COFFEE!

1. Take my son to the potty and back to bed.
2. Repeatedly tell him that “What is the opposite of elephant?” is not a question I can answer before finally answering, “Dog,” just to get him to go to sleep.
3. Repeatedly curse the Baby Bumblebee “Opposites” DVD.
4. Fidget nervously in bed for so long that Dave, still sleeping, literally kicked me out of bed.
5. Change my clothes three times. What outfit says, “Take care of my baby. I'm right across the street?” I assemble an outfit. Then change again, because I realize I look kinda like a ninja. Sundress it is.
6. Drink a very large cup of coffee.
7. Fueled by caffeine and nervous energy, update my Facebook status twice, tweet about the joys of coffee, and write about 40 million posts on MomsLikeMe.com (sorry, ladies). Expect to receive a couple of calls and emails later questioning my mental stability.
8. Drink two more very large cups of coffee.
9. 10 minutes until wake-up. I rearrange some of the living room furniture. And then put it back because I can no longer get to the bathroom.
10. Wake Billy up for school! With the song “Good Morning To You.” His response: “Please stop singing.”
    
    Happy first day of school!
    
    

Something else he'll have to leave at home: my now stretched-out black nightshirt. "I'm the Black Beast," he told me. Indeed.

We've had a wonderful summer. More on that once I've safely gotten him off to school tomorrow.

Right now, I'm more nervous than a two-tailed cat. I feel like I've been shopping for school supplies for a month. But as I'm checking and re-checking the list of things Billy's supposed to bring tomorrow (two bottles of antibacterial soap, boxes of crayons and markers, an assortment of sponges, a ream of copy paper, etc.) I've been thinking about the things he might miss from home.

5. The witch hat
The quintessential image of my summer is Billy zooming around the dining room table on his scooter wearing nothing but Pullups and that pointed witch hat.

4. His Razor scooter
We used to think Billy had coordination problems, but he is crazy good on the scooter. He can weave in and out of furniture, narrowly miss my toes, spin circles and stop on a dime. I actually think it calms him down sometimes, focuses his attention. I just mention it in case any other parents with “sensory seekers” (and a lax attitude toward their hardwood floors) want to give it a try.

Maybe they'll have a storage tub at school that he can relax in.

3. Peanut butter
One of his classmates has a peanut allergy, so no peanut-related products in his lunch or snack. And that got me to thinking how much harder so many parents have it than we do. That peanut thing is serious, scary business. Billy loves peanut butter, but he can have it after school.

2. The laundry basket
Second only to the witch hat, the laundry basket is his costume of choice. It's one of those net pop-up ones, so he can see through it, and he wears it over his head as “Robot Billy.” Sometimes he wears it while riding his scooter. Once, he fell asleep in his bed wearing it.

Billy's best buddy

1. Willow
Billy's sister was barely one and barely walking when school was last in session. Now she is his best friend, playmate, sworn enemy, bath buddy, wrestling opponent, and fellow robot. She has been the third member of our circle during this summer's “circle time,” the world's most appreciative audience for his antics, and the hand he holds while watching TV. He has been the center of her universe. It's going to be hard on her. And me. And very quiet in our house.

I can still remember learning to read. It was a very exciting time. I was in first grade, and we were taught phonics with the Open Court system.

If you're around my age, you'll remember the wall cards with the letters and pictures on them, and the chant that we stood and recited every morning: “Block A, Block A ...ay, ay, ay! Beating heart, beating heart ... buh, buh, buh!” And so on.

There was a story behind the pictures associated with each sound. We started with the letter “M,” which we learned made the sound “mmmm...” The picture on the card was a girl enjoying an ice cream cone, and she was the star of the story. I can remember each picture on every card, because it made sense and had relevance to the story.

As we learned another letter, another bit of the girl's story was revealed: At one point she saw a motorboat on the water, which made an “nnnnn....” sound. And at another plot point, she encountered an angry cat, teaching us “fffff...” sound. At various points in the story, she cracked some nuts(C- and K-), knocked on a door (D-), got out of breath (H-), made some coffee (Qu-), and encountered a frog (G-), baby birds (Y-), an angry lion (R-) and apparently, a ghost (Oo-).

I have a couple of points. First of all, the story was exciting. There were ghosts! And lions! And motorboats! And ice cream!

Secondly, I was six years old. My mom had taught me how to read quite a few words before then, but the school didn't actually attempt to teach me to read until I was six.

Billy started pre-K when he had just turned three. Almost immediately, his class began with sight words.

The first word I was taught in school was “ME.” It had obvious significance for me, and I knew how to sound it out because I had been taught the “ice cream sound” (M-) and “Block E” (long E-).

Billy's first word : “the.” How do you teach a 3-year-old the significance of “the.” WHY do you teach a three-year-old the significance of “the?”

In my first grade class, after learning “me,” Mrs. Peel taught us the “knock on door” consonant (D-) and “the angry lion” (R-) and I sounded out the word “deer.” My first book: We Feed A Deer. A little light on plot, sure, but it was followed by Fire! Fire! (long I-) and one about a jewel heist on a boat (long O-) that I remember to this day.

Billy's books are called “pre-decodables” and they are the most boring stories on the planet. In fact, calling them “stories” is a little misleading. They are more like word collections.

Some of the titles are A Table, The Pond and The Cows, and they make We Feed a Deer read like an episode of “CSI: Miami.” I mean, come on, who ever heard of a children's book in which the protagonist was a TABLE?

Here is the actual entire text of The Pond:
"The pond.
He and I are by the pond.
The frog is by the pond.
The pond."

Billy's going to start his second year of pre-K next month, and he will very likely be getting the same material again. The only thing worse than studying The Pond for a week is a re-run of The Pond. I've tried getting these books back out to re-familiarize him with the sight words, but the last time I pulled one out, he just laid his head down on the table and started to weep softly.

His favorite books at the moment are Madeline, which involves crying and emergency surgery and a man with a “hurchy foot” and scars and presents and balloons (these plot twists are listed in the order of their importance to Billy), and Finding Nemo, which has sharks and a blowfish and water and a seahorse and hugs and lots of shouting.

The Pond can't compete. I'm glad he's learning to read at school. I just hope the plotless reading material doesn't cause him to develop an aversion to it.

Books are competing with more stuff than ever for kids' attention. It's never been more important to make their reading material exciting and challenging – even if they are three. Especially if they're three. Have you seen an episode of the "Wonder Pets?" Those animals get around.

For the time being, I'm spicing up The Pond with a few plot twists of my own. I hope it doesn't raise too many eyebrows in the fall if Billy explains how the giant frog at the pond ate the boy who then cried and cried until his friends, the magical fish who were cousins of Nemo, sang the theme to the “Wonder Pets” and saved the day.

Now that's a story about a pond.