery straw over time, then they’ll suffer accidental poisoning from the black mold you just can’t seem to clean out of its interior. In my opinion, the hard-top Nuk sippy cup has been the cheapest, sturdiest, easiest cup to clean and hardest cup to spill. It’s the only cup my kids have been allowed to drink milk out of in my car since I weaned them, but over the last year or so, it’s fallen out of fashion for day-to-day use. Regular water bottles work just fine at their age for H2O on the go, but I’ll still bust out the sippy cups from time to time when the boys have to eat in the car en route to an activity and I’m packing milk from home. However… when I recently glanced in the rearview mirror at my giant sons shotgunning milk from infant drinkware on the way to a basketball game, I realized it’s time to let the baby cups go. Farewell, old friends—before I end up sending my boys to middle school with sippy cups.
The spare pair of underpants in my purse. Just kidding. I doubt I will ever stop carrying a spare pair of boys’ undies somewhere on my person. It started on the tail-end of potty-training, when I downsized from the diaper bag to the massive mom-purse. At first, the underpants were part of a larger emergency stash including wipes and a full change of clothes for at least one son. Slowly, that was whittled down to a single pair of character underwear and a thin sleeve of baby wipes. The wipes are now a staple. In fact, I wonder how I ever survived a day of my pre-kid life without a secret reserve of all-purpose wet-wipes. I’ll never go without them again. Meanwhile, the character underwear have just been absorbed into the abyss of the mom-purse. Every time I think about taking them out for good, one of the boys decides to trust a fart and makes me think better of removing that safety net. By the time that pair of undies actually comes in handy, it’ll be like shoving a white Incredible Hulk into a Dusty-The-Airplane Speedo. But I’d prefer safe over sorry.
Cutting grapes in half. Ok, that’s also a lie. Preschool age or not, I will always cut their fucking grapes. As much as my kids fuck around at meal time, they’ll be coming home from college to grapes cut in half. Can’t have them choke to death on my watch. Sorry, not sorry.
Joint bath time. Since my youngest was old enough to sit, we bathed the boys together. Before long, the efficiency of “two birds, one stone” evolved into the pain-the-ass of “one bathtub, one shit-ton of water everywhere”. What with the splashing (them) and the yelling (me) and the “he’s touching my butt!” (both), it quickly became a hot, wet mess that nobody enjoyed. It was like bathing a pair of hippos in the sink. When I finally realized there was barely room for water next to their tangle of limbs, I pulled the plug on joint bath. Now, I bathe them one after the other. They each get the chance to individually luxuriate (or procrastinate washing themselves) until I finally yank one out so the other can get in. Next stop: showering, which no one in this house is ready for. Them, because the cracks of their asses may never get clean again without a pool of standing water to indirectly “wash” it for them. Me, because I lack confidence in their ability to correctly operate a shower curtain and avoid flooding the whole second story. And also, because showers are true “big kid” territory. That’s a sad and scary business.
Nick Junior. At one point in time, we measured time in 24-minute increments to coincide with the familiar duration of a Bubble Guppies episode. Going to see Mommy’s parents took 1-and-a-half Bubble Guppies. Going to see Daddy’s parents took 4 Bubble Guppies. Driving to Disney World took a veritable shit-ton of Bubble Guppies. In recent years, we moved on to equally infectious Nick Junior programming, like Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, and Blaze and the Monster Machines. Nowadays, Netflix, ESPN, and whatever network airs American Ninja Warrior have easily eclipsed anything Nick Junior has to offer. While I do miss how my younger son used to yell, “Leeet’s BLAZE!” before he’d run down an empty aisle at Home Depot and how my older son used to exchange the word “pup” for “butt” in the Paw Patrol catch phrase “A pup’s gotta do what a pup’s gotta do”--I try to remind myself that I would rather run screaming naked into the street than watch 2 minutes of the “Mer-pups” episode again. Do I miss the cute Bubble Guppies musical parodies, like their back-to-school-flavored “Pencil Case” set to the tune of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface”? Of course. But otherwise, I think I’ll survive.
Disney Junior. With the exception of a brief infatuation with Elena of Avalor, my boys’ interest in Disney Junior programming has been fading fast for the past 2 years. My biggest regret of their waning fascination is that Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was the first thing my kids ever watched. They were transfixed by “The Hotdog” song at the end of every episode and would stop whatever they were doing to bob in place with their puffy-dipe bottoms. The last time the boys were too tired to change the channel, I heard Mickey eagerly inquire, “Say, you wanna come inside my Clubhouse?!?”. When my older son answered back with a shrug and a deadpan, “Mmmm...maybe”, I knew our Disney Jr days were done.
Cars. Though it pains me to say it, the dynastic reign of Cars is coming to a close in our house. For awhile there, we watched the Cars movie daily and could not enter a Target without at least casually perusing their selection of wide-eyed vehicles. By the time Cars 3 came out, the boys were divided on how much they cared; the younger one could watch the trailer on repeat for half hours at a time, while the older one had already moved on. In the end, habit, nostalgia, and Pixar magic pulled them both back in for a bit, but the older son’s renewed enthusiasm was short-lived, as we suspected. The younger son continues to dabble in Hot Wheels and still maintains the impressive collection of Cars movie characters he and his brother have accumulated over the past 5 years. The carpet used to be a constant tangle of Cars cars engaged in “races” that were either “‘bout to start” or “not done yet!” whenever I asked him to clean them up. But these days, he’ll ignore his cars for weeks at a time in favor of “older kid” toys like Lego and Bey Blades. For his upcoming birthday, he still claims he wants more Cars playsets to complete the fictional town of Radiator Springs. When I try to redirect him toward toys that might have a longer shelf life, he insists, telling me, “I just need Sarge’s house and Fillmore’s, then I’ll be all done!” As a mom in the throes of a long goodbye to preschool, it makes me a little sad to admit how right he probably is.
The ramp in the preschool breezeway. Between the two boys, we’ve attended the same preschool for the past 3 consecutive years. When my older son was 4, I’d wait in the hallway outside his classroom door at pick up time, trying to keep the 2-year-old from eating dry pasta off the macaroni artwork displays. When the older brother finally emerged, we’d weave down the crowded hallway to the mouth of a breezeway that descended at a slight incline toward the door closest to the parking lot. The boys had a love-hate relationship with running down the ramp, loving the thrill of racing and then hating whoever made it to the door first. There were days I cursed that congested hallway and being left in the dust with a handful of jackets and preschool papers while my boys bolted ahead of me, laying waste to smaller children and frequently tripping or face-planting into the door jam. Nowadays, I’m waiting alone at the classroom door with no one to wrangle or redirect. My younger son is now inside the classroom versus terrorizing the hallway and my older son has moved on to elementary school. My last remaining preschooler still enjoys a good sprint down the breezeway ramp after class, but every pass gets us closer to the last time, when he’ll sprint off to kindergarten once and for all. I’m sure it’ll be a long time before the image of him flying down that ramp fades from the forefront of my memory, but I know I’ll shed a tear or two the last time I see it in person.
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