Training Your Brain

Can we talk about Common Core for a minute? You know, the new standards being rolled out in public schools across the United States? The theory behind them is that they are supposed to help kids develop critical thinking and real-world problem-solving skills.

When I first started reading about Common Core, I thought, “Well, how could that be a bad thing?” and a little later on, “What are people so up in arms about?” and “What is the big deal with Common Core?”

Oh, my friends, now I know.

A quick detour:  my oldest child, Viva, has always been a good student. Her favorite subject is math. She was fortunate to have a 3^rd grade teacher who was nuts about math and imparted that enthusiasm to her class. In the 4^th grade, Viva was graced with another great teacher – a former engineer – who nurtured that enthusiasm and then “looped” with the class, teaching them 5^th grade the following year. He developed units on entrepreneurship and running a business, and created a mock medical school program. He selected Viva as one of a group of students to troubleshoot computer issues for her classmates on their iPads. He got her excited about Science Camp! All of these experiences pretty much solidified Viva’s desire to study engineering and/or computer coding when she attends college in the Great Someday.

Until this week, when she brought home a math test with a score of 83. Now, 83/100 is not a bad score. But it is not the type of grade she usually brings home, and she was upset. And when I began reviewing the test, I started to understand why. In Common Core, when you solve a math problem, you don’t just write down the answer and move on. You write down the answer and you have to explain how you got there. And if you don’t explain it exactly as the teacher wants you to, you don’t get full credit for the right answer. So if a question is worth four points, and you get the problem right but don’t explain it “correctly,” you lose a point. On nearly every question, instead of getting a 4/4, Viva was getting 3’s.

For one question, the teacher took issue with Viva writing that an explanation about the “larger” number as opposed to the “greater” number. Seriously. She took off a point for that. Sweet Dub and I reviewed the entire test with her and came to the following conclusion: you basically just have to learn the game. It sucks, because they are now changing the rules midstream, but it’s a game. And that sucks, because what it bolls down to is, you have to now figure out what the teacher wants to hear. Which isn’t critical thinking at all.

Last night, we were reviewing her math homework, and Viva was now getting stuck. Intimidated by this new challenge. She told me that she was certain now that she was going to get it wrong, no matter what she did.

I won’t lie. My first reaction, because I am from Boston and we are all filled with rage, was to be pissed. I know that middle school is when girls slide away from math. They start to think of it as a “boys” subject. And even when they have a natural talent for it, they stop excelling at it. This is why we have so few women in math and science fields. But then I stopped myself. Because I realize it is something new, and it is hard, and when I asked Viva to explain her rationale for one problem, she did. And she was right, at least from my perspective.

And I think this is good for her. She’s lucky that so far math has come easy to her, but research shows that when you realize that you can build up your abilities through effort you actually learn more.

Today, I read an article which reinforced this for me. It’s called “The Learning Myth:  Why I’llNever Tell My Son He’s Smart.” I particularly liked this:

Recently, I put into practice research I had been reading about for the past few years: I decided to praise my son not when he succeeded at things he was already good at, but when he persevered with things that he found difficult. I stressed to him that by struggling, your brain grows.

Here’s to growth, and to helping all of us persevere.

School’s Out for Summer

Well, almost.

We are all groaning our ways through the last days of school. I have two children, and they are at the same school, so my end-of-year should be pretty standard. You’d think. You know, the usual end-of-year parties and “what to get the teacher” dilemma, combined with “what are we going to do with the kids all summer, OMG why is everything so expensive” (sob sob, rend clothing, shake fist at sky).

Oh, but no.

My fifth grader is graduating from elementary school. So there are extras, like a yearbook, and graduation picture, and Class of 2014 T-shirt, and end-of-year field trip day to some seventh circle of hell where they pour skittles into the kids’ mouths and give them IV’s full of cotton candy and let them drive go-karts, play mini golf and dominate on arcade games, following which they release them staggering into the daylight laden down with tiny plastic trinkets and huge twisty drink cups with the straws attached and a mountain of other plastic crap which they do not need but insist they do because they won it playing games, don’t you see, it’s not fair. Also, my kindergartener is sort of-kind-of culminating. It’s not a graduation, per se, but they’re also having a party. On a different day than fifth grade graduation.

Also: my kids seem suddenly to be performing arts gurus, because they have both been asked to perform this week – one, dancing at a Motown revue event last night, and the other, playing drums in her rock band this afternoon in front of the whole school.

Added to that, my children are changing school districts next year, a delicate procedure during which you must keep your shit together all whilst feeling the top of your head might pop off at any second. There are sooooo many forms. And soooo many documents you must collect from hither and yon – birth certificates, utility bills, report cards, copies of standardized tests, immunization records, etc. There’s the ridiculous health card you must fill out with the child’s medical history asking you, among other things, at what age your child first sat up? First crawled? First walked? Are they for real with this? I barely remember what I did last weekend.

And enrolling the kids is a multi-part process. Ceeya must visit the new school next month for an official literacy assessment, and in California they are doing this graduated shifting of the eligibility date for kindergarten which apparently also extends to first grade, which I don’t understand. Ceeya was three weeks too young for kindergarten this past year, but they accepted her provisionally and now she has blown all the assessments in her current school out of the water. (Seriously, the “good” proficiency score in phonics was 28, and she scored 112. She may have broken their test.) Now I have to go through the same thing with the new school so she doesn’t have to repeat kinder because she won’t be six years old by Sept. 1^st.

It is like having another job. I am exhausted. No Pinterest-worthy teacher crafts over here, man. I am out.

Nuggets

Photo:  3 pigs craft and flannel board story - Creative Commons, by Mommachels-Flickr

I have only touched briefly on the school changes that have happened with us over the past few months, but I want to give a bit more background because this has impacted us a great deal. Around December of last year, it was becoming painfully clear that (1) due to staffing changes, Ceeya’s preschool was not providing the type of care we had become accustomed to; and (2) it was becoming cost-prohibitive to send her there. The preschool was struggling financially so it was understaffed and couldn’t afford to bring in different teachers, and we became aware of an exodus of kids from the school.

Ceeya’s preschool teacher had taught 3^rd and 4^th grade previously but she had no classroom experience with this age group. I didn’t feel she was engaging the kids at the appropriate level – she seemed to default to arts and crafts and coloring, which I felt was a missed opportunity for this age group. They are little sponges for information at that age, and school can be so much fun for them. I also noticed that Ceeya’s toileting hygiene started to slip because the teacher wasn’t as on top of it as the previous teacher. The children in the class were a mix of three-and-four-year-olds, so they were all potty trained but still at the age where I would say they needed regular reinforcement on how to wipe and wash their hands.  At home in the bathroom with her I realized she had stopped wiping at all and no longer even flushed the toilet. It was infuriating and I had to have repeated conversations with her about how important it was to keep herself clean. I also had conversations with the teacher that seemed to go nowhere, since there was no change.

As things deteriorated, we started working with Ceeya at home in the evenings and on weekends with materials we got from Lakeshore and various online sites because we felt her fine motor skills were stagnating (a relevant concern due to her sensory processing issues) and quite frankly because she was bored with school.

At the same time, I started looking into other preschools in our area, most of which were (1) just as, if not more, expensive and (2) not accepting new students. The situation was looking desperate. And then the skies parted and the fates conspired to have me run into a former coworker/ friend/ neighbor at an event that I would not usually have been at, but was asked to attend because another coworker had a dentist appointment. And there, my problems were solved, because she told me about a FREE LA Universal Preschool (LAUP) program in our old neighborhood, which was collaborating with a FREE pilot pre-K program at Viva’s school (which, hello? How did I not hear about it?). They were in need of additional kids for the program because it was still new. 

So in February, Ceeya began attending two FREE educational programs and our only cost now is before and after care, which saves us $500 a month. Instead of coming home with coloring pages, Ceeya now comes home with sheets to help her trace her name. She is learning to read sight words (the, and, this, etc.) and can read some books by herself. In LAUP, they have done a unit on the life cycle – so they have hatched real live chicks from eggs, they have a tank full of tadpoles, and they recently acquired caterpillars and are learning about chrysalises. She has a new best friend named Miles, who is crazy about her.

All of this is great, except for one thing:  the naps.

Due to the structure of the LAUP/Pre-K programs, there is no nap time scheduled for these kids. The person running the LAUP program also runs the after-school program, which includes older kids. There is no separate quiet space for the younger kids to nap.

Ceeya is awesome when she’s well-rested. When she’s not, it is – how do you say? – challenging. Basically, she falls apart at the slightest perceived provocation. Witness, last week at around 5:30:

I have just gotten home and I have gone into the other room to change my clothes. Ceeya and Viva have unpacked their lunches and are sitting on their bed talking.

Ceeya:  Guess what we had for snack today?

Viva:  What?

Ceeya:  Tacos and chips.

Viva:  Chicken nuggets.

Ceeya:  [falls out screaming and crying]

Mama [runs into their room]:  What happened?

Viva [wearily]: I have no idea, all I said was chicken nuggets.

Ceeya [after 3 minutes of unintelligible cry-talking]:  I said I had tacos and she said I had chicken nuggets!  [screaming and crying again]

Mama: I don’t think that’s what she meant.

Ceeya:  But I didn’t HAVE chicken nuggets! I had tacos!

Mama:  I understand. So if YOU know you had tacos, then you had tacos. What difference does it make what she says?

Ceeya:  Because she is MEAN.

Viva: WHAT? Oh my God. I didn’t even –

Mama:  Viva.

Viva:  What?

Mama:  She is deliriously tired. Let’s not make things worse. Let me talk to her. Why don’t you go relax yourself in the other room, okay?

Viva goes off in a huff. I am left to put Ceeya back together from a little puddle on the floor.

And repeat this scenario in various incarnations to infinity, and that is what our life is like right now on the weekdays. Sometimes Ceeya passes out at about 6:30 and we have to bathe and pajama her in a half-conscious state. Sometimes depending on his schedule Sweet Dub is able to pick them up from school at 2:30 and can manage to get Ceeya to take a nap by 3:30 or 4:00, but by that point since she wants to sleep for two hours she is impossible to wake up. Either way, it is not a good time.

 

For future discussion:  Ceeya just misses the cutoff point (must be 5 by October 1) for kindergarten for the fall. Her pre-K teacher says there is no point to her doing another year of pre-K. In the meantime, Viva’s teacher is saying that Viva is at the top of her 4^th/5^th grade class and she won’t have anything left to learn in 5^th grade next year. I really wish I could just take one year off and take the kids out of school and travel. There is that whole pesky “how would we eat” dealio though.  Hmmm…

 

Just A Girl

Image from Milwaukee Public Television site, www.mptv.org.

So…after the debacle of Black History Month, Viva came home this week and told us that her class is now studying women’s history.  Because March is Women’s History Month.

“But it’s already mid-March,” I said. “And Spring Break starts next week!”

“I know, right?” said Viva.  “But I don’t really care because I’m kind of sick of learning about history.”

 “Happy Women’s History Month Week,” I said, snorting. “Okay, I know you are over it because of Black History Month [which felt like it lasted 10 weeks in our house], but women’s history is pretty cool. And I doubt that Mr. B_____ is going to focus on anything particularly violent.”*

“Oh my God, let’s hope not,” Viva said.

“So who are you learning about?” I asked.

“Nobody yet. He made us do research to find three women who made a difference in history, and he made it really hard.”

“What was so hard about it?”

“He wouldn’t let us use any of the women we learned about during Black History Month! So you’re not allowed to use Oprah, Michelle Obama, Sojourner Truth…”**

“So who did you find?”

“I don’t remember their names. I think one was a lawyer?” Okay, I got on her a little bit about that, but I figured there would be more to the assignment and this would be reinforced.

And then, two days into Women’s History Month Week, her teacher took the rest of the week off, going out of town to start his Spring Break early. 

Sorry, Mr. B____, but you get a FAIL from this child of the ‘70s, Free-to-Be-You-and-Me loving,  Seven Sisters College-educated, 40-something feminist. I am the great-great-granddaughter of slaves, so I appreciate the Black History focus, but give my African-American daughter equal time to learn and appreciate the contributions of women to our history.  

 

By the way, I did a little Google research and found a variety of links about teaching kids about women’s history. Here’s one I think we’ll be using at home...perhaps during Spring Break, before Women's History Month is actually over. It's pretty incredible to me that in just a few minutes on Google I found lesson plan after lesson plan that her teacher could use, and yet it appears that the kids in my daughter's class are only getting two days of women's history.

 

* Which, my God, let’s face it –doesn’t mean he couldn’t focus on violence against women if he wanted to. Lord knows there’s enough of it. And let’s not forget that the violence that was perpetrated against African Americans during slavery and post-emancipation was certainly not limited to the men. It makes chills run up my spine to think about the horrors that were done to female slaves.

 

** Yes, she did say Oprah first. Lord, give me strength.

Flip Flop

I am seeing a shift in my children these days, and it is this:

The one who was miserably bored with school, now—with the shift to a new half-preschool, half-pre-K situation—jumps out of the car and runs to school. She chatters to me excitedly about volcanoes. She tells me they had green eggs and ham to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday. She is eager to see the fuzzy chicks which are going to hatch ANY SECOND NOW in the incubator in her classroom.

Meanwhile, the one who has always LOVED school, who was not at all apprehensive about her 4^th/5^th grade combination class at the beginning of the year (despite my privately held misgivings), is now dragging her butt to school. Black History Month (more specifically slavery) is one reason.  Another is that the 4^th graders were promised a whole week away from the 5^th graders, who were all supposed to go to Science Camp for the week last week. And then only two 5^th graders went to Science Camp (which at $200 a pop, is out of range for many of the families at school). She was looking forward to her grade having their teacher all to themselves for once. The 5^th graders are a pain in the ass, a thorn in her side.

I am nonplussed. I am of course happy that Ceeya loves her new school, which she started in February (and I can’t believe I haven’t yet posted about that yet). But I am bummed that Viva is now really disliking school. Her grades are still good, but she’s really struggling with her attitude. I know, life is not all peaches and roses – Lord, do I know. But Viva is generally a pretty happy kid and now her general mood is one of Funk. And not in the way that I like.

We are planning Spring Break and her 10^th birthday is coming up and I’m hoping that will help. And meanwhile, we keep talking things through. We keep talking. (And in Ceeya’s case, we keep talking loudly, generally right over somebody as they are in the middle of a sentence, and we get offended if it is gently pointed out to us that such behavior is rude, and then we tell everyone within earshot that we don’t want to talk to them ever again and they are no longer our best friend. And then twenty minutes later we wrap our arms around them and squeeze, lest they forget that they are always our best friend and must never leave us. Oh, Ceeya. She is a complicated little person.)

Inescapable, Inexplicable. History.

In my lunch time travels yesterday, I came across the above graffito spray painted across someone’s garage. When I shared it with the family later, Viva said:  “Los Angeles? I don’t think so. I think probably Birmingham.”

 Whew, Black History Month, you are kicking my ass. You are giving my baby headaches, and stomach aches, and nausea, and trembly legs. You are interrupting her sleep.  For it appears that in 4^th grade, the gloves have come off, and the reality of slavery is being presented to my child in class.

 (“Not the worst parts though,” she says. “Mr. B____ skips over the really bad parts.”)

They covered the Civil Rights Movement earlier, and that, she could get behind – of course, it is empowering to hear about taking a stand and forcing a change  – but slavery knocked her down.  My kid is super-sensitive to violence of any kind and she is also hyper-vigilant to any kind of injustice, so learning about the details of the slave trade literally makes her ill. We talked about the Middle Passage yesterday, and of how mind-bogglingly inhumane it must have been, beyond what we can imagine.

 “I hate history,” Viva said, her sweet eyes clouded. “Why do we have to learn history?”

 “Because those that don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it*,” I said. “And because it still influences who you are today. You are descended from slaves. Do you realize how strong your ancestors had to be, physically and emotionally, spiritually – to survive that? That blood is in your veins.”

 “That’s true. But still, I can’t wait until this month is over,” Viva said.

“It’s not easy,” I said. “I know, it’s tough.”

 “I still can’t understand how people could be so mean to other people just based on the color of their skin – how they thought we were inferior,” Viva said. “I mean, they thought slaves were stupid, but how would they do if they got stolen away from their families and taken somewhere they didn’t speak the language?”

 “They had to think that way to justify it,” I said. “They had to see slaves as animals, as less than human, to justify what they were doing to them.”

 “That’s messed up,” said Viva. “Especially because you take someone like Frederick Douglass – he was a slave, and he was super smart. When his master found out that the master’s wife was teaching him to read, he got beaten. Who does that?!”

 “You see what they were willing to go through to get an education?” I said. “It was a big deal just to be able to read and write. Slaves weren’t supposed to be educated. We are really lucky to live in the age we do, as far as that goes.”

 "Yeah, I see what you mean. If they could see what we know now, it would blow their minds,” Viva said.

 Yes, indeed. I honestly love these conversations as Viva begins to see the world in all its messy complications. I think it is important for her to learn the journey of this country and how it is part of a larger global journey and that our struggles with bias and prejudice are far from over, here and across the world.  

I love that girl. What an honor to be along for the ride.

* Which I knew I was paraphrasing, but naturally I mis-quoted. What George Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) was: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” On par with, “You can’t understand where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”

Skool

The Pew Research Center released a new study today on student loan debt, which has mushroomed in the past five years. he Pew Research analysis finds that “whether computed as a share of household income or assets, the relative burden of student loan debt is greatest for households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum [emphasis mine], even though members of such households are less likely than those in other groups to attend college in the first place.”

I read this and it just infuriates me. I know that colleges and universities do the best they can to put together financial aid packages for students that come from families of limited means. Back in the dinosaur days when I went to college, I received a generous package comprised of some grant money, a work-study job, and a couple of student loans. My parents did not contribute any cash, because they didn’t have any. I didn’t expect them to; I worked all summer to make sure I would have some money to buy books and I was pleasantly surprised when my grandparents gave me a check for a few hundred dollars when they dropped me off at my dorm.

My family expected me to go to college and to finance it in whatever way possible. I accepted this; I was very eager to go to college, and very eager to leave it when the time came. I was able to get a decent entry-level job and was horrified by how much of my check was eaten up by my pesky student loan payments. It never occurred to me not to pay them, or to negotiate their amount in any way. However, the burden of that student loan debt made me leery of going to graduate school, which I regret today. I pinched pennies and paid my undergrad loans off over a period of ten years; and I was thrilled at that point, in my early thirties, to feel I could begin to contribute to a regular savings account, and pay cash for things like TVs, and contribute to my 401K.

Sweet Dub went to law school straight from undergrad, and we will be paying off his student loans for the rest of our lives, it seems -- if we ever get back to paying them off, as he has deferred them since he was laid off in 2010.

A higher degree used to translate into a higher standard of living. The Pew numbers are really discouraging for--well, pretty much anyone. But I feel the pain particularly of those college students who come from low-income families that can’t help them out of the hole post-graduation. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it.

Other studies have shown college graduates make 84 percent more over their lifespan than do high school graduates, and they have considerably better job prospects even during times of economic uncertainty. No need for alarm--if these statistics hold true in the future. I suppose only time will tell.

The Preschool Search is On

So the infant/toddler day care facility where Miss Ceeya frolics during the week has an age cap of roughly 2.5 to 3 years old. At that point you must get your kid the heck out of there. They don’t care where you go but you can’t stay with them—sort of like closing time at the bar, so to speak. (Not that I would know anything about that. And if I did, it was so long ago that it seems like a lifetime ago. Not that I’m old or anything. Wait, what was I saying?)

A couple of months ago, the lead teacher at the day care asked what our plans were as far as moving on. She gently mentioned that a couple of other kids around Ceeya’s age were already shopping around, and indeed, a couple of weeks before Ceeya’s birthday, two of them left for preschool. I started calling around and discovered to my shock that we are now at the point where there are already waiting lists. WHAT?

Well, you might say, why not just send her to Viva’s old preschool, and you would be right, except you don’t have all the facts, so you’re actually wrong. (I know, I know. Don’t get so upset, I can’t bear it.) Viva’s old preschool would be perfectly acceptable if: (1) we had two incomes; (2) it was anywhere near our current life, not a trek completely out of the way; and (3) Ceeya were a slightly different type of child. Viva loved preschool, but her preschool was very structured and traditional. Sweet Dub and I have been talking it over and thinking maybe we have to go Montessori with Ceeya. Not sure.

But you might say, why does Ceeya even need to go to preschool if her dad isn’t working? Can’t he look after her all day? I will say this to you: if I wanted him to never work again and also at the same time completely lose his mind, sure, he could be a stay-at-home parent. But I would like him to (1) have the option of taking a job should one arise (which actually looks imminent*) and/or (2) continue working on the film projects he has been doing while he is unemployed, because he is extremely talented and one of his projects is almost done. We are very nearly at the point where he could sell it and get distribution. This means he needs his days free so he can finish his project, work on the other projects he has in development and pre-production, and take meetings with people who can finance his production company. Following up on the numbered list from earlier in this paragraph, I would also like him to (3) be happy when he sees his family at the end of the day. He doesn’t do domestication very well. By this I mean he can do it—he cooks, he cleans, he changes diapers, and he kicks ass at all of these—but if he doesn’t have a creative outlet he goes cuckoo bananas.

I went on a preschool tour this morning at a place about 5 minutes from Ceeya’s current day care. It is a nice place, with a nice mix of kids (with our multiracial family, diversity is a plus and I am always looking for a place where one race doesn’t predominate). The teachers seem genuinely caring and the kids appear to be happy. They incorporate art, music and education throughout the day (basic numbers and letters), and the older group (age 4 and up) does simple cooking and computers once a week. They even have field trips occasionally. Monday through Thursday is a similar routine and Friday is a bit less structured. On Friday afternoons after nap time they watch TV because the main classroom is off-limits. The preschool is located inside a church, so they have to clean up that room as it is used by the church on the weekends. I am not clear why they can’t just do some other activity and I didn’t ask what they watch on TV, but once a week wouldn’t kill her, I guess. The monthly tuition is half of what I pay now, and less than half of what I would pay at Viva’s old preschool.

It was okay, but I didn’t LOVE it. I put our name on the waiting list as a safety and I’m going to keep looking. I have a tour with another preschool scheduled Monday. Stay tuned…

* Another conundrum, because he doesn’t particularly want a desk job, but in this economy, and with his film project not yet in the can, he is feeling pressure to cave and go back to working for The Man. While a regular paycheck is a lovely thing, I don’t want his soul to shrivel up and die. You see the problem.

Breaking Free

Taking a break for the moment from the “all Ceeya, all the time” tone that this blog has recently adopted to get us all caught up on that other child of mine, Viva.

Viva is in second grade. She has moved seamlessly from the private school where she spent most of her weekdays between the ages of 2.5 and 7 to the public school right down the street from us. If you were me, you might have expected more drama. You might have agonized a bit over how she would do in this new school, this new environment, this new sphere. Would she make friends? Would the teacher like her? What if this were a complete disaster?

Honestly. I worried about the class size. She was moving from a school where there were 12 kids in all of first grade. I worried about the quality of the education. She is extremely bright, gets bored easily, and is used to getting one-on-one attention from the teacher. I worried that she would have trouble dealing with “regular” kids (whatever that means). You know, I just worried, because that is my nature and I am her mother and I want her to be happy and have a great school experience.

So: class size? She’s in a gifted/talented magnet so there are 16 kids in her class, not the 35+ I was having hissy fits imagining. Quality of the education? Because she is in the magnet program, she is surrounded by other kids who are quick and curious and as eager to learn as she is. Their teacher, who is happily back in the classroom after three years in administration, says, “These kids came in like it was March, not September. They were ready to go, and I love it!” She is getting to know each of the kids and tailoring different projects to their interests. She is as thrilled as I am with the small class size and getting to spend so much time with each kid.

Viva loves her teacher, her class, and her after-school program. So school is going way more amazingly well than I could have hoped. Since there is no drama in that, let us move on. Viva has also, over the past few months, undergone a radical transformation.

Perhaps you know that Viva is a tomboy. She is a tomboy to the extent that most of her friends up to this summer were boys. Had you asked me to describe her up to now, I would have said something along the lines of: she plays sports with a fierce competitiveness; she has a true disdain for fairies and princesses, dresses, and anything sparkly; she abhors pink. She likes to play with superhero action figures, and when she comes home from school, she strips off her uniform and pulls on a pair of boy’s basketball shorts. She may or may not wear a shirt. If she does, it will be a boy’s undershirt or an oversized T-shirt.

Over the summer, at camp, Viva had a gradual awakening, thanks to a group of knuckleheaded little boys at her camp. “Boys are stupid,” she told me. “And you know, I don’t think I want to be a tomboy anymore.”

I was blown away. I said, “Maybe some boys are stupid.* Some girls can be stupid, too. But don’t let the behavior of some silly kids make you change who you are. If you want to try being a little more girly, that is fine with me. It’s fine to try on different ways of being as you figure out who you are. I love you if you’re a tomboy, and I love you if you’re not.”

When we began back-to-school shopping, she indicated that maybe she’d be interested in trying on a dress. I ended up buying her several knit cotton dresses and leggings, along with pants and nice shirts. She also wanted sparkly low-top sneakers that lit up when she walked. Do you know that every day for the first week of school, my “tomboy” wore a dress and sparkly shoes?

Children are amazing. Viva is never boring. I love that I am here to buckle up next to her and marvel at her journey. And that still, so often, she is still badgering me to come along. The years move quickly, you know. Sometimes I miss her even though she is still here.


* The fact that she even uses the word stupid is incredible, since just a couple of years ago the word stupid was equivalent (to her) to using a “bad word.” My, how times have changed. How lazy I have become in my language policing.

A Fraction of What I Have to Say

So many things to blog about, so little time:

Cily is much better, just about at 95% I'd say. We have battled the Croup and won!

Viva is having issues with school. As in, not being challenged by the curriculum. I hate to say it, but I can only imagine this would be worse if she were in public school. At least with private school you have some leverage, as in "we are paying you folks a lot of money to educate our kid - let's figure out what we can do to keep her motivated, shall we?"* Last night we were reading a chapter book before bed - alternating reading pages aloud to each other. Whenever Viva would come to an unfamiliar word, she would pause, work it out carefully and then move on with the rest of the sentence. This was both exciting, since she's suddenly at warp speed with the reading, and at the same time, not really odd to me. I know she is very bright, and it's reminiscent of how I was at her age, so it seems pretty normal. Then I was looking at the book today and found it's listed as Grade 7 and up. No wonder she's bored with kindergarten...

Sweet Dub and I are both working out pretty regularly these days. He is on this kick to lose weight (!! if you knew him you would laugh, but I think he only wants to lose ten pounds) and get in shape for the spring, which is on its way faster than ever since we live in Los Angeles. I am trying to lose my baby pooch and generally firm up all over. I feel pretty good, and I'm enjoying making my work friends laugh with my overexaggerated-for-comic-effect hip-hop abs moves. "Everybody dance y'all!"

If I were to talk to you on the phone right now I would rattle on like this for about twenty minutes straight and tell you I have to go but I have so much more to tell you and then I'd apologize profusely but hang up. That's just how I roll. Always leave 'em wanting more. Thank you and good night!

* Why is it as taxpayers we don't feel entitled to demand the same level of service? Am I not now paying twice for education? I sure as hells am.

Rainy Days and Mondays

It's raining and chilly here in Southern Cal and that makes me want to do not much of anything.

Despite the rain, after dropping Viva off at school I motored on and interviewed a childcare provider today and (dare I say it?), it looks like we may actually have secured a spot for our little one next month. I really like the director of the program, I like the philosophy of the center (for those keeping score at home, they use the RIE approach) and it's only 5 minutes from my job.

As far as the other kid: we have made the decision to suck it up and leave Viva at her current school, even though we will probably have to dip into our savings to pay for it for the next six months. I still want to get her into the decent public school in our neighborhood, but I have to go through a permit process to try and get her in for September since we are outside the boundaries. (Yes! How can it be more of a struggle to get her into public school? I don't get it.) We don't want to move her twice in one year, so we will keep her where she is. Errrgh. Ye gods.

In holiday news: what are the odds that I'll get Christmas cards out this year? Scratch that - what are the odds that I'll get Christmas cards with a photo of the family on them out this year? I'm thinking those odds are not good. The only photo I have of Viva and Cily is very grainy, but maybe I could make kind of an artsy card...

This is on my mind because we recently processed some 35mm film from this summer. I wish I had a beautiful photo like this of my two girls together:

Viva peeking out from the pear tree in our (former) front yard. Sadly, the only picture I have of the two of them (besides the grainy one taken off the videocamera) is of me pregnant with Cily, hanging out with Viva:

I don't think this really counts as a picture of the two of them. By the by, I can't figure out why the scanner is putting those black bars on the side of the photos. It's wildly irritating to me. But I love this series of photos and I wanted to share and I can't find the photo CD that has these shots on it. And let's be real, it's difficult enough for me to get on the computer these days...

Viva dancing around the front yard...

Aaaand... Miss Cily's up. Time to go attend to her every whim...