Christmas week--and I somehow expected a more relaxed schedule. The daycare baby isn't coming this week. No school. But my husband ran off to work earlier than usual, but not before pointing out that the carpet in the bathroom (yes, I said "carpet"--the people who owned this house before us were idiots) was soaked. The toilet overflowed. I used every available towel to soak up the wetness. The toilet looked fine, but I made a mental note to bring up the plunger later to make sure. There was no time to shower, so I didn't. I just pulled on sweat pants and a t-shirt and figured no one would see me but kids.

Of course, I had agreed to watch my nephew (age 6) and neice (age 9) for 36 hours and my brother-in-law was the first to view me in all my unshowered glory when they arrived at 9:40 a.m.

The loud morning flew by and suddenly it was lunch-time for six kids. All was calm, all was bright. Well, not really. It was foggy all day. After Babygirl took a nap in my arms, I thought that I could figure out a craft project for the kids to do so they could stop wandering the house, shouting and banging doors.

What a darling boy, my YoungestBoy.

Friday night bedtime and I said, "Let me read you a book." I picked out Stellaluna, a lovely, award-winning book with beautiful pictures and a moral to the story.

As I'm reading, I suddenly remember this morning, when we were watching "Sesame Street." Rosita had a Frog Prince friend and she was singing him a song. She was going to lose her friend because he would turn back into a Prince.

YoungestBoy suddenly said, "Mom, I'm going to cry, too. That is so sad that she's losing her friend."

My sensitive, sweet boy.

That was what I was thinking (while reading) when he abruptly crawls on top of me and farts loudly.

I say, with mock indignation, "Hey, didn't anyone ever tell you not to fart on your mother?!"

He bursts into giggles and I laugh, too.

After mothering boys this long, it was bound to happen. I laugh at farts.

What's next?

Last week, my five year old son brought home his first-ever report card from kindergarten. His grades were nearly perfect and his teacher wrote, "Wow! His math skills are amazing for his age! He is doing very well in all academic areas and is a joy to teach!" Tears sprang to my eyes. So this is what parental pride feels like!

I have two older kids, the twins, who are in fifth grade. TwinBoyA normally does well, though his handwriting is horrific and impedes his progress in writing. He has an enormous vocabulary, but when writing will choose a small, easy-to-write word rather than a bigger, perfect word. This year, he's really working hard and earned an academic award recently. I'm relieved, since fouth grade ended badly. (Let's just say, when he started sitting next to a girl named Tasha, everything went down hill.)

TwinBoyB, though, is another story. He is a kind boy, charming and fun-loving. Even at this age, when pimples are beginning to dot his nose, he'd just as soon be out in the backyard swacking bushes with the metal pole he broke from the broom. He makes a lot of noise, mouth-noises, foot-noises, just plain hollering. He's hated school since the day he started. I remember driving him home the first week. He chanted all the way home, "I hate school! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!"

His handwriting has been messy at best, illegible at worst for years now. His second grade teacher told me, "It's just second grade." She used to help him cheat on his spelling tests because she knew he'd get a milkshake if he got a perfect score. What a scam that was. He is a charmer.

So, the week after YoungestBoy brought home his perfect report card, TwinBoyB tells me early Tuesday morning, "Mom, I have to tell you something, but I'm afraid you'll be mad."

I hate it when the kids start a sentence like that. Then I have to assure them I won't be mad.

"Mom, my Roanoke report is due today and I didn't do it."

I just raised my eyebrows instead of my voice. When I finally pulled all the details out of him it turned out that the class had been given a week and a half to write a fictional historically-based story. TwinBoyB didn't understand the directions from the start, so he just fiddled away his time. He never mentioned it to me. When I asked about the project, he said they were working on it at school.

I emailed the teacher for the information. Then, for two days after school, I hovered over TwinBoyB while he agonized over writing three pages. He is truly a horrible writer. He has no intuition, no skills, no interest. As a writer myself, I just cannot find a bridge between us. When I was in third-grade, I wrote a ten page story for fun and won an award for it. Words have always been my friends, my partners, my solace.

TwinBoyB's worst enemies are words.

No, I take that back. His worst enemy is long division. And multiplication is out to get him, too.

I worry that this child will never succeed in school. And I realize how important it is to me that he does well. I feel like this is what I do. I raise kids. If my kids fail, am I a failure? Sigh.

Then again, I think of YoungestBoy. I've raised him the same as his brothers. In fact, I didn't even teach him how to write anything before school, not did I "work" with him in reading or math. He just embraces math. The other day he said, "Mom, I know what 5 minus 50 is." Half-listening, I said, "You do?" And he said, "Yes, it's negative 45."

So here is what having adopted children and biological children is teaching me. My older kids are not struggling because of me. My youngest is not excelling because of me. My job is not to duplicate my own successes in school. These kids are individuals.

My job is to give them a map, help them read it, point them in the right direction, and watch them go. They will succeed, they will fail. They will learn, maybe not the way I want them to, but they will learn.

In the meantime, I need to work on being a soft place for them to land. Especially for my boy who hates writing and loves mud.

Tonight I had to run to the grocery store (again) to get graham crackers for kindergarten gingerbread houses. As I was standing in line a voice said, "Hi!"

Ack.

I always mistakenly feel like I'm invisible in grocery stores. But I'm not.

The voice belonged to my favorite baby-sitter, a lovely young girl named Beth. Her father stood next to her and her teenage friend grinned on the other side.

We made small talk. They remarked, "You look so tired!" I talked fast, made up reasons why I look so tired, but the fact is, an almost-39 year old face looks wretched without make-up. At least mine does. I have no lips and dark circles under my eyes. The lack of sleep only highlights my imperfect complexion. I am pale.

I rambled on and on about Babygirl and how she doesn't nap. I was acutely aware of the long line which suddenly sprouted up behind me. I smiled way too big.

When I was young, I never left the house without make-up. I couldn't imagine letting anyone see my Real Face.

Now, I'm old and haggard and I couldn't care less. This, my friends, is what almost-39 looks like. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(All the same, tomorrow night when I meet my friend for dinner, I'll be wearing a full mask. My Real Face only shows when I am caught off-guard.)