There are still a lot of photos and stories from summer that I swear I'm going to get around to posting someday, but for now I have to share Evan's preschool photo:
The photographer who came to the school for photos was really good with the kids and at getting natural smiles out of them. We weren't even planning on ordering photos, but I went in that morning to assist the photographer with setting up and supervising kids, and because of my (very minimal) help, she offered to give us some free photos. Looking at that face above, I'm glad we got them after all, because isn't that cute?
The day we got the photos back, Evan's class had earned a trip to the treat jar. I told Evan he could have his treat after lunch. We were putting on our coats when Evan saw one of his friends eating her treat.
"How come she gets to eat her candy?" he asked his friend's mother.
"Oh, well, sometimes I spoil her a little," replied the mother.
"Why do you spoil her?" Evan asked.
"Because I love her," she replied.
Evan looked at me, matter-of-factly: "Too bad you don't love me, Mom."
It's a cute photo, but don't let that sweet smile fool you: he's still Evan.
17 November 2009
evan's preschool photo
19 October 2009
my life as a chauffeur
It turns out that having both kids in school really hasn't changed much around here. A month into Evan's school year, we've settled into a routine that's working out pretty well for us. The only snag in our scheduling so far is a small one, but rather annoying: my free time during Evan's school time is not nearly as much as I expected it would be.
See, he's in school for two and a half hours. Great, I thought at first, that's seven and a half hours a week! But as it turns out, once I factor in the time I spend driving Evan to school and then Greg to work and then picking Evan up again, I'm left with a little under two hours, which is hardly enough time to do anything.
Examples of ways I've spent my less-than-two-hours on preschool days: grocery shopping and checking email; running and showering. And... that's it. On mornings I grocery shop I have very little time once I've gotten home and put everything away, and on mornings I run I have a little time afterward to stretch and cool down and shower.
I don't mean to complain, though, I really don't. It's so nice having time to run, and being able to go to the grocery store without kids in tow. I guess my problem is just that I saw those free hours as an endless expanse of time which I could fill with any number of productive activities, and I'm quickly finding, to my dismay, that my time is not infinite at all, but still pretty limited. Before Evan started school I told everyone that my fall project during my new-found free time was going to be to make a quilt, but I've hardly had time to think about it, let alone start one!
I'm spending a lot more time in the car these days as well, between driving both Greg and Evan three times a week, plus the driving I need to do for errands. That's partly due to the lousy weather we've been having though -- rain and unusually cold temperatures have been preventing Greg from riding his bike much this fall. Hopefully spring will be a little better for that.
So, to answer everyone who's been asking what I'm doing with all my free time: the same stuff I always do, but also driving other people around a little more. Not a bad way to spend my mornings, though.
01 October 2009
stories of preschoolers
Even though Evan is in preschool now, he's only there three mornings a week, so we're still going to one of the community play classes for preschoolers on one of his off days. The main reason I decided to continue with this class in addition to preschool is because of how much Evan loves his teacher.
She's not a real teacher; she's a Parks Department employee who leads the kids in some activities and supervises them while they play, makes sure they're using the equipment and toys properly, that sort of thing. It's a really unstructured environment, held in a school cafeteria covered with big mats and active toys. The teacher really enjoys the kids, though, and she spends a lot of time just playing with them, for which they all love her too.
I'm about to tell more snobby parenting stories here, by the way. Because these classes are free or really cheap, you get a lot of different types of people attending. Let's just say that my bleeding-heart granola sensibilities are even more unusual here than they are at Suburban Preschool. I frequently find myself boggling over some of the things I overhear from other parents there.
There was the grandmother who told her grandson to be nice to Evan or Evan's mommy would get mad at him and yell at him. Then she looked at me and whispered, "Really, yell at him." Whuh? Sorry, Grandma, but it's not my job to discipline your grandson for you!
Then there was the father complaining that his daughter wouldn't go to sleep before 10 or 11 pm. They'd tried everything, he said, but it was no use, because his two-and-a-half year old daughter knew how to turn on the television in her bedroom and put on a DVD by herself, so despite their best efforts she still stayed up late watching DVDs. (The other parents listening to his complaint, by the way, responded with variations of, "Kids these days! They're so smart and technologically advanced!")
This morning there was another grandmother, playing with her grandson on the mats. Five-year-old grandson picks up a block and Grandma says, "You can pretend it's a gun." Five-year-old points his "gun" at the teacher and starts yelling, "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" Teacher keels over, groaning. Little boy laughs: "Ha ha! I killed you!" Grandma suddenly gets very sharp with grandson: "That's not nice! We don't say that!" Little boy asks, "What?" all innocent-like. Grandma says, "We don't use the word 'kill'. That's not nice." Oh, okay, gotcha -- pretending to shoot a teacher with a gun is fine and dandy, but don't call it killing! We wouldn't want to be inappropriate!
There are a lot of cute kids and normal people who attend these things, but some of these people are just so very different from me in their basic fundamental values and principles that I can't even comprehend what's happening inside their heads. Evan and I get along really well with the teacher, but some of these people make me wonder how she stands it sometimes. She was telling stories this morning too, of some of the more colorful kids saying things to her that just make her jaw drop at the rudeness of them.
I worry, sometimes, about whether my kids are going to grow up to be good people (and these worries are based more in my own paranoia and lack of parenting confidence than they are in any signs from my kids that they're becoming sociopaths or something) but then sometimes, when I spend time with my kids' peers, I figure, even if my kids aren't Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., at least they'll be better than the obnoxious jerks these kids' parents are setting them up to be.
And then I feel guilty for thinking kids are jerks, and this is when I start to feel like a judgy snob. But I guess... I'm not really sure what my point is here. I'm not even sure I have one, really, so I suppose this is a good place to end the rambling.
28 September 2009
preschool
Evan had his first day of preschool this morning. It was a strange feeling, dropping him off and getting back into the car with Greg beside me and an empty back seat behind us. James started nursery school for the first time when he was younger than Evan is now, yet Evan still seems so small.
Camera/computer issues are still not resolved, but luckily Greg just got a fancy-pants new cell phone and he was able to get a first-day photo of Evan:
Our little baby, all grown up, with his new big-kid backpack and everything. Sniff.
This will probably surprise no one, but Evan loved school, loved it to pieces. When I picked him up he ran to hug me and the first words out of his mouth were to ask me if we could dance ourselves home from school. Sweatshirt and backpack went on, and he was off, skipping down the hall toward the door.
The ride home from school was all narration, because guess what they had for snack??? Raspberry yogurt! And Mrs. S. is the nicest teacher in the world, she's much nicer than James' teacher! And they had story time, but Mrs. S. didn't read a book, she did a puppet show! And there's another Evan in the class, and Evan M was a very good listener for Mrs. S. but Evan S. was, oh, a pretty good listener. School is good.
We went to a welcome picnic at the school on Saturday, and it was a little weird. Greg and I are not so much the type of people to walk up to strangers and initiate small talk, so we kind of hung back and people-watched. The vibe from this school is different from that of James' preschool. Less granola, more Wal-mart. Comparisons: the snacks served at the new preschool were Capri Sun and store-bought cookies; snacks I have seen people feed their children at the old preschool were things like legumes and homemade whole-wheat crackers, and nothing less than 100% juice. Cars in the parking lot at the old school were mostly older minivans with liberal bumper stickers on the backs. Cars in the parking lot at the new school are much newer, shinier, and bigger, even including some SUVs. (I can't imagine anyone at the old school setting foot in an SUV.)
We spent some time discussing the suburban feel of the place before it struck me that maybe now that we live in the suburbs and are sending our son to the suburban preschool, maybe we look like a typical suburban family too. I mean, is there any way to tell from looking at us that I literally make my own granola? I started remembering something about books and covers and resolved to keep my mouth shut until I actually met some of these people. Even rereading the last paragraph makes me feel like a big snob, so -- hey! A project to work on in my new-found free time: less snobbishness.
So this school is not our ideal. It doesn't match, in my mind, the standard set by James' crunchy urban school. But the smile on my son's face, and the excited chatter all the way out the door and during the ride home have convinced me that it's a pretty good place for him to be.
11 September 2009
end of summer
It's come to my attention that there are people out there who actually miss it when I don't update my blog, which I really hadn't guessed. I stopped updating during my busy summer and people noticed and said things to me, so here I am, back to the blog.
It's not quite fall yet, but it's starting to feel that way. The days are suddenly noticeably cooler, trees in the neighborhood are starting to glow red and orange, and James started second grade on Wednesday. Second grade! I do not have the requisite first-day-of-school photo to share with you, for two reasons: 1, the laptop is having issues and I can't use it to do the whole photo thing, and 2, I forgot to take the requisite first-day-of-school photo. I actually brought the camera to the bus stop on Wednesday, but neglected to put the battery in it first. Yesterday I had every intention of taking a second-day photo and passing it off as a first-day photo, but the bus came ten minutes early and what with all the sprinting to catch it I didn't get a chance. Today I just gave up.
Second grade, by the way, is great, and Mrs. F. is his best teacher ever. And I don't know if it's maturity or something they're putting in the water at school, but James came home and voluntarily told me all about his day. No prying! Questions answered with multiple syllables! I hardly knew what to do with the sudden influx of information!
When James first got on the bus and went to school, Evan and I went inside and I asked him what he'd like to do all day. He answered, "I don't know what to do without James." Heart-meltingly sweet, I know, but not entirely true. No James means no competition for the Legos, which is mostly how Evan has been spending his time this week.
Evan is due to start school soon too. He was supposed to start next week, but we got a letter from the school informing us that the church in which the school is housed is having roofing work done, which includes asbestos removal, so school doesn't start until the end of the month. We did, however, get to go in to the school to meet Evan's teacher (apparently asbestos exposure of under half an hour is okay?) and she read to him and gave him presents, so he's totally sold on this whole preschool thing.
Evan, by the way, suddenly seems so much older. He's had a growth spurt over the last several months, and we cut his hair short, and finally he really looks like a preschooler. The baby fat is melting and the traces of babyhood in his appearance are fading away as well. It's been weird to witness such dramatic changes in a kid who's always grown so gradually.
We had a lot of fun this summer, and hopefully I'll remember to get back into the habit of blogging to share some of our many photos and stories.
10 June 2009
big news!
Just a quick update. Most of you reading this probably already know, but: Greg handed in his thesis! He has a month to prepare his defense, and then, he will be finished with grad school. Finished! It's possible he'll have to make some corrections to his dissertation after the fact, but he will be able to get a real job, with a salary large enough to support our family, and we'll actually get to see him every day.
So! Exciting!
James and Evan came in from playing on Monday afternoon to see Greg sitting on the couch. "Dad!" they cried, "Are you done?" When he replied in the affirmative, James asked, "Does this mean you'll get to stay home all the time now?" Sadly, no, but he will be home a lot more often now that he's not spending all of his waking hours writing.
So things are good. We're feeling a little more relaxed now, and starting to make plans for the summer now that we have a time frame to work around. We'll keep you posted as to what's next!
10 April 2009
friday photos: scratch-paper-comix edition
I've been wondering about the quality of James' art education all year, as he brings home one construction paper collage after another, but this week really topped them all. I know that kids love to draw on scratch paper, but this is something Evan regularly does in his preschooler art class. Are public school budgets for art classes really so low that first-graders are limited to construction paper and scratch paper projects?
Despite the questionable usefulness of public school art class, my first-grader has a lot of interesting things going on in his head, and he manages to produce some hilarious stuff. This week's scratch paper drawing is actually one of my favorite things he's made at school.
This is Part 1 of a comic-style story in which several of his favorite characters team up against one formidable foe. Read the full story below the fold.
First, Cyclops was tearing down the city. He smashed a building in half in New York City:
But then Luke Skywalker came and stabbed Cyclops in the foot with a lightsaber:
Then, Cyclops got angry:
He smashed the Empire State Building in half:
Then Indiana Jones came and whipped him in the leg and Luke said, "Thanks for coming to help me!":
Then Curious George stabbed Cyclops in the eye with a banana while he was hanging from a giant tree:
Then Spongebob pulled out one of Cyclops' teeth and made him swallow it:
Then Plankton came and wanted to make friends with Cyclops, but Cyclops burped the tooth out onto Plankton's face:
Then Plankton zapped Cyclops with electricity out of his remote control. Then R2D2 came and zapped Cyclops in the face:
Cyclops smashed everyone except Gary the snail, who had a lightsaber:
Then Gary stabbed Cyclops in the face with a lightsaber and he died:
You may have noticed the "Part 2 Come Soon" at the bottom of the page. If Part 2 does indeed come soon and is as fantastic as Part 1, I may post it as well.
Evan, by the way, thinks this is just about the greatest story ever, and while I'm not entirely on board with all the stabbing, I do think a giant Cyclops destroying New York would need to be stopped, even using violence if necessary.
Let me know if you're interested in seeing more of my kids' artwork, or if this is one of those blind parent moments in which I'm forcing everyone to look at something I think is brilliant and you're all dreading the prospect of having to look at more children's scrawling excuses for art.
08 April 2009
evan news
So the news lately is that we have a preschooler in the house. Evan is officially enrolled in preschool for next year, and we're all excited about it. Well, actually, I don't think James cares much, but the rest of us are excited. Evan's excitement comes mostly from the fact that the new school has a matchbox-type car that resembles the Batmobile, and mine comes mostly from the fact that I will be getting over 7 hours a week all to myself come fall. I'm not sure what Greg is excited about, since he's not getting any extra free time or Batmobile-like cars out of this preschool deal, but he seems happy about it. Maybe he's actually thinking of the social and academic benefits our son will be getting, who knows.
The school is very similar to the preschool James went to, but cheaper, and closer to our house. It's also a cooperative school, where parents serve on the board and volunteer in the classroom, and actually, the physical layout of the school, the varieties of toys in the classroom, and the fact that it's located in a church make for some rather eerie similarities. The teacher seems very friendly and capable, though my first impression of her is that she won't be nearly as awesome as James' teacher was, but that would be hard to do. Still, I think she'll be more than fine.
Evan and I are still going to some community play classes, where he keeps the teacher endlessly amused with his antics and his chattering. He's finally getting to the point where I can sit and watch him play without hovering, without fearing that he will kill himself or someone else by recklessly diving off of something. If he ever stops throwing tantrums, I might be ready to believe he's growing up a little.
25 February 2009
catching up
Looking back through my recent posts, I realized that I haven't written much about our lives in a while, so I thought I'd write a brief (though probably not very brief) post about what we've been doing over the last couple of months.
I'll start with Christmas. I wrote about our ridiculous holiday travel experiences, but then completely neglected to write about our actual vacation. We were at Greg's parents' house for about ten days, and it was wonderful to spend so much time with his family after a full year without seeing most of them. We did all the usual holiday stuff -- played games, watched movies, lazed around, ate a LOT -- but probably the most remarkable thing about the vacation was snow. Snow! In the Pacific Northwest! As someone born and bred in upstate New York, spending seven Christmases in green, snow-free Washington state never felt quite like Christmas. But the Pacific Northwest got hit with some unusual weather this winter (luckily, not affecting our travel on that end at all), and we were able to play in the snow, to build snowmen and have snowball fights and go sledding in a place with real hills.
It's always hard to say goodbye to Greg's family, knowing we won't see them again for a long time, but this year we're hoping to visit again in the summer, for the first time in three years, thanks to the travel vouchers and frequent flier miles the airline gave us after all the trouble we had. I didn't realize how long it had been since we'd been to Washington in the summer until the boys and I were watching an episode of Blue Planet about tidal areas, and James, when asked, told me he can't remember exploring tide pools in Washington. I had to stop and think that the last time we were there, he was four, so he probably wouldn't remember much about it. Hopefully that will change this summer.
I say hopefully, because the biggest thing going on with us lately is that Greg is in the final stages of writing his dissertation, really pushing to finish it within a month or two, so by the time summer rolls around, hopefully Dr. Schmidt will be employed. And hopefully whoever employs him will be willing to give him a little vacation time over the summer. We could all use a vacation -- with Greg trying to finish, he's working ridiculously long hours, and we don't see him nearly enough. I've been feeling lonely and overworked on the domestic front, and the boys are even losing out on weekend playtime since Greg is going in to work most Sundays. To give you an idea of how things are, today is Wednesday and James hasn't seen Greg since Sunday. We'll all be glad when graduate school is over and done with.
James is still enjoying first grade, as much as he can enjoy doing a bunch of work that's too easy for him. He brought home another perfect report card a couple of weeks ago. Evan and I are going to more community classes for preschoolers, and we're looking into real preschool for the fall. Last week was winter break, in which the boys and I spent waaaay too much quality time together, which made me incredibly grateful for public schools and birth control.
There's not much else to tell -- we're all healthy (most of the time), we're all content. Pretty boring sometimes, but nothing to complain about.
21 November 2008
friday photos: first grade update edition
Last week we had James' parent-teacher conference. We suspected that the conference, like all previous conferences with James' teachers, would be fine, because he is bright and, with the occasional exception of talking too much, generally well-behaved.
Also, I had heard a funny story from our neighbor a week or two earlier after his conference with his daughter's teacher. Neighbor Girl and James are in different classes this year, but still play together every day after school. NG's teacher was asking NG's dad about what NG does outside of school, and NG's dad mentioned that NG plays with her neighbor James a lot. NG's teacher said, "Oh, you mean Smart James from the other class?"
So, knowing that other teachers in the school know our son as "Smart James" had us feeling pretty relaxed going into this conference.
We love James' teacher this year. Mrs. M. is friendly, enthusiastic and experienced, and best of all, she loves James to pieces and couldn't say enough about how well he is doing in school. The only issue that came up at the conference was when we told Mrs. M. that James thinks school is too easy and he would love to have more challenging work (something he's told us on a regular basis since school began this year). Luckily Mrs. M. realizes how bright James is, and that he could benefit from more challenging work, but unfortunately it seems she has little flexibility to provide him with more challenges. Because of the requirements and structure of the first-grade routine, Mrs. M. doesn't have time to work individually with James on advanced material. And it certainly wouldn't be fair to ask her to put in extra work for a kid who's already excelling when she probably has her hands full trying to keep some of the other kids up to speed with regular class work.
So we're trying to spend some extra time working with James at home. Last weekend I bought him a 320-page workbook of second grade skills, which he is currently flying through with little trouble. He is perfectly content to sit down and fill out worksheet after worksheet of spelling and math problems. Good practice for his handwriting, too. And we're currently reading Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, which James is enjoying just as much as I did at his age.
I never realized when James started school that it would be so much more work for us, but the older he gets, the more fun we are all having.
Oh, and a word on Evan: I discovered yesterday that he can recognize the numbers 1-9, when I thought he didn't know any of them. Smart kids!
08 October 2008
scene from the bus stop
Waiting at the bus stop with Neighbor Girl and Neighbor Girl's Dad:
James, to kid across the street: Hey, Captain! Hi, Captain!
Me: James, why do you call that kid Captain?
James: The first time I met him, he just told me his name was Captain.
Neighbor Girl's Dad: And Tennille?
James: I can kneel! [drops to knees on the sidewalk]
Me and NGD: [cannot contain laughter]
It's my least favorite part of day, morning, even when I don't have to drag myself out of bed and down to the bus stop in the chilly autumn air, twenty minutes earlier than the scheduled time due to the unpredictability of the new bus driver. (Of course, it's the days we're out there twenty minutes early, in the rain, when she comes nearly on time, and the days we only make it out ten or fifteen minutes early, we barely catch the bus.)
But early mornings are made infinitely more bearable when you spend the worst part of it with a thirty-year-old guy who cracks pop culture jokes and starts singing "Substitutiary Locomotion" when you mention the kids have just watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Then it's actually a pretty good way to start the day.
23 September 2008
what's for lunch
Yesterday James had the best lunch he's had since the school year started. This is because the siren song of saturated fat and empty calories is so alluring to my son that I agreed to let him choose one or two lunches per month to buy in the cafeteria, and yesterday was his first school lunch.
"It was awesome! I had a cheeseburger -- with extra ketchup! -- and rice balls with bread on the outside,** and an apple and applesauce!"
I have had a fear of school lunches ever since I read Fast Food Nation several years ago. It's been too long for me to accurately remember all of the details, but the basic reason school lunches are so terrible is because government subsidies make meat and dairy the cheapest foods for schools to buy, so lunches are very heavy on meat and dairy (and, consequently, fat) and not so big on fresh fruits and vegetables or whole grains. Looking at James' school's September lunch menu, I see entrees such as mozzarella sticks, nachos, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, several varieties of breaded and fried chicken, and pizza every Friday. Sure, they're serving canned fruit and vegetables every day, but somehow I doubt calling your sides "sunny corn" or "yummy carrots" adds much to their appeal.
On top of the questionable nutrition of school lunches, we also have a commitment to eating ethically-raised animal products on a very limited basis, so you can see why we're not keen on school lunches. We more than qualify for the free and reduced lunch program, but as cheap as I am I just can't bring myself to sacrifice my son's nutrition to save some money. So I've been trying to be creative with packing James' lunches so that he won't feel left out of the daily grease ingestion.
Let me tell you, there are some good resources out there for school lunch ideas. I've been taking inspiration from the idea of bento boxes, which are Japanese home-packed meals featuring a wide variety of foods, and often some cool artistic designs made from food. There are many photo sets on Flickr showing ways in which people have adapted the bento idea for other types of foods and cuisines. I've also been checking out Vegan Lunch Box (not that we're vegan, but I got the corresponding cookbook from the library and it has a lot of great ideas as well as some tasty-looking recipes) and LunchNugget, two blogs in which mamas document the tasty lunches they make for their offspring.
Now, I'm not nearly ambitious (or awake) enough at 7:30am to use cookie cutters on vegetables, or fashion octopuses out of hot dogs, and we don't have a real bento box in which to artistically arrange lunch. But I do find it really useful to have so many ideas to consider, so that my kid is not just taking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple to school every day (which, incidentally, is Evan's lunch nearly every day, since he does not yet know what he's missing). And James, luckily, is willing to let me experiment and find out how well a burrito or a leftover chicken drumstick holds up in the lunchbox for three hours.
So far he seems to be satisfied with a once or twice a month special school lunch. Let's hope I'm good enough at this creative lunch-packing to make that last the whole year.
________________________________________________
**Tater tots. How happy am I that my kid doesn't know what a tater tot is?
19 September 2008
05 September 2008
friday photos: first grade edition
This year I actually remembered to take the obligatory first day of school photo.
So far first grade is a success. We have not missed the bus yet, despite it coming 6-7 minutes earlier than scheduled (we had to run for it this morning, but we made it), James' lunch box is coming home nearly empty every day (so far no begging for cafeteria chicken nuggets or pizza), and James is in the same class as both his kindergarten best friend and his kindergarten girlfriend. This girlfriend, by the way (to tell an anecdote I could have blogged about in my missing month but didn't) is the girl he told over the phone a couple of weeks ago that he doesn't want to marry her, he just wants to have babies with her. Let's hope she didn't repeat that to her parents.
As always, James tells me virtually nothing about school, and the thousand questions I ask in the brief period between him getting off the bus and going outside to play are answered in monosyllables around mouthfuls of snack. Full-day school is a tiring adjustment for him, I think; at least, that's the excuse I'm giving him for his cranky attitude toward me when he gets home every day.
But we are all adjusting. Evan and I are learning how to fill our days without James around. I'm slowly remembering what it's like to hang out with one child at a time. We're all getting used to getting up and getting ready much earlier than usual. I think it's going to be a good year.
25 June 2008
milestone
My first-born child finished kindergarten today. I can't really think of anything meaningful to say about it, just -- that kid is getting old, now. The time, it flies, even when you're not always having fun.
19 June 2008
homophobia starts early
James got off the bus today and told me that one of his classmates and classmate's 4th-grade brother were teasing him on the bus, saying that James likes boys and James wants to marry a boy. James didn't seem too upset about it -- he said he told them it wasn't true, told them not to say it, but I don't think he got very angry about it.
But I'm angry. I can't believe that that's something six-year-olds are teasing each other about. First of all, all this talk about marriage in general among kindergarteners is unsettling -- how quickly do kids need to grow up these days? I hear far too much for my liking about which of the kids in James' class are "getting married." Yet already, at such young ages, these children are acutely aware that boys liking boys is something to tease about, something to shame another child for.
If it starts this early, how bad will it get as they get older? I made sure to point out to James that even if it were true, even if he liked boys, there's nothing wrong with that, but how do my reassurances stack up next to the taunting of his peers?
It makes me incredibly sad, actually. It makes me grateful that I've never had to face teasing over something as wonderful as love. It makes me worry about what my kids might face should one of them be gay. It makes me worry about my small voice versus the roar of society in their ears. It makes me fear that my kids may one day end up teasing other kids this way.
You know, I was so overjoyed about the recent California ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. But then something like this comes along, elementary children being already caught up in the prevailing negative attitudes about gay people, and it makes me realize just how far we have to go before it will really, truly not matter who you love.
15 February 2008
friday photos: kindergarten love edition
In the week leading up to Valentine's Day, James' class at school has been focusing a lot on love, and doing various love-related projects. He had a show-and-tell day on which he had to bring in a photo of someone he loves, and he made a little "Love Book" to illustrate people or things he loves. Naturally, cuteness abounds. Photos below the fold. And the drawings from his "Love Book": Greg was a little insulted to be replaced by Goldfish (I believe this refers to the crackers and not the animal, which I find even funnier) but I'm pleased to have made the cut. Especially since Greg is actually James' favorite person by far. I'll be visiting family this weekend, so I may or may not get a weekend recipe up. Have a happy weekend!
The person James loves who he brought photos of to school? His brother. AWWWW. These are the two photos he brought to show his class: 
16 November 2007
progress report
My mom is visiting because my birthday is coming up, and we have lots of plans and festivities coming up this weekend. This leaves me little time for a real post, but I thought I'd share a quick update.
We had our parent-teacher conference with James' teacher this morning, and in the tradition of his preschool progress reports, we were told that James is a great student. Things we've worried about (If he's bossing his brother and friends at home, is he bossing other kids at school? Is he improving on his emotional control, i.e. keeping outbursts and tantrums to a minimum?) seem to be non-issues at school, where he is generally well-behaved and focused and participatory and pretty much everything else you could ask for from a five-year-old.
The big news is that she estimates his reading ability and comprehension to be at about a third grade level. This doesn't really surprise us, but it's always nice to hear someone else praise your child.
01 October 2007
i'd rather we had bake sales
Now that we're a month into the kindergarten routine, I'm finally getting to used to it. I'm used to watching my kid climb aboard the bus without looking back, I'm used to checking the kindergarten calender every morning to see whether he needs to bring anything, I'm used to receiving the Friday Folder at the end of the week, filled with correspondence from the teacher, homework assignments, school newsletters, and notices from the PTA.
But some of these notices from the PTA have got me wondering. In the first month of school, I've gotten at least four letters from the PTA about fundraisers. Fundraisers! In kindergarten! I've also had two neighborhood kids come knocking at my door, selling things to raise money for school.
As a high school student involved in pretty much every club, group, or organization my school offered, I certainly did my share of fundraising. Selling candy bars to earn money for a band trip, selling holiday items to raise money to buy track and field sweatshirts, that sort of thing. I raised a lot of money to help fund my extra-curricular activities. But the latest letter from the PTA at James' school informs me that "these programs enable our school to obtain items for our children's use, such as classroom equipment, sports equipment and in some cases, funds for special projects". Sorry, what did you say? Classroom equipment??
What kills me (even more than the fact that our school does not, apparently, have adequate funding for classroom equipment) is that the fundraisers the PTA is urging us to participate in give us so little money back. The PTA letter says that last year, through programs with Campbell's Soup and General Mills, "we collected 7496 Campbell labels and received $706.70 from General Mills". If my math is correct (and it may not be -- my mental math skills are very much out of practice), that means a school earns less than ten cents per label. For every can of soup your family consume, Campbell's will give ten cents back to your school. How much is a can of soup these days? Three dollars? I really don't know, but in any case it doesn't seem that Campbell's is breaking the bank with school charity.
Even worse is the Target program the PTA is promoting. If you specify your school when making a purchase at Target, Target will give 1% of your purchase amount back to your school. ONE percent. If my math is correct (again, quite possibly not), I would have to spend one hundred dollars on worthless Target crap to give a dollar to James' school. Wow, Target, how generous. I can tell you're really concerned with the plight of education in this country.
You know, the ideal situation would be for schools to be adequately funded, from the local government level to the federal level, but if that's not possible, my next choice would be to give money directly to the school, rather than buy a bunch of junk in order to send a few pennies toward the school. And I do understand that there are people who buy a lot of stuff at Target already, or who eat a lot of Campbell's Soup, and that these programs are ways for those people to help out their kids' schools without putting in any extra effort. But it's still ridiculous that one of the primary ways of raising money for equipment and projects at our school is by asking parents to clip labels and UPC codes from our groceries.
Of course, I'm still going to send in the labels from our occasional cans of tomato soup, or the boxtops from our Kix cereal. But I'm going to do it grudgingly, cursing the forces that make this sort of thing necessary in the first place.
19 September 2007
two weeks
I can't believe I haven't posted in almost two weeks. Oops! Sometimes life gets in the way of this blogging stuff.
I've decided, though, that it's finally time to write about James' kindergarten experience, now that he's been a kindergartener for two weeks. Of course I have no photos, because it has just never occurred to me to bring the camera to the bus stop, so words will have to suffice.
Are any of you surprised when I say that he totally, completely loves kindergarten? We all love it. And can you guess what his favorite subject is? Keep in mind that my child is half-monkey, sees the entire world as a jungle gym, and hardly ever stops running. Now can you guess? His second favorite subject is less obvious, though not surprising (at least to me): he loves math, which ranks second to gym only because they don't officially have science in kindergarten, though math is pretty close. In third place is the library. (See? He's not 100% Greg. There's a little of me in there too.)
We found out on the first day of school that the little girl who lives two doors down from us is in his kindergarten class. Not only does she have as much energy as James, but she likes Star Wars! What more could a boy ask for? She is blonde and excitable and rambunctious and reminds me of a girl of similar description who James used to be good friends with.
He goes to school for almost three hours in the afternoon, but including the bus, he's gone for almost three and a half hours every day. I initially thought that I'd rather have him in morning kindergarten, so that I could have the mornings with Evan and the afternoons with James while Evan napped, as when he was in preschool, but the afternoon time is working out pretty nicely for me anyway. James leaves, Evan naps, and I have uninterrupted free time. It makes me giddy. I'll have to post another day about what I've been doing with that free time.
Kindergarten has a very different feel from preschool. Mostly for me, I imagine. I was so involved with James' preschool, I knew the teacher and all of the parents, I assisted there on a regular basis, I dropped him off and picked him up there and knew the daily routine and basically knew exactly what he was doing in his time away from me. He was gone, but it didn't feel like he was that far away.
And kindergarten? All of a sudden there are hours of my son's life about which I know virtually nothing. And with James, sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get the details. I've heard some songs, he's brought home a couple of worksheets, I've heard details here and there, but I still feel like I am missing out on a lot. For someone who's physically been with the kid almost 24/7 for almost 6 years, it's a weird feeling to watch him embarking on his own life, and knowing that I will never get that closeness back. He'll only grow further and further away from here on out.
Not that that's a bad thing. It's fascinating to watch him develop into an independent person, to find out which details he's eager to tell me and which I have to pry out of him, to see him becoming more confident, more sure of himself (I hadn't thought that was possible, but apparently there was room to grow even for James). One of the best parts of parenting has been seeing the results of all my labor, and realizing that this person, this wonderful child he's become, was really worth all of the sleepless nights and endless diapers and emotional meltdowns (both his and mine).
Today, two weeks into kindergarten, he ran ahead of me to the bus, and climbed aboard without a hug, without a wave, without a backwards glance. And I smiled to see him go, because that is James: diving into everything headfirst, with confidence and excitement, and I love him for it.
