sweet and tender

I took this picture of Lincoln a while back, and I wanted to post it, not because it's that great of a shot, but because it captures his younger self instead of the way too grown up looking kid I've been seeing in all of his other pictures. He'll always be my baby and sometimes it's hard seeing him look so old.

Two cute and somewhat tragic Lincoln stories:

Story #1 Lincoln is such a great kid, he really has this innate sense of right and wrong, I love that about him. At home he skirts the line a bit, but at school he's completely serious about doing well, following directions, and not getting into trouble. At his school kids can earn these little "caught being good" cards for good behavior. He's earned a ton of them, and they are always the first thing he talks about when I pick him up. He also told me about the "oops" card kids get when they don't listen after getting a warning, or are doing very naughty things.

I always pick Linc up in the same spot, and he usually comes barreling down the hill to the parking lot racing with one of his friends. This day was different. It took him forever to get to the car and when he did he was in tears. My heart sank seeing the red puffy eyes that only appear after hours of crying. He was so distraught and the only thing a could understand was "your going to be so mad, you'll ground me, I can't tell you" At that moment my brain was going in about a million different not so pleasant directions. You think you know your children right? What could he have done that would cause this kind of reaction, I almost didn't want to know. " Mom, I got an oops card" " I'm so sorry" I had two reactions, the first was immense relief, knowing that my 6 year old had not committed some heinous crime, and the second was a not so tactful fit of laughter probably because laughter often follows intense relief, for me at least, but it was not the best time to be laughing when my son was truly feeling the weight of the world on his little shoulders. I also wandered where in the world he got the idea that I would be so mad and disappointed in him for getting his first "oops" card of the entire year! What kind of mom does he think I am, we all get an oops card every now and then, he's never been grounded, I don't even ever remember using that phrase with him before. Oh yeah, school, he learns wonderful things from school, and from all the other little convicted oops card holders he's been rubbing shoulders with in Kindergarten.

I've rarely seen Lincoln so inconsolable, he was a mes, but luckily for him we were leaving for vacation and he wouldn't have to deal with it for about 10 days. As soon as we got home from our trip though, he remembered. He cried all morning not wanting to go to school. He was so scared to have to take his little "oops" card in and talk to the principle about it.

So the whole story is this: They were in gym and Linc got a cramp, so he took a seat on the bleachers for a bit. The trouble is that the bleachers are off limits, I guess it's a standing rule, One though, that he being new, didn't really know about. To make matters worse there were two other kids down by him really playing on the forbidden bleachers and supposedly she asked them all to return to the group, but Lincoln swears he never heard her. She gave them all oops cards, and Lincoln says he cried and tried to explain to her all day, but she wouldn't listen. Sad story. I know the teachers version might be a bit different, but truly, Linc is not the type of kid that tries to lie to get himself out of trouble, at least not so far anyway. We both went in together to talk to the principle about everything, and he was very sweet and encouraging, making sure to say that it seemed like a pretty silly reason to get an "oops" card, and was distressed about all the stress it's caused for the last week and a half. But he survived, although now he complains everyday about going into school, because he's worried about getting another oops card, without doing anything wrong. I told him he just needs to try his hardest to listen more closely, and not to stress because at our house we're through with "oops" cards, they mean nothing to us. We only have about 4 more weeks of school this year, so hopefully he'll get through it. His time at this school has been a bit hard, different teachers really make for a different school experience, and after some of the experience over the past few months I understand more clearly why so many parents decide to home school their tender kids.

Story # 2 A few weeks ago after getting both the boys down to bed, Linc came out crying. He said he couldn't sleep, he was so upset and sad. He said: " I know your going to be so disappointed in me mom, I just don't want to tell you." He was so upset, I really started to worry. Then he said: " I said that they stink, but I didn't mean it, and the picture guy said we had to say it, but I didn't mean it, I'm so sorry."

So I guess when they were taking class pictures the photographer must of been trying to get them to say silly things that would make them smile. One of the silly things was " Girls stink!" So along with feeling like he'd said something mean, he also felt like he'd said something that would hurt my "girl" feelings. For a while Linc went though a bit of a male chauvinistic phase, and I worked very hard a getting him to understand, that girls are not inferior to boys and very capable of doing all kinds of things, sometimes they are even faster, better, and stronger at some things than boys. This took a while to sink in for him, but it finally did. So I think he really thought after our oh so many long winded discussions about this topic, that he had truly let me down by not standing up for all the girls.

I love this kid!