On May 9th Pumpkin had his 5 year doctor's appointment. It started out with such fun; Pumpkin had to pee in a cup. (YUCK.) Well, you can imagine how much he liked this! This is great! Wow-wee, and they look just like the little paper cups we use at home too. And mommy gets to hold the cup! Of course I praised him for successfully aiming into the cup and not getting anything on me. (I want you to guess where this is going.) Now, since he is a boy and consequently his brain is wired wrong, he has remembered the praise part of peeing the in the cup, but not mommy's part about this is dirty and we only do this at the doctors. So yes, on several occasions he has proudly walked up the stairs, very full paper cup in hand, to present to me this token of his undying affection. (Yuck!!!)

The first thing they do is test his eyesight. This was fine - all he had to do was say which way the E was pointing - toward the boy, bird, cat or cloud. (instead of up, down, right, and left) Since he could yell out (yell being the key word in that phase) "Boy!". . . "Bird!" Pumpkin was great at this part. Next was the hearing test. (More fun! Headphones!) Now, try explaining to a hyper boy with a 10 second attention span that when he hears something, he needs to say "I hear it" He managed to remember our instructions for about 3 beeps. Then he was totally silent, kicking his legs back and forth and generally squirming around. Every now and then he'd look up and sort of nod. So the nurse would take off the headphones and remind him that he needed to tell us he could hear the beeps. It was scary for me because I could see that he was supposed to be hearing things but wasn't responding. However, the nurse assured me that he acting nearly the same as all the other 5-year-olds and that he wasn't hard of hearing, --- he just ignores me.

We had the big exam where they check his reflexes and give him some shots. First they do a little pin prick to take some blood. I'm not going to lie to him, so I said, it's going to hurt just a tiny bit. A tiny sting. And since a mother's love knows no bounds, I even offered to let the nurse prick me first, if Pumpkin would like. I felt so bad for him, he was so upset with the pin prick - and then they have to squeeze his fingers to get the drops of blood out. So he's crying and carrying on. Then the doctor comes in and does some checks. Finally the nurse comes back with the trays of shots. He saw the nurse and looks at me and asks, "is she going to hurt me again?" Pumpkin started crying the minute he saw the tray. I was truly surprised the way he cried. Given how hard I've seen him fall, I was taken aback at the depth of his passion. Probably because most of the time I see him cry it's because he's tired and not truly hurt.

Great quote of the day. Pumpkin is like hell on wheels. He is moving constantly! While the doctor is checking his ears Pumpkin has an ongoing commentary about what is happening. Anything the doctor does to him, he needs to try to himself (with amusing results. Boy did he wack himself with the hammer to test his reflexes.) I asked the doctor, are all your 5-year-olds like this. Dr. looks up and smiles, "Well, he's a bit busier than most." Oh yeah, and then he asked me if hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder run in my family or DH's. Which is funny since when I was a child those things weren't even invented. I told him, if one of us was hyper, it was me! But the nice thing is, the Dr. said that if you have a hyper child who doesn't get into trouble at school, they actually tend to be the smarter ones. So that was reassuring. Especially since daycare is always telling me how wonderful Pumpkin is.

I just wanted to check that my parenting style is the best for Pumpkin. Since he is in a rather structured environment 9 hours a day, 3 days a week, I let him run wild at home. OK, so he doesn't run wild, but it isn't particularly structured. If he wants to run around outside for 6 hours, then I let him do that with minimal intervention. My thought is, let him run off steam at home. However, I want to make sure that hyper boys don't need lots of rules and such since I'm not imposing them on him. Don't get the wrong idea - let me point out what a very good little boy Pumpkin is. My darling gas molecule! So it's not like he is breaking things or being disobedient. And when the mood strikes him (rarely), he can sit and play quietly for quite some time. But it is like he vibrates. He moves constantly.

Right after the doctor's appointment we registered for Kindergarten. I ended up registering at EV- not our local school. It ended up being an easy decision. Remember how stressed I was about the damn daycare situation? Boy was that a waste of energy. Anyway - I did a ton of research online: questions to ask, things to look for on the home visit, state agencies to check for. Finally, after putting of the decision as long as I could I called up the home daycare. I had a wonderful, long, conversation with her. Please remember this is like the 2nd or 3rd time I've talked to her. Only at the end of my list of questions - and after I'm in LOVE with this daycare -does she mention she has a HUGE waiting list. Duh! And why didn't you mention this two months ago when I inquired if you had a daycare and the ages and talked about my daughter and son then? Would have saved me from some sleepless night. On the positive side, it was an easy decision. We'll stay with the current daycare, which I really like anyway. So Pumpkin and I drove to his new school and signed in. Boy is there a lot of paperwork. Like I had to bring his birth certificate (prove he is my child), his social security care (more proof of my child) his doctor's records, and bills from our house proving we live there - which is funny since he is going to EVn through daycare and not from our house.

Of course while I am waiting my turn to hand in my paperwork Pumpkin has to go to the bathroom - it's that little boy gene. His brain goes on Red Alert: "There's a bathroom nearby that I haven't been in, so I have to explore it!" The same child who can play outside for 6 hours and sleep 10 hours a night can't be in a restaurant more than 15 minutes. So we had to leave the registration trailer (how funny is that) and walk over to the school. And then we have to sign in and then walk to the office. Well, it was lunchtime and there were kids absolutely everywhere and the office woman is like - who are you and why are you here. So I mention registration and before I can say bathroom they are trying to get me to sign out and go back to the trailer. So finally some poor administrator had to follow us (escort us?) to and from the bathroom to make sure I wasn't a homicidal maniac with my son as decoy. (It is a sad world out there Toto.)

Oh yeah. Sometimes on the way home we can get off 2 exits before our usual one and drive by his school. Which he knows is 'his' and that he is going to take a school bus to get there. So he finds this exciting. Yesterday he choose to share his excitement with his sister by reminding her in a sing-song voice that this was all his school and not hers. Precious: "Mommmy! Pumpkin's not share-ring!!" Pumpkin: "But it's myyyyyy school 'n youuuuuuu can't go there!" Precious (now in tears): "Moommmmmm! Make 'em SHARE!" Pumpkin: "Because I'm a big boy. So when you are older you go to school too." And so on. Joy.

For his birthday Nana T got Pumpkin some supremely cool gifts. She got us this thing called a butterfly farm. So you send it a postcard and in return you get a medium cup with what appears to be wax on the bottom and 4 tiny tiny caterpillars. You're supposed to keep the caterpillars at room temperature, and kids aren't supposed to handle the cup that much - or at least not shake it up and down or turn it over. So to keep them from killing these things I put it up on the piano. The next morning (It must have been after Kath had the baby ) I realize that DH has put the cup on top of the refrigerator. Gack! We've had these creatures for less then 48 hours and now it appears that DH has killed them! Happily it seems they only went back into hibernation or whatever. So twice a day I let the kids actually handle the cup and watch them. The rest of the time they are only allowed to look but not touch. I can't say how totally fascinated I am by these silly things. And now the caterpillars are HUGE. Eventually they will turn into cocoons and then we have a special box to put them in. When they turn into butterflies they will be in the special box until we set them free. (Supposedly all you need to feed butterflies are water and sugar.)

Nana T also got us this Bingo game. Never in a million years would I have thought that Pumpkin would like this game, but he just loves it. We play it with quarters instead of chips, which may explain part of the attraction (he LOVES money.) He has his 'bingo' card and I have a stack of 20 cards with the numbers 1 to 20. So I pick out the numbers one at a time and Pumpkin puts a quarter on the number I have called. Half the time he doesn't want to use the bingo card, but the 'callers' card, which is a big sheet of paper with all 20 numbers on it - and what he likes to do is put a quarter on every square. But hey, whatever makes him happy! But he just loves this game?? I would have never guessed. We also got an alphabet version. This has more cards, and each letter (with a picture) has 2 matching cards so you can also play concentration. It's hard to play these games, because Precious wants to join in (and Stealth Baby has to be asleep or all bets are off) so we play a mix. Both Precious and Pumpkin get a few alphabet bingo cards, and I make 3 stacks of the letter cards and they simply pull them off and try to match the photos. For Precious it's just matching photos (and she doesn't do a very good job, but she's happy to be included) while for Pumpkin I'm trying to get him to understand the thought that photo on the card and the letter on the card are related.

My darling mother, who must be an alien, also got Pumpkin a cool gift. As I've mentioned before, Pumpkin loves this episode of Dragon Tales where Max has a remote controlled car. So when mom wanted to bring up a gift, I said - hey, he loves these cars, try one of those. So what does she bring? A monster truck complete with 8 removable wheels and a special wheel tool. Hello - there are tons of these things for like 9 dollars, but she buys one that costs 30 dollars, has loseable parts, and further requires a 30 dollar battery (which she forgot to buy.) So, cruel world, we hand Pumpkin his short life's dream, but it won't work until we find the time to shove all 3 kids into the minivan and head to the toy store. However, I cannot overstate how much Pumpkin LOVES this car. It takes 4 hours to charge the battery and then it will run for about 4 hours. By Saturday night Pumpkin had completely drained the battery (and run in front of one car - grrrr) It was so funny. So the steering contraption is this thing that looks like a gun - actually it is also the tire ratchet - so it has a trigger that you pull toward you to make the car go forward and you push it away from you to make the car go in reverse. There is a big knob on the back that you turn to make the car turn. Sounds pretty simply, right. Well, not if you are 5. So Pumpkin pulls the trigger and the car jumps into action. Somewhat surprised, Pumpkin begins running down the street after in - and because he's excited he's pulling the trigger even harder causing the car the go ever faster. It was hilarious. So Pumpkin basically runs in a straight line after the car, which is also going in a straight line since Pumpkin is not able to stop and steer, until the car hits an insurmountable object like a car tire. Over and over he runs after the car until it hits something - then he picks it up and carries it back to the starting gate to start over. So we finally got Pumpkin to understand the concept of turning, and that the car would come back. However he truly seemed to prefer running the car as fast as it could straight into the curb causing it to bounce up in the air. And then we took the neighbor's skate board jump and put that out into the street for the car to run over. The safest place to be would have been on that jump since Pumpkin could no more steer the car onto it than fly. But Pumpkin had a ton of fun with the jump and moved it all around so that the car was jumping over the curbs onto the sidewalk or flying through the air. The sad thing is that I really want to play with the car but haven't had the chance!

Pumpkin's little foray into the world of bad attitudes continues. I know a lot of it is that he is simply testing us - and he's such a loving boy so much of the time. But meal times are a little tough. He always wants a treat, and half the time he won't sit still. And I know it is because he wants to see our reaction. Kenny, unfortunately, doesn't help. Kenny also has a sour attitude. Actually, about 2 weeks ago Kenny and Pumpkin got into some kind of a tiff, probably because Pumpkin won't do exactly as Kenny says - bossy little terrorist! I'm not sure Pumpkin totally realized that they were having a fight (after all, he still has me and DH and Precious to play with, so it's not like he's bored.) Kenny started riding his brother's skateboard down at his end of the circle and not coming up here. And that was very odd since he practically LIVES up at our house. It also seems that ever since Kenny has realized that he is moving that he has become more difficult. Angry might be the right word. And he is parroting the garbage his parents feed him about how crummy the house is (which sold in 3 days, BTW) and that they don't want to live here anyway. You know, so I'll give him a hug and say I'll miss him and he says something back like "Well, we don't want to live here anyway." Amazing how little kids have that built in defense system so early. But, anyway, Kenny is sour and I think some of it is rubbing off on Pumpkin. Although, some of it is that Pumpkin is growing up and wanting to be more in control of his environment. More in control of everything, actually. We shall see how this goes. Hopefully it's just a phase and my congenial little boy will reappear.