four on friday.

Yesterday morning after swim practice, the kids and I stopped at the gas station on North Main for Dunkin’ Donuts, which they painstakingly picked out and then happily devoured in the parking lot. In the car I tried to prepare them for the errand we had to run as I drove us down to the Social Security Administration office on Assembly Street, finally found a metered parking three blocks away, and paraded us all to our destination.

Inside, we made our way through the wall of security and up to the 11th floor into the Social Security office, which was packed full of people. Every single person looked up and stared at us as we filed in. Of course, if you are someone with anxiety, one of your worst fears is a roomful of people staring at you. Add to that my very real fear of being judged for obviously being a homeschooling mom, and I kind of just wanted to disappear.

But don’t worry! I maintained my sense of humor and smiled at the people who stared at us and did just a little school with Judah and pulled up the Photobooth app on the iPad (which had us all giggling), and the five of us made it through our hour-and-a-half wait just fine. I also realized that most people were mainly staring at Noah, who is just so darn cute that he takes the focus off the rest of us.

I consider it a small victory. You have no idea how much work it’s taken to reach this point — sitting together in a waiting room without temper tantrums or sibling fighting, without anyone running off or touching things we shouldn’t or destroying anything.

It’s not that being well-behaved in public makes my children inherently more valuable as people — like that’s the goal in and of itself. It’s just that I want to prepare them to succeed in these less-than-fun life situations every now and then, to sit in waiting rooms or go to the crowded grocery store or be in a roomful of adults and not run around wild. It’s not something I ask of them often, and we took a lot of baby steps to make it to this point.

I believe with practice and a good sense of humor (that’s key and I’ll admit I don’t always accomplish that), my kids can hear the expectations I have of them, and then rise up and meet those expectations. It infuses them with such a dignity to realize, “I can do this!” I saw the pride in their eyes afterwards when I said, “You did such a good job! Thank you for helping me today by listening and obeying! I knew you could do it.” They are not perfect, of course, but are smart and polite and growing up so fast.

Still, as we filed out an hour and a half later, a nice lady whispered to me, “You deserve a medal.” Which is not true, but was a sweet thing to say.

And now we’ve properly filed for the boys’ new social security cards with our name — “Gentino” on them! Their new birth certificates are in our hands, and everything is paper-official. It’s a lovely feeling, going into Easter weekend.

Happy Easter!