Holpineville

Stuff I Should Have Written Down Before Now

In no particular order:

Last Day

It’s the last day of school, and my kids have done no actual school work for two or three weeks, I think.  I’m not upset about it, because they did do some things at the end I’d been campaigning for the teachers to do all year:  arts workshops, field trips, special projects.  Ruby spent a lot of time in the school library, too.  Today, Carl took chips and a Crockpot full of queso for his class party, and Ruby took chips and the stuff to make guacamole.  Tonight, of course, they want to go out for Tex-Mex. 

I have to help sell t-shirts and yearbooks and then take money to the bank for the PTO after school, so the kids won’t be getting out early.  And tomorrow is a teacher appreciation luncheon I’m sort of in charge of, and I still have some PTO letters and accounting to wrap up, so I guess school isn’t really out for me yet.

Score One for Mom

Ruby reports that she did well on the civics portion of the Stanford 10 (standardized exam), because “it was all that stuff you’re always talking about!” So, score one for Mommy, always blathering on about the rights and the Constitution, flags, presidents, patriotism, elections, political parties, and whatnot.  I hate to think my major contribution to her education is a question or two on some bubble-filling test, but at least I made an impression.

Or Maybe Not

Rod and I are often impressed with how smart!  How insightful!  our Carl is. Except, of course, when he’s not. We were talking over some upcoming dates when we got an idea that Carl (seven, going on eight, or first grade, going on second) wasn’t so clear on the basic concepts; and we asked him to recite the months of the year.   He couldn’t do it.  He managed the alphabet, but it was a strain. The Pledge of Allegiance was iffy, too. Please, tell me it’s okay to be going into second grade and still unable to recite “January-February-March-April-May-June-July-August-September-October-November-December.”  His teacher says that's pretty normal in a classroom environment where they don't memorize that stuff, that most of the kids in the class were challenged by a project she gave them that involved putting their work from this year into chronological order.  But I'm not so sure. 

Music Recital

Ruby had a music studio party, instead of a “piano recital,” because it’s a little less formal that way.  Ruby does play a little piano at her lessons, but because she wasn’t practicing consistently enough to make much progress, she started doing music theory with her teacher, and she’s been composing a lot.  They debuted one of her compositions at the recital and it was nice—more modern  than I would have expected.  We had wine/punch/cookies, and then mingled with the other families while the kids and some of the dads had a drumming circle. 

Dentist

By some miracle, neither child had any cavities at their dentist visit last week.  Ruby needs to lose about three more teeth and then it’s time for orthodontics.  Yippee.  Given how much she complains about even the slightest discomfort, I’m going to need ear plugs for the duration of the treatment. 

Carl is sporting an ever-widening gap between his front teeth that kind of bugs me, but the dentist says it’s just that his face is growing and we’ll just have to wait and see how things work out and see what needs to be adjusted in a few years.

Finally, Kitchen Help that’s Helpful

As Ruby’s extracurricular commitments for the semester have been winding down, she’s found herself with a little extra time and energy.  She’s been reading a lot, and trying to see her friends more.  But she’s also been cooking dinner once a week or so, which is awesome because I sure get tired of it.  I actually like to cook, when it’s a voluntary act, but the expectation to produce a tasty, nutritionally balanced meal that 4+ people find acceptable around 6 p.m. every night is very wearing on me.  Also, although I am a pretty good cook if I do say so myself, you wouldn’t know it to hear my kids talk, and having them tell me how awful the food is every night, how it’s not what they wanted, how it was better last time or X makes it better at his house, or “why do we always have this,” or “but I wanted Y!” doesn’t make me any more excited about feeding them.

Ruby’s cooking is about as good as you can expect from a nine year old:  pastas of various kinds, soups, an omelet thing she likes to make but not eat, tofu, frozen dumplings, salads, odd drinks from various children’s cookbooks, and occasionally forays into pad thai, spring rolls, and special desserts.   She sorely needs some more knife training and practice, once in a while she misreads a recipe, she has the same problems we all have with trying to get several things ready at once and cleaning up as we go, and just like her mother, she hates having people give her advice on what to do and how to do it, even if they’re right.  But she’s developing some skills and experience, and I’m just delighted she’s doing it from time to time; there’s nothing better than having your kid say “Mom, I’m doing it.  It’s fine. You go sit down and read or something!”  Yes, ma’am, I believe I will, thanks, sweetie…

Carl cooks occasionally, too, although mostly in the special-project sense:  he has his own recipe for spicy peanut sauce, he makes a good Caesar salad, he likes to bake cookies, and he helps out when we cook as a family. 

Callie, Bubbles and Whiskers

Ruby has two friends who have fish tanks.  One is a serious hobbyist (or at least, her dad is and she helps) and the other is a serial collector of pets of all kinds.  And I should have seen this coming, because of course, Ruby decided she truly, deeply needed more fish, too.   (You will recall that she already has a long-suffering blue male beta named Lillian). 

So Ruby asked, and asked, and researched, and discussed, and asked, and negotiated.  Mommy the Pushover was okay with the pet aspect of the fish, but not so excited about the mess and work factors.  Rod, so opposed to dogs, additional cats, and most other critters, was somehow okay with fish….I think it’s that there’s a pump and some machinery involved, frankly. 

And then we debated how big a tank Ruby could get (20 gallons) and where it would be (it ended up on her dresser, which I am completely not happy about, but I couldn’t come up with a good alternate solution).  And What Fish to Get took weeks of talking, reading, debating,  and because it was Ruby making the decision, crying. 

I was suggesting Ruby wait and get fish as a birthday present, because her birthday is coming up and that way her friends could buy her some gear, if not actual fish.  But no, that was Much Too Long To Wait, and to be honest, she just wore me down.    

One day, my resolve snapped and we just went and got the stuff.  Ruby was pretty impatient about getting the fish, but she waited the bare minimum for the water to do whatever the water in a new aquarium does.  And then we brought home Callie (calico bug eyed fantail goldfish), Bubbles (black bug eyed fantail goldfish) and Whiskers (small bottom-dwelling catfish that I hope eats goldfish poo as promised).  I honestly don’t think they’re living very nice lives, up there in the not-pristine water in Ruby’s hot room, but they haven’t died yet. 

Cross Fingers

Rod is having surgery on his head next week.  His ENT is taking another crack at un-deviating his septum and he’s having that (rumor has it, painful) thing done to the back of his throat/palate that’s supposed to cut down on apnea/snoring.  He’s hoping it will all result in being less dependent on the CPAP machine and the couple thousand dollars in allergy drugs he takes annually. 

I am just dreading it because:

1) Unavoidable anesthesia risk

2) Someone poking sharp objects around in the vicinity of my beloved’s brain makes me tense

3) Rod is not such a great patient.  It takes him forever to come out of anesthesia, he’s groggy and cranky and doesn’t communicate for days, he fainted on me once, post-surgery, and boy did that suck, and he’ll be lying around feeling crummy for a good week or so and I won’t be able to fix it.

4) I am a rotten nurse.  Not only can I not catch Rod’s 200 lb. carcass when he faints, when he’s sick, I don’t really know what to do to help, beyond a cold compress, a drink, and medication on schedule.  I tend to rebound from medical stuff pretty quickly, and I figure everyone else should do the same.  My general thing for sick people is to provide what aid I can for a day or two, and then I somehow expect them to buck up, take a painkiller, and get back to regular life.  Having kids has made me a little more patient, I suppose, but I know I will still be feeling inadequate to the job next week.

5) It complicates the delicate childcare/carpool schedule, which falls into my domain to sort out, even if it’s not my surgery.

6) Yes, once again, we’ll be hitting that high dollar healthcare deductible this year.  There is just never a cheap year.

I Tried, Really I Did

As I was coming out of my PTO presidency haze, I started thinking again about how I need to exercise more:  weight management!  Muscle tone!  Cancer prevention!  Good example for children!  Better sleep!  More energy!  But as usual, no exercise activities sounded very appealing, and the idea of going from deconditioned to a regular exerciser was daunting.

At the same time, a couple of my friends who are generally with me in Don’t Like to Exercise camp independently started doing this program called Couch to 5K.  The premise is that you start very slow, jogging for a minute at a time, and build up over nine weeks to a point where you can run a 5K race.  The more I heard about this, the more it started to sound like a good idea:  I could get up early and do it for 30 minutes and be done, so it would be efficient in terms of time and calorie burn.  Surely I could jog for a minute, right?  And then I could be in reasonable shape by July!

And then I decided I would try to get Ruby to do it with me.  She desperately needs to get more exercise; I think it would help with her weight, with her self esteem, with her energy levels.  She’s very uncoordinated, but it doesn’t matter so terribly much with jogging. 

So we started doing it.  The first day was really hard, but the ones after went pretty well.  Ruby was remarking on how her days went better on the ones we got up early to jog. 

But.  My friend the physical therapist heard about it and strongly told me not to do it.  “I just think it’s too much pounding, running is probably not the right thing for you.”  Then I had my annual general doctor visit, and she basically said the same thing.  “Yes, you really need to exercise, I am totally in favor of that, but with your joint issues, something else would be better, trust me on this.”  “But!” I said, “I’ve lost so much weight!  And I have orthotics now!” 

And then my knees chimed in with a resounding OUCH, and I limped for ten days, and so I guess it’s official, my jogging/running days are over.  I am sadder about it than I expected to be.  It’s just hard to be officially too old and too broken to do something normal people can manage.  Ruby and I are going to keep walking fast a few times a week instead, I think, and I’ve been taking every opportunity to do laps at the pool even though it’s wrecking my hair, but it’s not the same in terms of cardio workout.  

 

Uncle

Do you know how much I love you?  So much that I’m staying up writing this, when I could be tackling something on the Horrible To-Do List, or maybe even sleeping, not that I sleep so well lately. 

I’m not sure where to begin to fill you in on things here.  My life is a complete scheduling wreck and all I can do is try to hang on for a few more months with reasonable diligence.  Then the PTO job should wind down and some of Ruby’s stuff will be over, and maybe I will get a grip.  I am in a rotten, depressed mood about the whole thing, but I think I just have to endure and try to sleep more in the mean time. 

Some  notes:

Ruby lost a molar this week.  She’s read all of the Lemony Snicket books in the space of about three weeks.  I can’t see how she can manage it that fast, but if you ask her a plot detail, she knows it.  She spent much of the last two weeks at school taking “benchmark” tests, which are basically a dry run for the big standardized test at the end of this month.  This whole deal just infuriates me, as it’s a huge, stressful waste of everyone’s time and neatly illustrates the horror of standardized testing gone wrong. 

So maybe it’s no surprise that Ruby cried over her math homework every night this week, and didn’t finish it once, even though one night I told her to take off, as a gift.  She still cried.  She cried in class today, when her teacher told her she needed to do a “writing prompt” (short essay exercise) that apparently she didn’t want to/feel like/was daunted by and so she did a math problem instead.  On the positive side, she and her tutor apparently found some magic key in her brain and she’s on track to get more spelling words right on her test tomorrow than she ever has before.  The secret trick?  She spells them in sign language.  I have no idea why this is working for her, but let’s hope it isn’t a fluke. 

Carl has decided he might finally get a haircut next month, because the weather is getting warmer, you know, but we’re not rushing into anything.  He woke up in the middle of the night with a really gruesome bloody nose; I cleaned him up as well as I could in the dark, but I was still finding drips and spatters this afternoon.   He is working on an invention for school, and he’s doing it so independently I’m not really sure what it is.  Rod helped with some patent research, though. 

To give you a few newsreel flashes, for Valentine’s Day I gave Rod a six pack and a balloon.  I have no excuse at all for being so lame, really, except that life overwhelms me right now.  He gave me this elaborate gear-heart thing he made on his 3-D printer, which is sort of symbolic of our relationship—he puts huge amounts of thought, time and effort into something  that never would be on my wish list.  Anyway, it was an unexpected treasure.  We had a date the weekend before that was solidly good, if not completely stellar.  Ruby’s class didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day at all, poor dear (we think her teacher is a distant cousin of Scrooge).  Carl’s class had a little party.  He didn’t like the Valentine cards I got him to take to his friends (“too dorky!”) and so he made his own on the computer, using the draw function in Word and some spaceships he Googled up.  And he carefully put names on each one, and then neglected to hand them out in class. 

We had a workday at the kids’ school a couple of weekends ago.  I cleaned out the Art Room, which is really the Mouldering Art Supplies and Debris Room, since the kids don’t actually have art instruction or art time anymore, thanks, State Legislature!  Anyway, if I was any good at that sort of thing, my house would not look the way it does, and it was very hard work. Ruby was a big help that day in another part of the workday, laminating and cutting out classroom materials, and sharpening 400 pencils.  She was excited to be allowed into the “No Students Allowed!” workroom for the day.  Carl went to Lego Club instead, but you could have predicted that. 

I had a birthday that was pretty darn good, or at least the blow of getting to be THIS old was softened somewhat.  Rod bought and wrapped a present, made dinner reservations and booked a babysitter, all by himself, and it was awesome.  Ruby did my hair in an up-do that stayed up, Carl gave me make up tips while was getting ready, and they both paid me meaningful compliments using their sincere voices.  And my present is so embarrassingly cool I’m not even going to tell you what it is, because it’ll sound like bragging.  (Oh heck, it’s an iPad, the super-fancy pants model.  Completely unnecessary, but I love it to death…so does Carl, of course.) 

Another cool thing that happened:  Alice Waters came to the kids’ school, and I got to have lunch with her.  Yes, Alice Freakin’ Waters, people.  Yes, the legend in her own time, Chez Panisse, eat local, eat seasonal, Edible Schoolyard, that Alice Waters.  All my foodie friends are insane with jealousy.  My only regret is that I am far too camera shy to have properly inserted myself into the photos of the big day.  I’m just a big lurking thing in the background. For the record, she says the trick with kids is to get them cooking the veggies without adults in the process and then serving them to each other.  

Only a little less cool:  Ruby went to a big-deal concert one weekend with her music teacher and some other students.   The teacher said she could bring a parent, but Ruby wanted to go without us, which I thought was mature and I was so tired, my feelings were not hurt.  Last weekend, she and I went to another event, a taiko drum performance, a plan that she had somehow latched onto when she saw a preview for the show on the Internet.  I decided to say yes and spring for the rather pricey tickets because she rarely asks for something like that, and she takes a drumming class, so I thought it was fitting.  It was a very good show, and I felt badly that we didn’t take Carl, because he might even have enjoyed it. 

Last weekend was all about Frito pie.  Rod and Ruby were busy all Saturday getting ready for the annual father-daughter Girl Scout dance.  Their troop was hosting, so there was a lot of work.  This year was a sock hop theme.  Rod got industrial helium tanks, and made a cardboard jukebox prop, and the whole troop made felt poodle skirts (although Ruby’s was a cat skirt, not a poodle skirt).   Several people contributed food for the chili and Frito pie menu, but Ruby was in charge of the vegetarian chili, so we made a huge vat.  The next day, there was a fundraiser for the playground renovations we’re doing at the kids’ school, featuring live music and what else but Frito pie?  So I made another couple of vats of vegetarian chili, some others made the meat kind, and I bought obscene quantities of Fritos.  We raised over $1100 in a couple of hours, so it must have been edible. 

This has been the week of a zillion meetings for me, and next week isn’t looking any better.  If the meetings themselves aren’t bad enough, arranging rides and supervision for the kids while I am at them is enough to kill me (“Ok, if you can pick up Carl and take him to X’s house, X’s dad can watch him until Rod can get home from work, as long as he leaves a little early, and assuming the boys are getting along that day and D is well enough to have company by tomorrow.  Teacher B said she could give Ruby a ride to Y, but she’ll have to arrive a little early, and then she’ll have to just miss activity C, because I can’t figure out how to get her there, and then J will pick her up and take her to Rod, unless I’m done by then and can collect her, or she decides to go to dinner with E….”)

This weekend, the middle school students at the kids’ school are having a huge yard sale to raise money for their field trip, so I’m helping in various thankless ways, and then naturally we also have to have a $#%^&&*! bake sale table at it, for the aforementioned playground renovation project, which is another thing to plan, promote, staff, and clean up after.  There’s also a laser tag birthday party this weekend, an art exhibit Rod really super-please wants to see (it’s mechanical, if you couldn’t have guessed) and Carl wants to go see the Lorax, the first time he’s ever asked to go to a movie theater (the big screen and loud noise scares him, although he won’t admit it anymore).  Then there’s spring break in another week, and then we come back and hello! It’s time for the school gala, which the PTO I am in charge of is hosting.  And then I have an Easter trip planned, and another long weekend after that.   

So, if you don’t hear from me, that’s what we’ll be doing. 

 

 

Waste

Yesterday, I went to a long, contentious, and very draining meeting of this school district committee I am on.  It was all about being $43 million dollars short for next year, even after all the horrible budget cuts this year, and how everyone just loathes the new teacher appraisal and development system I spent most of last year going to meetings about and working on (oh, no, we’re not all getting 5 out of 5 ratings anymore!), and how the graduation rate is only 74% (but that’s better than it used to be!) and some people are just crazy, is all I can say.  Driving home, I listened to a news item about the horrible state of public education funding and the huge gaps between the haves v. the have nots.  Then, I helped Carl finish his homework, lice combed Ruby’s head, and read to them for a very long time, because we were at a pivotal point in the bedtime book de la semaine (actually, they have about five separate bedtime books going, which is a little much even for my variety-loving tastes, but they aren’t complaining.) 

Then, after I thought I was off duty for the night, Ruby had a big hysterical crying fit because she was suddenly afraid the house was going to catch fire and burn down while she was sleeping.  Later, there was a long string of PTO emails about exciting things like supply fee reimbursements (more of the crazy people) and gala invitation dimensions, and how many t-shirts to order in which sizes.   Naturally, the burglar alarm went off at 4:15 a.m., scaring the bejeezus out of Ruby, and after I got everyone back in bed, Rod snuffled or squirmed every time I got close to being asleep.  

You won't be surprised to hear, then, that tonight is the night I have finally managed to secure a babysitter, in an effort to reinject some joy and romance into the marital partnership, and I will be such! Fun! to date!  There is definitely a 4 p.m. coffee run in my future.  Also, I have no grand plan for the evening Fun & Romance and I hate to just default to dinner and a movie.  Gah.  I know, I wouldn’t want to date me, either.

Anyway, back to my main point: wasted resources.

If, like my household, yours shops Amaz@n.com very often, you really must always due it via an affiliate link to a charity.  What, you say?  You see, if you start at www.wilsonpto.org/fundraising, you’ll find a link to Amazon.  Shop like normal.  Use Prime, redeem gift cards, get free shipping, download to your heart’s content.  Whatever you spend, our little PTO will get a donation of 6% or so.  It’s anonymous, so you can buy underwear, tampons, gas remedies, marital aids, or whatever, and you won’t have to worry that we’ll know who has the addiction to romance novels or how much your new washing machine or camera cost. 

If you’re not into supporting my kids’ school, fine.  Go find the link at the website of your public radio station, or local museum or symphony.  Everybody’s doing it, and it’s free money!

More free money: 

Do you recognize this:

It’s a Boxtop for Education.  They show up on many, many products.  Here’s the list.  You may think, as I did, that your household doesn’t really buy that much processed food, but I bet you’ll find a few as you look through your cabinets.  These little puppies are worth 10 cents each to a school, sometimes more when there are bonus deals.  Don’t throw money in the trash!  Pull them out of your neighbor’s recycling bin, too.  Then give them to a parent of school aged kids, mail them to the school down the street, give them to the preschool at your church. 

 

See this: 

It’s a Label for Education. Same deal—the list of products is here.  They are valuable, and schools go to a lot of trouble to collect them.  It drives me nuts when people tell me it’s too much trouble to save that stuff. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do it, because I can't find $43 million (really, we probably need five times that to educate children in the still-modest style I would find appropriate), but I can make sure the school gets my 6% commissions, and those little ten cent bits of paper, and so can you.  

Rhymes with Nice, But It's Not

Rod returned from his trip just in time to find me discovering lice on Ruby’s head, a joyous homecoming if ever there was one.  I think we have the little critters on the run, but the hour spent combing every evening is brutal, given the already tight schedule.  I have my suspicions about where Ruby got them, and yet you can’t really go around critiquing people’s combing techniques and how they treat their kids’ heads, right?  Just please, don’t let them find my head….

 

This week is just an ongoing slog of after school activities and PTO meetings and work on the school’s fundraising gala, which is coming up.  Rod had a day trip to exciting Ft. Worth, and I stayed up late several nights stuffing envelopes, which lends a glaze of exhaustion to everything else.  Today I had the great honor of talking with one of the Early Childhood classes, in Spanish, no less, about the joys of volunteer work and why one would be crazy enough to be the PTO president. Apparently the teacher is moving on to other parents with more impressive jobs to talk about professions and the importance of higher education.  So, there was a minor sting to my pride when I was invited to talk about volunteering, but I smiled and said yes and refrained from explaining what an important person I used to be before I retired early.

 

The meeting with Carl's teacher was okay.  She's trying to figure out what to do with him when he gets so mad he's not interruptable, which is rare, but scary.   He's so big and strong she can't physically remove him.  She wants him to work on recognizing when he's upset and stepping back from the situation before he can't, and to build his emotional vocabulary so that he can talk about what he's feeling instead of clamming up or lashing out.  Which all sounds lovely, and exceedingly difficult bordering on impossible, but I'm trying to chat him up about it at home, too.  The teacher is also concerned that some of the other kids have figured out how to make Carl mad and are starting to do it for sport, or to get him in trouble...even though they're friends, which sounds a little like what his sister does, even though she's his sister.  

As for the grade skipping, the teacher seemed to think we should go for it.  She says his writing might not be completely second grade, but otherwise, he's a year ahead, he doesn't seem to see himself as a first grader at all, and she worries he'll be lonely when all his third grade pals move on to a new class next year.   

Tomorrow, I’m hosting a big ol’ coffee for people who might do some work on that fundraising gala, which means I’ll be spending the evening cleaning the house, baking muffins, and snapping at my family.  I think Rod is having a little geek party on Sunday, along with his Girl Scout meeting, and then the kids are off Monday.  I am toying with the idea of taking the kids around the neighborhood to clean up trash in honor of Martin Luther King, which would make it a tradition, since it’s the third time, or we’ve been invited to a party to make packages to hand out to the homeless guys at the intersections around here.  Really, could things get any more exciting?  

 

It's Sole Authority Weekend!

Rod is away for the weekend, bonding with his brother and his high school and college pals in Las Vegas.  He had better be having fun, and I imagine he is, but the whole thing just sounds tedious and exhausting to me.  I really must be getting old. 

Rod’s departure coincided neatly with the beginning of the Girl Scout cookie sale, thus dooming me not only to a weekend of single parenting, but also to door-to-door sales, my Least Favorite Thing Ever.  But Rod spent a lot of time last week dealing with his troop’s cookie sales paperwork, plotting out meetings, planning the father-daughter dance, and chatting up parents of prospective members.  A born leader of Girl Scouts, he is. 

The kids are back in school; the re-entry following winter break wasn’t as traumatic as I feared it would be, until Friday when Ruby had a 6 a.m. crying fit about how she was dead, just dead, because she hadn’t finished her work for the week and there was just no way she ever would.  Every effort I made to cheer her up, strategize about the situation, or calm her down was met with utter negativity. She's very frustrating to me when she gets in that mood.  For the record, when I picked her up from school, she was still very much alive and had managed to finish all but one thing. Next week will be the real test of mood and endurance, when Ruby’s after school schedule fills back up.

The kids’ report cards came out Friday.  They are very vague and not informative.  Ruby’s was great last time, and it still is now.  Carl’s was okay to good last time; he was marked down a little for not getting enough work done, and some  (but not all) of those grades were up this time.

Children, and What to Do About Them, continues to baffle me.   Carl:  will he go on to invent some geeky thing that transforms the world, or will he be arrested for ignoring and then shoving some peace officer who dares to ask him to move along while he’s playing Angry Birds?  It really seems too close to call most of the time.  More important, I can’t see how to make the former more likely than the latter. 

Here are two intertwined Carl problems.  Problem A: A couple of people separately suggested we should try to have him skip second grade.  I believed grade-skipping in our district to be impossible, but it turns out it is technically possible, if you apply by February and make your child take tests in June.  However, it’s extremely rare that anyone passes all the tests.   The rationale in favor of skipping second grade would be 1) Carl is one of the oldest kids in his grade so it’s a close thing that he’s not a year ahead anyway, 2) he’s physically very, very big, 3) academically he could probably cope fine,  4) he prefers to hang around with older kids anyway, and 5) if we did it this year, he would keep the same teacher because his class is first/second/third grade.

I’m not entirely in love with the idea, even if Carl could pass the test.  I skipped a grade, and while it may have spared me a year of academic torture-by-boredom, I’m not sure it was all for the long-term best, either.  Third grade here is where all the standardized testing pressure and insanity cranks up, and I hate to take away a year of Carl’s innocence.  And while he’s generally well-behaved, he has moments where he loses control, and there are some kids he has a tough time tolerating. 

On to Problem B: So on the one hand, I have people telling me how brilliant and mature-seeming Carl is, and then I get an e-mail from the teacher, inviting me for a conference next week because he’s having trouble controlling himself when he gets angry.  There was an incident just before Christmas when Carl got sent to the office and had a nice long conference with the principal.  They made a deal that Carl would be the one to tell me about what had happened. 

So guess what?  Carl said nothing at all about it.  Finally, after the principal dropped a big hint, and a little girl in his class came up and told me he’d been sent to the office for hitting, I asked Carl about it.  He seemed appropriately remorseful and downright embarrassed, but clammed up and wouldn’t give me any details at all. I asked if he had apologized to anyone who needed an apology, and he said yes, and that was that.

The teacher says he’s not generally a problem, but apparently there are enough times when he is, or maybe he’s scary enough when he gets enraged, that she wants to talk to me about it.   So, what do I say? 

Moving on, this week I took the kids to check out a karate school nearby.  Carl has been asking for a long time to take lessons, and of the options around here, this was one of the more feasible.  Let me just say that karate is so not my thing: you have to practically shovel the mumbo-jumbo BS in those places, and the actual class looks like a really dull exercise class, only with the counting in Korean.  But the kids liked it, and the old lady with a black belt instructor, and the older kids in the class who helped teach it, were welcoming.  Carl seemed to catch on fast and punched and kicked with a certain amount of power and coordination.  Ruby is too busy to sign up just now, but I promised to find us some tae-bo to do together instead.   I will probably enroll Carl, although I think he’ll find the whole thing less charming once he’s signed up and has to follow orders.  I’m hesitating, because we were also talking about signing him up for the local equivalent of Little League, and I don’t think the schedule will bear both. 

It’s late and I’m rambling.  More news later.

 

 

Merry Christmas from the Family*

I just thought I should check in.  We’re fine.  Christmas (and poor Rod’s birthday) was very good.  Santa came, we are rolling in an embarrassing number of presents, we reveled in moments of wonder, awe and holiday spirit. We ate a lot, drank a lot, shared the joy, loved each other and generally felt luckier than ought to be allowed. 

And yet, it’s Christmas as an adult: Even the sweetest parts have their bitter undercoating.  I was sick and sleepless the whole week before Christmas, and really, I am still not quite out of it. I gave the virus to Rod; he seems a little less sick than I was, but he still sounds awful.  During that week, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make things festive, partly for the kids, partly for me.  Partly, I succeeded; partly, I didn’t.  And it feels like I lost nine days in the frenzy and now I'm trying to pack two weeks of vacation into one. 

I find, too, that I miss my old tribe.  It just seems wrong, it being only the four of us on Christmas Day.  My in-laws are averse to holiday travel, for which I don’t blame them at bit.  My dad would love to see us, but he’s far away and long remarried, with another set of schedules to juggle, so we don’t have every Christmas together.  And at holidays, I miss my dead mom, my dead grandparents, the dead uncle and the dead aunt and all those cousins, and even the relatives I can’t quite figure out how I’m related to.  It wasn’t that things were so perfect back in the day when it was a given I would see some large fraction of them all at holiday time, but it was a kind of built-in celebration system and bonding opportunity, and it evidently set my expectations for what Christmas is supposed to be.  It could be worse: my sisters got stuck doing the working spinsters thing alone together this year, for instance.  And yes, we could have hit the road and imposed on someone, but it just wasn’t feasible, schedule-wise or money-wise this year.  Sigh. You don't know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone….my life really is a series of pop music clichés, people.

Now in Holpineville we’re getting ready:  planning for the New Year’s Eve party we nearly always have, even though (or maybe because) I hate New Year’s Eve; getting some PTO stuff ready to go, because school starts right away after New Year’s and the spring agenda is packed; wrapping up some year-end bills and paperwork and cleaning out some long-term household messes.  Carl is nearly done assembling his Christmas Legos (all five big sets) and Rod is obsessively printing giant Lego minifigures (or would that be, Maxifigures?) on that damn 3-D printer with some silver plastic Ruby lovingly bought him for Christmas, just for fun and to make the kids happy. I’ve also given him a list of things to fix around here, and I think he wants to brew some beer, and did I mention, he’s not feeling so hot?

 

 

*Beloved local-color holiday song traditionally sung each year at our friends’ Christmas Eve caroling party; a wonderful mish-mash of hymns and popular songs and kids and dads volunteering to play piano, guitar, recorder, tambourine, maracas, and sing solos…it was glorious as usual this year.   If you celebrate Christmas or Hannukah, I hope you had a moment or two of transcendental joy and peace, too. 

 

In the Waiting Room

The waiting room at the occupational therapist is surprisingly low-key, in terms of the emotional energy.  The parents don’t chat with each other as much as you’d expect.  Some of them have other kids to watch; some of them are catching up on work; some just want the forty minutes or hour of peace.

But we all know why we’re here.  We’ve all been down a path that starts with wondering if something your child does, or doesn’t do, is just a little personality quirk, or a sign of More.  We moved on, probably, to other people noticing things about the child, to someone suggesting or even insisting that we get the kid “evaluated.”  And then there was the either a sad day when your kid got a really big label, or maybe the verdict was less clear: a series of “well, it could be this,” “there are indications of X,” “s/he seems to have an issue with Y,” “you should probably consider Z,” “let’s try ABC and see if it helps…” 

These parents are learning the same hard lessons you are about which therapy does what, public v. private school, what’s a disability and what’s not, accommodations, 504 plans, IEP’s, advocacy.  They, too, know the stress of dealing with tantrums and all stripes of impulsive, antisocial and age-inappropriate behavior.  You know they worry, just like you, about their “different” child making friends, getting through school, and navigating adult life.  How, you wonder, will this kid ever make it through college if she can’t write more than a simple paragraph?  How, that dad wonders, will my child ever hold down a job when he can’t make eye contact and screams when he’s frustrated?

But it’s not as depressing as all that.  Here, at least, people get it.  You don’t have to explain the weird thing your toddler is doing in the corner.  And the therapists are gurus, counselors, guides… angels, really.  Finally, there’s another adult who not only can understand what you’re dealing with, she’s in a position to offer those rare gems: useful opinions about your particular child!  You can ask all those questions that occur to you in the middle of the night, you can get a sense of how your kid compares to others, you can have a plan.  You don't have to worry about boring the therapist, or annoying her with your own brand of crazy, obsessive worry, like you might with a friend or your kid's teacher.  The therapist gives you a break:  a time or two each week when someone else takes on the burden of dealing with the Big Furry Problem you live with.  We hang on their words, when they emerge with our kids: “He had a good day today!  We worked on X,Y, Z.  He told me about ABC, and we talked about how important it is to try hard at DEF, and this week he’s going to work on doing J.“ We can go home, knowing we’re Doing Something, having a plan to attack, or tame, or at least co-exist with the Big Furry Problem.   

___________________________________________

I’ve been stewing over that bit for weeks, and it’s still not meeting my exacting Blog Standards, but I’m ready to move on.  As for the household update:

School is out: we had the groundbreaking for the new school playground/soccer field/etc.  and the class parties and the “winter songs” programs and general PTO meetings.  The Girl Scout campout went well; Rod and Ruby are tired but everyone seems to have had a good time and somehow they made it down the freeway and back with the minvan-dwarfing U-Haul of gear.    Carl had a sleepover with a friend one night, leaving me to go to a party by myself for the first time in probably a decade.  The next day we played ball and read books and he resisted my efforts to get him to nap, and we went to another party that night, ‘tis the season and all.  Yesterday, there was a big impromptu pack of kids at my house. Supposedly they were here to make Christmas cookies, but the kids mostly played and fought with each other while the organizing mom and I did some baking….not really the satisfying parent/child bonding activity she’d envisioned, and honestly, the cookies weren’t so hot. 

I still don’t have a grip on Christmas/Rod’s birthday/New Year’s.  Amazon Prime is my only friend at this stage, and Rod is trying to gently action on various fronts.  Santa is very uninspired this year and I hope my little brats aren’t too disappointed.  I need to figure out what to take to a Christmas Eve party and then what to eat on Christmas Day, and I need to get an invitation out for the New Year’s Eve party we’re having  (no better way to celebrate your least favorite holiday than with a big party at your house!).  To top things off, I’m keeping up a proud pre-Christmas tradition by contracting a Huge, Rotten, Sleep-Impeding Cold complete with sinus pressure, drippy nose and hacking cough, which makes me look and sound lovely and I am undoubtedly passing it along to everyone else in the house and the neighborhood, so I’ll get to deal with it again, even after I recover.    

 

Not Jolly Yet

I keep trying to think of nice happy things to tell you, but I’m just not in a good mood lately.  I’ve never been medicated for depression or anxiety or anything else, but there have been times it might have been a good idea, and it’s possible this is one of them.  I’m neglecting my sweet husband; the kids alternate between the extremes of marginal parenting (Clearly Raised by Wolves, or, Hopelessly Overindulged by Helicopter Mom); I don’t exercise, eat right, or sleep enough; I am completely unprepared for Christmas or the end of the fiscal year; the house is a mess even by local standards; no knitting or reading or anything else is happening; and I’m not really getting my all-consuming PTO work done, either.  In short, I’m not coping well in any of my life’s roles and my hair is falling out (seriously, it is, big time, and I don’t know why.  To think, I was worried about Rod’s scalp showing through…)

Things are going on, however, despite my mood.  Rod is busy at work because he'll be off while the kids are on vacation (yippee!) and he is completely obsessed with his 3-D prototyper machine when he’s not.   A friend of mine refers to her husband’s hobby as “that goddamn guitar,” and I am beginning to relate to the sentiment, if not use the same tone of voice.  Rod’s even got Carl interested now:  he taught Carl how to use Google Sketch Up, and then they made some of Carl’s designs.  Carl had to do a special project for school about Hawaii, and they came very close to making a 3-D poly-lactic acid model of the whole archipelago. 

When he’s not doing that, Rod is still busy.  He humors me, mostly, during this phase of depressive angst of mine.  He rescued a friend from a plumbing disaster and is fixing the oven that had the nerve to break on me last weekend.  He deals with these kids who live here.  He took them both shoe shopping last weekend.  What they came home with was not what I would have bought in terms of size, style, quality, type or price, but I was spared the trip and the stress and arguing that always ensues when I do it.  He is doing a fine job as Girl Scout troop leader:  he organized a super-fun pottery-making meeting, he recruited some new members, he went to a long training class, and he’s taking a pack of girls camping this weekend (yeah, right before Christmas, what’s your point?). 

As for Ruby, she’s been very busy.  She’s had a lot of sleepovers with one particular friend, which is nice, but she’s having a hard time expanding her list of buddies beyond that.  She has been making things:  remaking t-shirts by chopping parts off and adding embellishments, and sewing very basic patternless clothes—a tunic for Carl, and a polar fleece holiday dress for herself. 

Ruby was a spur-of-the-moment shepherd in the Christmas pageant at a friend’s church.  It was great; the show was outdoors, with a real camel and a choir and everything.  Ruby did fine, but she was disappointed that the live goat she was supposed to tend got rowdy at the last minute and was removed from her care. 

Under the influence of an animal-crazy friend, Ruby decided that she wanted to get a class pet for school.  In Montessori, class pets are encouraged as a way to teach children responsibility, respect for living things, biology, etc.  But in practice, some teachers just don’t like having them and don’t do it after an initial try or two.  Ruby’s class didn’t have one, and I suspected that was per the teacher’s choice.  But the teacher said it would okay to have fish, so that’s what Ruby got.  It’s a little female betta named Pearl, with an enormous and over-decorated tank that Ruby and Carl and I had a big cranky fight about buying, and the poor tortured fish has been back and forth to school three times in two weeks already. 

Carl is growing again.  His hair is longer and his clothes are too small.  He had one of his best new buddies sleepover last weekend, which was really fun.  His teacher says he’s doing a little better at getting his work done at school, and she’s having a hard time keeping ahead of him in math, because he’s moving through the curriculum so quickly.  He’s had the second grade homework the last couple of weeks, which does seem to challenge him a little.  He got in trouble at school yesterday for something, but I’m not supposed to know about it; the principal only said she made a deal with him that he could be the one to tell me about it.  And so naturally he hasn’t said a word, and therefore I don’t know what happened.  Frustrating little twerp he is, sometimes.

What else?  We got a Christmas tree, and it only took two weeks of boxes strewn all over the house to get the decorations unpacked and up.  We went to some parties last weekend.  I have done no shopping at all yet, and I thought I had time, but suddenly everyone is telling me it’s the very last minute and ack! Ack! Ack!  There won’t be much shopping this weekend, though, because Rod and Ruby will be Girl Scout camping and Carl has only a limited tolerance for that sort of thing.    Out of town relatives:  look for a nice Memorial Day gift, okay?

As for me, well, last week there was a teacher appreciation luncheon and a PTO Mom’s Night Out, and the school book fair, and a bunch of other lesser meetings.  This week, I have a newsletter to write, two PTO meetings to host this week, two “winter performances” to attend at school, a budget issue to resolve, and so on.  Tomorrow morning is the groundbreaking for a huge park/renovation project at school, for which we need only raise to another $100K or so, preferably in the next three weeks.  I used to do a lot of event planning for work, and I am going completely crazy from the lack of planning that’s gone into this groundbreaking.  Apparently we’re just all going to show up, and someone will have fancy shovels, and we’ll play it by ear.  I will have anxiety hives by then—there’s no timeline!  No script!  No props!  What if it rains?! Of course, everyone else involved thinks I’m a little kooky for worrying about that stuff.

I have to get some presents for the teachers and staff by tomorrow, and I have to acquire food for the kids to take to their class parties, and I have to go to a big deal committee meeting this afternoon, and I have to help Ruby pack for camping, and, and, and.  

All I really want is vacation…time on the sofa with a book or a movie or some knitting, a little holiday spirit to creep in.   Which it will, but I had hoped to be there by now.  It’s taken me three weeks to write this for you, and I see that it’s not very good.  I promise to come up with better material, once I make it through Friday.  

 

I used to worry that he would never learn to eat solid food

Me: Carl, I'm coming to school tomorrow for the Thanksgiving Feast. Is there anything special you'd like me to bring, to go with the school lunch?

Carl: hmmm. A Z Bar, okay? And some Caesar salad. Maybe a sandwich. And oh yeah! A Lunchable!

I Just Can't Wait

There’s a special kind of magic in the air…because somehow, the stars have aligned and the energy is flowing and there is (almost) NOTHING on the official family dance card this weekend.  It’ll change, of course.  Ruby has a project to work on, and Carl wants to have at least two capital-B-full-of-beans-BOYS over for a sleepover, and Rod will be anxious to spend quality time with his 3-D prototype thingy, but just the concept of glorious free time gets me happy.   

And then next week, once I make it through the school Turkey Parade and Thanksgiving Feast, there’s a long weekend, too!  No one invited us anywhere for Thanksgiving, and I have been so partied out lately that I made it clear to Rod we were not hosting anything, and I was leaning toward pizza and a video for the big day.  But then some friends asked us over, and I gleefully accepted and now I need to figure out appetizers and kid food and a really awesome veggie.  Yay.    

You’ll be happy to know that Ruby’s wart has been pronounced gone, with luck for good.  I also took both kids to the dentist, and by some miracle, there were no cavities.  Carl has mysteriously broken off a big chunk of one baby tooth, but as long as he’s not in pain, we’ll just wait for it to age out of his head.  As for Ruby, the visit-to-the-orthodontist countdown clock is ticking away at 18 months to two years.  The dentist said some orthodontists might start right away in her case.  However, she says the situation isn’t dire, and starting sooner would probably just turn a two year project into a four year project, so we’ll wait for the last eight baby teeth to fall out.  Good news, although I did have a little mini-freak out about paying for that, and her occupational therapy, and the sorry state of her college fund, which God willing, she will need in a mere eight years.  I really wanted to order some new yarn this week (yes, for my extensive collection of unknitted yarn), but I resisted and I guess I need to keep on resisting. 

What more?  The TMJ is mysteriously 90% better, which might explain my happy zippy mood.   I had a bunch of meetings this week, so many I had to miss a couple others due to scheduling conflicts.  Rod is working really hard at work.