Calfgrit7’s first grade class was part of a show where the kids stood and sat on risers on the auditorium stage. It was for the end of the school year, and all the audience was parents. They sang several songs, did little “hand dances,” and were just cute as hell.

Some of the kids seemed to be loving the whole performance, some seemed very stage shy, and some seemed distracted, looking around the stage and audience without really paying attention to what they were supposed to be doing. And all the time, there camera flashes from the audience. I looked around the auditorium and laughed at all the parents filming and snapping pictures — I was right there doing it too.

The kids sang about saying “Hello” in many languages, they sang about their school being great (to the tune of “It’s a Small World”), they sang about eating a mosquito burrito, and they sang “We’re All In This Together” from High School Musical. I’ve heard that song before, but having heard it from a bunch of 7 year olds, my son among them, it’s now got a reserved spot in my heart. God, but they were adorable.

We made sure Calfgrit7 saw us in the audience, and we exchanged waves a couple times. After the show, we congratulated him, and he seemed very happy and proud for having performed. That’s great. He didn’t look like he was totally comfortable up there on stage, especially compared to some of the “real performers,” but he said he enjoyed doing the show.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

For an update on Calfgrit3’s injury: he’s healing up nicely. It’s really astonishing how quickly kids heal. His black eye is really just a shadow of what it was the couple days after the fall, and there’s been no lasting effect.

Now, while on the subject of Calfgrit3, he’s been asking some interesting questions lately:

“Why don’t earthworms have eyes?”

“Why does water put out fires?”

“Why is the microwave not hot?”

“Why do we read books before nap and bedtime?”

I remember when Calfgrit7 was 3 years old — he asked similarly difficult to answer questions. The only specific one I remember from him is: “Why is the sky blue?”

Notice the common theme to these questions? “Why”. Every question from a 3 year old revolves around “Why?” They don’t ask, “Where does the sun go at night?”, they ask, “Why is nighttime dark?” I don’t know why this is, but it’s an obvious pattern.

When Calfgrit7 was still a baby, before he could talk and ask questions, I vowed to myself that I would always try to answer my children’s questions. I would never shrug them off or wave them away. But I made that promise before I really knew what kind of questions kids would ask. And before I knew how many questions they could ask in a day.

I mean, take, for example, “Why does water put out fires?” Do you know why? If you do, can you answer it in a way that a 3 year old would understand? If it was just this one question, I could research the answer and tell him before putting him to bed at night. But a 3 year old can ask a dozen questions like this just on the drive to the store.

The main reason why I remember that one question above that Calfgrit7 asked when he was 3 (“Why is the sky blue?”) is because I actually did try to answer it when he asked. I happened to know the answer to that question: Because the molecules of nitrogen in the atmosphere scatter blue light waves more than they scatter other wave lengths of light. He paused a moment, as if to consider what I said, and then said, “Why is the sky blue?” I sighed.

I now understand why parents say, “Because it is,” and “Because I said so.”

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I was at work and my cell phone buzzed. It was Cowgrit calling me from home. “Hello,” I answered. I could hear the Calvesgrit in the background, and it sounded like the littlest was crying.

Cowgrit said, “Calfgrit3 is hurt. I need you to come home and help me.”

“OK,” I said, “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” (It’s a 15 minute drive from the office to home.)

I saved my computer work and hustled out of my office to my car. I wasn’t worried because my wife didn’t sound upset.

Cowgrit is a nurse (RN). She was a full-time pediatric nurse for several years, and she’s been a part-time (four days a month) maternity ward nurse since Calfgrit7 was born. I’m thankful for her knowledge and experience in pediatrics almost daily, and especially with incidents like what she called me for. No matter how bad something with the boys looks to me, if she’s not worried about it, I can stay calm. I knew, whatever this problem was, she sounded calm on the phone. If the hurt was really bad, she would have told me to meet them at the hospital — so probably nothing broken or bleeding a lot.

But before I got home, she called my cell phone again. She was taking him to the doctor’s office, and I should go to meet them there. She said Calfgrit3 had fallen and hit his head, beside his eye, on a table. The area was swelling faster than she could stop it with an ice pack, so she wanted the doctor to see him. She said she didn’t think there was any serious damage, but it was bad enough to get a doctor’s opinion.

She was still calm, but I could tell the concern in her voice. Calfgrit3 had stopped crying in the background. (He was eating some crackers; Goldfish can soothe any crying child.)

I arrived at the doctor’s office just a few minutes after my family. When I stepped into the examining room and saw Calfgrit3, I said, “Whoa!” He had a big ole goose egg on the corner of his eye. It looked like he had half a golf ball under his skin. He was playing happily with Calfgrit7, apparently unbothered by the injury.

Cowgrit told me some of the swelling had gone down — good lord, how bad was it before I saw it? She told me the story of the incident: They had gone across the street to visit a neighbor. Within moments of them getting in the house, Calfgrit3 tripped and fell, hitting the corner of his eye on a table. The bump had started growing immediately, so she rushed him back across the street to put ice on it. She also gave him some pain med. She checked to see if it looked like his eye was damaged, but she thought it just a bump. But when the bump just kept getting bigger, to the point of closing his eye, she decided the doctor was needed.

Eventually the doctor came in and examined Calfgrit3. The doc checked his eye, ears, nose, and the goose egg. She felt around his eye socket to determine if anything was broken. She said everything looked fine, and that this was just a bump. “Keep putting cold on it till it goes down completely. It’ll look real bad for the next couple of days,” she said. But there was apparently no real damage to his skull or eye. Whew.

A day later, sure enough, it looks real bad. The swelling is mostly gone, but all around his eye is various shades of black and blue, and green and yellow. His eye lid is all black. Calfgrit3 acts perfectly normal, like he has no discomfort. It’s kind of funny, in a disturbing way, to see a cute, smiling little boy looking up at you with that big, ugly shiner around his eye. In a few more days, there’ll be no sign of this injury. Kids heal so fast.

Cowgrit is great at moments like that incident. Had I been the only parent with him when his eye swole up like that, I would have freaked out. I’d have probably gone directly to the hospital emergency room fearing a concussion or lost eye.

And if a degree and experience in pediatric nursing was not great enough for a mother, she also has a degree in elementary education. I am so lucky to have Cowgrit as the mother of my children.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I went to Calfgrit7’s school today for his lunch time. (I decided not to bring up the bullet situation with the office staff, but this “lunch date” was planned before the bullet was found, so this timing was just coincidental.) This is the last lunch at school I’d have with him in first grade — school will be out for this grade in a couple of weeks.

Calfgrit7 was very happy to see me, and he immediately held out his hand to take me with him into the cafeteria and to their class’s tables. They have to sit boy-girl-boy-girl now because both sexes were getting too rowdy when they got together in their groups. The girl sitting beside CG7 was a tiny, little thing with a little Barbie band-aid on her forehead. She showed me her boo-boo rather proudly. Across the table from me was another girl with a pink and purple “Princess” shirt. Beside her was a boy with disheveled hair and half a dozen packs of ketchup to apply to everything on his tray.

The kids are so silly and cute. The two girls with us continuously wanted CG7’s and my attention — we’re just the babe magnets, yes we are. How you doin’?

I snapped a few pictures around the cafeteria because Calfgrit7 won’t be back in this school next year, and I want him to have something to remind him of it if he ever feels nostalgic for his kindergarten and first grade years. I know, I know, he’s only 7. But I wish I had some pictures of my elementary school so I could look back and remember what it looked like when I was there.

That’s the sad thing about nostalgia: you only think of it when it’s too late to record those memories.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com