mommagreenfish

Those of you who grew up as I did, on a diet of the Cosby Show and Star Trek: the Next Generation, will likely remember the Cosby Show episode to which the title refers.

Little Rudy feels left out of everything because her older brothers and sisters, and even her parents, keep telling her that she’s too little to help.

Eventually, she’s hiding out in her cardboard box clubhouse, and her mom comes in to cheer her up. She points out all of the great things you can do when you’re five. “Yaaay five!” she says, and Rudy repeats it.

Today was not a “yay five” day for my five year old.

It should have been. For starters, it was finally his turn to be the VIP at school today. This is a glorified show-and-tell, where the kids get to bring in up to three things from home that they really love and tell the class about them.

He’s been excited about this day since Monday, when he found out it was his turn. Which might explain why he was awake at 5:30 this morning.

Despite the early start, things probably still could have gone well. After all, it’s also the one day a week that I come home early from work (I stay late one night a week and this is my reward), so I’m the one who greets them off the bus, usually a guaranteed five-year-old pleaser.

Not so today. Today he got off the bus at a snail’s pace, and looked at me as though he wished I would crawl under a rock.

By the end of the night, despite being allowed to stay up later than usual (probably not wise given the early start, in hindsight) and play a “grown-up” game with his seven-year-old brother and me (Carcasonne, I highly reccommend it), he was up in his room, ranting at the top of his lungs about how he never gets his way and this was “the baddest day ever”.

It’s a good thing he was so loud, or he might have heard me snickering downstairs.