Holpineville

I am Moderately Fond of Democracy

I was going to say "I love democracy!"  but then both of the candidates that I really care about ended up in run-offs.  So there are five more weeks of hard work and tension to go. 

I got up early yesterday to be a poll worker.  Yes, one of those perky people handing out cards that you try to avoid eye contact with and slip by on your way into the voting place.

By now, you probably know that I hate talking to strangers, and I also have a very difficult time waking up in the morning.  So it was a little surprising that I enjoyed myself, talking to the precinct election judge and the other corner-standers, including one of my candidate's opponents, and seeing everyone coming in. Later, I spent several hours at the election day bake sale at our kids' school, chatting with the people who live nearby about the school and the elections. Last night, I stayed late at the returns-watching party for my friend, where we all learned once again that when voter turn out is less than 20%, a couple hundred votes makes a huge difference, even in a very big city.  

One side benefit to my minor political activity in these local races is that the kids are both very interested in elections, politics, and candidates.  I like that they are seeing people they know run for office and being involved in campaigns.  On the other hand, explaining How the World Works to innocent children is not easy.  I do miss my high school civics teacher, jaded and burnt-out as the poor guy was. 

Halloween was good, from what I can now recall, four days later.  Ruby made a fab Statue of Liberty.  Carl was Skippy Jon Jones at his school's storybook dress up day parade, and then a bat on Halloween proper.  Rod was Dracula in white tie, and I was me...too tired to get a costume together.  We went to the school fall carnival on Saturday afternoon, and to a friend's party Saturday night. Sunday involved another (very loud, says Rod, who sacrificed himself and went) birthday party, and ended with Horrible Tired Crabby Kids Falling Apart Night.  Nights like that, I wonder if Carl will make it to adulthood alive and unincarcerated.  But he was all better the next day; yay! for sleep.

I keep waiting for a break in the busy, but it's not happening.  This week's special events: Ruby is taking a sewing class, Carl has a birthday party to attend, and I have meetings every night.  This weekend, there's a statewide Montessori conference at school that I need to help with, it's the 22nd anniversary of When Rod Met Andrea, I need to do some election campaigning, there's another birthday party, and a friend's art event I promised to drag my kids to. 

Also, it's my last weekend to eat in my usual fashion ever.  On Monday, I start a horrid-sounding regimen of protein drinks and nothing else for two weeks.  After that, comes the much-anticipated, carefully considered, and long-prepared for gastric bypass surgery, and food will never be quite the same. Yes, I am rather freaked out about the whole thing, and I don't really want to discuss it all here.  But I do need to think hard about what to have for dinner Sunday night...suggestions?

Montessori Education is Peace Education

That's the slogan on the school t-shirts this year.  Carl seems to have taken it to heart, to judge by his work:

He especially likes map work:

And in Montessori school you do a lot of labeling:

How do you know when it is okay to let your kid stop going to some class or activity?  Ruby is in a weekly creative writing workshop.  The program gets good reviews from most kids and parents, and several of her friends are in it. Ruby is generally creative, likes making up stories, role playing, enacting dramas, and putting on shows, and she does some writing at home from time to time.  Also, her spelling sucks, even adjusted for her age and grade level, and I think writing is an important skill kids should practice more in general.  Finally, this is the first time the program is at the kids' school and I wanted to support it by signing Ruby up. 

But somehow, Ruby doesn't like this class. She says the instructions for each assignment are too bossy, or confining; basically, she feels like she can't write what she wants.  Ruby says the writing time is too long and it's too loud and distracting in the room with everyone else.  She feels over-scheduled and Wednesdays in particular are too tiring and she's just not happy about it.

I told Ruby she needed to stick it out for the semester and we'd reconsider for the spring.  She said she realized today that the teacher's instructions are more flexible than she'd thought, so today was better.

So what do you think?  Is the benefit of the class worth the bellyaching about it?  Or should I let her drop, because she's given it an honest try and she's tired and stressed out and only seven, even if it means the school loses the program for lack of enrollment? 

Here is a poem she wrote that the teacher sent out as part of an edited anthology of the work of the class.  I gather from some of the other poems that the idea was to write a verse or two about various feelings.  I like the poem, because it seems very "Ruby" to me, and I'm not the world's finest judge of literary merit, but I have to say that I think some of her classmates wrote generally better pieces, if that makes any difference to you.   

___________

Happy

 

I bounce up and down!

 

Sad

 

I run upstairs and lie on my bed.

 

Mad

 

I say, MOM!  MOM!!

 

Alone

 

I feel sick.

 

Angry

 

I say MOM! 

 

____________

The news in brief: For the first time today, Ruby asked if she could borrow one of my books when I am done with it. And yes, she meant to read it.  Surprisingly, it was not some trashy novel, but a big thick history book.  She read a few pages and liked it, "even if I can't understand every single bit of it."  I said yes, of course.

 

Some fool scheduled Election Day precariously close to Halloween this year, so I am very busy until sometime next week with kid stuff, parties, and political action.  It's been raining way too much for my psychological comfort, Rod survived his first colonoscopy (which he got because he's now a middle aged dude and it comes with his Deluxe Executive Physical Exam Package) with no bad news, and in fact, we're all well and healthy for the moment.

The cat ate my password

I see we have some catching up to do, you and I.  You haven’t been getting the posts I compose as I’m falling asleep or sitting in traffic, have you?  Let’s see what I can string together for you:

The news:

Ruby spent one weekend throwing up, but recovered quickly.  Carl has had a snotty nose and I can’t tell if it’s getting better or about to get way worse.  Many of their friends have had the dreaded H1N1, but so far we are clear.

Rod did some much-needed caulking and painting around the house and has been working long, long hours. 

We have new tenants moving in next door this weekend.  Everyone please cross your fingers, light a candle, whatever, and hope that they pay us on time and take decent care of the place.

Carl says he is just one lesson away from being done with Pre-K work at school.  I have no clue if that's true or not, but if it's motivating to him, that's awesome.  Ruby was trying to teach him to read one night, using the highly-motivating book Super Diaper Baby (one of the highlights is the bad guy accidentally transforming himself into a turd).  Anyway, I mentioned to Carl that I have a book about teaching your child to read and maybe we should get it out sometime.  “Get it now!” he shouted, an hour before bedtime.  I would like to say that I used that window of opportunity and that he’s now reading well above grade level, but I made him go to bed instead.

Grandma paid a visit for a quilt show, but made time to have dinner with us all and to take Ruby and me to the show one afternoon.  Ruby really enjoyed it and has big plans for the kitty fabric she got.  Ruby also enjoying calling people on the phone these days, especially Grandma.  It’s strange to see my little baby casually picking up the phone, paging through the speed dial, and calling people all by herself.

Ruby has replanted her garden for fall. Now being tested are onions, spinach, swiss chard, lettuce, cilantro, and pansies.  The excitement was darn near overwhelming when she discovered a lone petite cantaloupe on her half-dead cantaloupe vine.  We’re still holding out hope that it will ripen enough to harvest, and not just rot on the ground.  She keeps harvesting the occasional okra pod or pepper, too, but the eggplant has been devastated by caterpillars or bugs or something. 

Ruby had the honor of introducing the arts showcase at her school today.  She Who is Never Nervous seemed to have a touch of the stage fright, but did fine.  Here is a lovely cell phone photo of my little star, a few minutes before she said her lines:

As for me, what have I been doing?  Nothing, and everything.  I harvested and froze a ton of basil, read a kind of interesting book about the pilgrims, went to my knitting guild meeting, kept plugging away at my volunteer projects, played phone tag with a speech therapist for Carl, went to the spaghetti dinner at school, got the kids’ hair cut, sorted through a giant pile of old papers (sadly, there are many more piles to go), took my pregnant friend to the doctor a bunch of times, cooked more than I really wanted to, did 96 loads of laundry, and ran all those time-sucking errands (cleaners, post office, grocery store, grocery store, grocery store, drugstore, cat food store, school, school, school, school, you know…..).

Last week, I volunteered at another sort of –related to my-kids’ school- Montessori –school-for-underprivileged-kids’ fundraiser.  Ruby and Carl had to be there with me for a while until Rod could collect them.  To my delighted astonishment, they didn’t want to amuse themselves with coloring books; they wanted to help.  And they did, setting tables and filling glasses just like the grownups.  Too bad I can’t get that kind of support at home.

This weekend, the cat is going to the vet, there are a bunch of birthday parties, the kids want to carve pumpkins (even though I explained they will be slimy and black by Halloween, given our lovely climate), and I need to figure out Carl’s costume(s)—the bat, and the Skippy Jon Jones he wants to be for the storybook dress up parade at his school.  How hard can it be to come up with something that makes Carl look like a Siamese cat who thinks he’s a Chihuahua on a mission to Mars?

 

And More

We would like to announce that Ruby is going to be the Statue of Liberty for Halloween, and Carl wants to be a bat.  There are practically no child bat costumes available this year except for some tarty ones for little girls, and I am not sewing this time around, so I have delegated most of the bat-making responsibility to Rod.  No one is allowed to change his or her mind about costumes from this point on.  Right?

Carl hates nap time at school.  Not only must he endure the indignity of being a five year old in Pre-K, but Pre-K kids have to go to nap time, for a whole 30 minutes a day.  Carl usually spends about that long complaining about it each morning and begging me to pick him up early from school so that he can skip it. He doesn't ever sleep and it's so so so so boring, and Buddy X and Y are always bugging him, and please, please, can't he just stay home? 

So finally I asked his teacher if he could do something else at nap time, like maybe work alongside the kindergartners?  She said no to that, but offered that Carl could bring a book to nap and read to himself. The best books for this, she said, and the ones that seem to keep Carl's attention longest, are big non-fiction picture books. 

Carl seems pretty happy with this deal, maybe just because it's a novelty, but I'm taking my respite from the complaining with a grateful heart for however long it lasts.  We went to the library today so that he could check out some new non-fiction, and we carted home a huge stack of books on fascinating topics like shipwrecks and dinosaurs, and also conifers, weather, and turkeys.  Did I mention that he can't really read yet?  So nice cover art is how he chooses. 

Still Here, Still Busy

I took the kids to the dentist today.  Now that they are both so mature and grown-up, I have to wait, (yes, in the waiting room), while they are attended to alone in the treatment zone.  And then I am escorted back for several entire seconds of consultation with the dentist and to pay the bill. 

I am not sure that my appreciation for the time to read gossip magazines in peace, and my recognition of the fact that this is an important step in independence for the kids, outweigh my sense of being sort of left out and underinformed. 

But anyway.  Carl's mouth is still a picture of health and evenly spaced teeth and nothing is loose yet.  Ruby has no cavities but continues to have a sensitivity problem with a couple of her permanent molars that have improperly formed enamel.  If the pain gets to be too much for her, fillings would be the next step, but we've agreed to keep muddling on through.  The dentist was winking meaningfully at me when she said Ruby's bite was "okay for NOW" and when I asked about an apparently missing permanent tooth with nowhere it would fit anyway (answer: it'll come in eventually, but no, there's really not space for it).  So I guess we better get with it on the orthodontia savings account. Finally, no one gave me a gold medal for all the time Rod and I spend brushing kids' teeth and supervising the brushing of kids' teeth, and for doing the flossing that so many of my fellow parents blow off, and I am just a little disappointed at that. 

Rod is super busy at work.  I am super busy with a couple of volunteer committees and trying to get someone elected this fall.  We are also trying to get a new tenant for our rental property, and I am stuck again, trying to decide just how bad a credit score has to be before you are an unacceptable risk, and how secure Job X might be, and should we say yes, or no, and risk the only future applicant having a whole den of pitbulls, a part-time roomate on the sex offender list,  and an autobody repair side business in his garage.

More later.

Progress Check

The kids’ school is issuing more frequent progress reports this year and having more parent teacher conferences, all under some quite welcome better-communication initiative. 

Both of the kids’ progress reports were very good, and I met with Ruby’s teacher soon after I had spent a day in the classroom filling in for the vacationing aide, which gave me another view of things.

Ruby is, in her teacher’s words, enjoying taking on a leadership role in the classroom.  She likes helping the younger kids, doing things to help the teacher, and being a voice of experience and authority.  I asked if that means she’s bossy, and the teacher said no, that rarely she talks to Ruby about how to phrase something in a kinder way, but overall, she’s been fine. We talked about which kids she liked to work with and which ones sometimes stress her out, and that she is continuing in her practice of confiding in the teacher about her feelings.  This is good, as it helps manage Ruby’s moods. Her teacher seems to truly like and appreciate Ruby, too, which makes me quite happy.

Ruby likes and is good at the handwriting drills, and is at or above grade level in all subjects: science, social studies, art, etc.  She’s working on “golden bead multiplication” in math.  She still is a bit slow at doing basic arithmetic…she understands how and generally gets the correct answers; she just can’t seem to memorize the plus and minus tables, so we’re to keep working with her on that at home. 

Ruby’s reading is firmly above grade level, but the teacher and I talked a bit about Ruby’s tendency to skip words when she reads aloud.  We aren’t sure whether that’s because Ruby is trying to go too fast; or if she’s reading it all but not saying it all; or if there’s, in the teacher’s words, “something else going on with the way her brain is processing things.”  Ruby hasn’t grown out of the tendency to make letters and numbers backwards randomly, and spelling is also a challenging area for her.  The teacher says that could all be normal, and it could also be a symptom of some larger issue, so we will work with her on those things and watch and see.  By larger issue, I suppose she means mild dyslexia. Teachers aren’t allowed to diagnose problems, of course, so it's all just a big hint. 

Ruby said today during her regular weekly one-on-one conference with the teacher, they talked about the reading problem.  The teacher encouraged her to try things like moving her finger or the eraser end of a pencil along the text as she reads, or sliding a piece of paper down the page under each line as she goes.  Ruby said they talked about how “it gets blurry when there’s a long sentence,” or “sometimes I see words double.”  Her vision checked out normal about a month ago, so I don’t think the eyes are the problem. 

I am not so worried about all this yet, because Ruby’s doing so well overall, but I am a little scientifically curious.  I’ve always thought I had a mild dyslexic tendency myself; not the reading kind, but maybe the writing and speaking variants.  I find myself writing some letters backwards or writing b when I mean d, for instance.  And fairly often I am thinking one word but saying another unrelated one, especially when I’m tired or in a hurry. 

I had an exhausting but interesting day in Ruby’s classroom.  The class is packed this year: 25 or 26 kids, which is over the legal maximum, but all the lower elementary classrooms are overflowing this year.   This is really hard on the teacher and just logistically difficult—when they sit in a circle, they don’t all fit neatly around the rug, for instance.  There is also a special needs kid who joins the class half of the day.  I remember special ed kids as being sort of exotic pariahs in elementary school.  No one really wanted to talk to them and people were only grudgingly kind.  But the kids in Ruby’s class seem to genuinely like and appreciate this kid, different as he is, and I was impressed by how kind and accepting they are.  He really needs an aide of his own during that time, but he doesn’t get one, so the other kids and the teachers do their best to help him integrate and work with the others. 

I got to take about half the class to the world’s most boring assembly, that was supposed to be a celebration of their participation in the summer reading program.  Funerals are a thousand times more celebratory than that was, I swear.  In fact, if I were I kid, I would be vowing not to read anything next summer so that I could skip that event next year.  But my group of kids behaved well enough, and then we went back to class, with me delivering an impromptu lecture about the jerk who just pulled the fire alarm and what to do if there really was a fire. 

Later, I checked people’s work and walked around trying to gently but firmly redirect the kids who weren’t working to their work plans and what they needed to get done that day.  There was technology lab (my break time), then lunch in the really loud cafeteria, silent reading time, recess, lessons on the solar system and maps, research project time, and group reading time. 

As for the other kid:

I was not happy with Carl last week when the music teacher pulled me aside to tell me how rotten my sweet boy behaved in music class.  She’s not especially likable and I know a lot of kids who have issues with her, but I was so upset that MY child was being uncooperative and disrespectful.  So I did my best to talk to Carl about it and explain our expectations, and he says he understands and we shall see how it goes.  His class didn’t have music this week because of Yom Kippur (so I guess he missed his chance to atone?).

The progress report from Carl’s teacher was excellent.  She says he is really working hard these days.  Carl is doing addition and working on letter sounds and things like matching pictures to sounds.  He loves the dinosaur books, “plays great with the active boys, and uses words to communicate wishes and concerns.”  So I skipped the teacher conference for him for now, thinking I’ll do it next quarter just to get a more in depth view of what’s going on. 

 

Hysteria Abating

The rain has slowed to a steady drip and I haven't driven into any major puddles yet. And I am much calmer.  Sorry.

Carl had his five year old check up yesterday.  He was acting like an utter goofball, so I guess he was nervous. I made the executive decision to bribe him into cooperation, even though it sets a dangerous precedent.  Thus, he cooperated with all the things he didn't want to do (vision screening, hearing screening, scale, poking of his various parts) and he's still very excited about his prize (stuffed flying squirrel with magnetic front paws from the lobby gift shop). 

Anyway, Carl is doing fine.  He's 46 inches tall and 53 pounds, which puts him firmly on the 97th percentile line for both stature and weight, in line with the same curve he's always followed.   The 97th percentile for 20 year old males is only 6'2", by the way.  I figure he'll be blowing right past that mark around age 14. 

There was also a flu vaccine: the nasal mist, which he didn't enjoy, but it beat the injected alternative.  I got another Clueless Mommy Award to add to my collection by failing to notice the fair-sized dried booger collection in Carl's nose, and we were instructed to get back on the saline-rinsing wagon and to try some new nose spray to ward off a return to Sinus Infection Misery City this fall.  

I have noticed that Carl has trouble with at least a couple of speech sounds.  His b's and v's get mixed up, and he has trouble with the voiced "th," as in "together" and "feather."   It may be a developmental phase and he needs only time.  Or, maybe he could benefit from a few tongue exercises and some coaching.  I'm not sure.  The doctor wasn't either, so she said we should go ahead and get him a speech evaluation, which might be covered by the health insurance that we are lucky enough to have, or it might not be. In theory, you can also get a (free!) evaluation at school, but everyone I know who's tried it at our school has been frustrated and had to go elsewhere. Add that to Mommy's To Do List to figure out and schedule.

Rod is still gone, but he's coming home in time to take the kids camping this weekend.  A bunch of our friends are going, but it's pretty far away.  I was originally supposed to go, but I have a lot going on this weekend, so Rod volunteered to do it. 

Ruby is trying to put in more time on her spelling list and improve her speed in doing basic arithmetic (8+6, 9+8, etc.), because she doesn't do well on the timed tests they have at school. Tomorrow, I am spending the day helping out in her classroom, which is the first day I will have spent any time in there this year.  I think it will be exhausting but maybe I will finally start matching names and faces of the new kids. Bad financial news arrived when our Super Wonderful Tenant came over to tell me that he's being transferred out of the country toute de suite, so after a very brief period of mourning, I need to get cracking on my real estate listing.  Blah.

I just read that Lego sales in the US are up more than 20% since Carl got interested in them, which helps explain the problem with my bank account.  Do you think they could send me a rebate? If only Lego was publicly traded. 

 

Weather PTSD

When did I get to be such an anxious person? Driving in the rain scares me now.  Yes, it's pouring today, and the weather-people agree it will be pouring until two days from now, which means the streets will flood, which means I will be tied in knots the whole time, watching the weather radar, checking the traffic cameras, calculating how else I could possibly get the kids home from school if the usual route is impassable, should I skip going to this meeting that takes place in the low part of town, should I pick the kids up early, and how I would cope with the kids in the car if we had a problem.... 

I suppose it all dates back to the Great Floating Car Incident of 2001, when I drove into a puddle and ended up in a dead car in the dark with water coming through the floor.  It was really frightening, and I was already stressed out that day by being secretly pregnant with what I didn't know was Doomed Miscarriage Baby.  Rod came to my rescue that night, but he's out of town this week, so if I end up in high water now, it's all my problem. 

 I am really unhappy with myself for being such a ball of nerves about something so stupid.  I lived here for over a decade without any weather anxiety, driving little bitty cars and renting in a neighborhood that floods.  Why can't I get back to that un-bothered state of mind? And do you have any, say, Xanax, that I could use in the meantime?

Moving on to the news: Carl says he wants to be an inventor when he grows up.  I lobbied for "poet" or "mechanic" (like an inventor, but more practically useful) or "doctor" (wouldn't it be great to have someone around here with a prescription pad?), but he's pretty firmly committed.  The Engineer Gene Lives On.

The birthday parties went well, with many kids attending and huge piles of presents accumulating.  We have all been busy assembling Lego kits and trying out toys.  My favorite gift, just because it appealed to my immature streak, was the "Cosmic Thruster."  ("Oh Mom, it has balls!")  Anyway, Carl has a pile of thank you notes to write, which will take a while because all he can write is his name, although he does have a certain talent for copying things out. 

Ruby had her first Brownie meeting, and is all psyched up to earn badges and sell cookies; not even the ugly brown vest can deter her, and now I need to figure out how to neatly iron all the badges and insignias and patches onto it.  It also reminds me of my mom, who wouldn't settle for merely ironed-on badges on my sash.  Oh, no.  Mine were lovingly sewed in place with great precision, and as a result, my uniform did look much neater that everyone else's.  How I miss my mom.

Where the Fun and the Mess are Never Ending

Carl is sweet and good natured and sporadically affectionate.  However, he is not moved to perform acts of kindness and disinterested generosity as often as, say, Ruby is. Thus, I was quite touched when he spontaneously decided to make a "surprise breakfast" for Rod and me this weekend.  He started planning Saturday, when he got out a tray and loaded it up, refusing to tell me what it was for, but instructing me not to get out of bed in the morning when I "heard the thump sound."  Carl asked for help in stashing the tray in the refrigerator and obliquely asked about things Rod might like for breakfast.  

I thought he might have forgotten overnight, but no, the next morning Carl somehow managed to get the tray out of the refrigerator and all the way upstairs to the bed, without spilling the following: a cup of milk, a cup of raspberries, a cup of cheddar bunny crackers (purchased as part of the "take a child to the grocery store and pay extra" tax), a banana, and a pear.   Then he went back downstairs to get Rod a plate with a pear and a banana.  It was very sweet. 

Can someone direct me to a suitable martial arts class?  Last week I took Carl to a trial jiu jitsu class.  It was nearby, mostly conveniently scheduled, sort of affordable, and a good mix of boys and girls ages 3 to 6.  Carl was excited about trying it out, until the day it was time go.  Then he reverted back to his toddler barnacle stage, wrapping himself around my thighs and burying his head in my stomach, and being a complete nervous pill besides.   I was about to give up and go home when he finally agreed to help the teacher teach the class. 

But it didn't go well.  Carl seemed to like the individual activities (rope climb, monkey arm hang), but most of the class involved working in pairs and he either refused to be paired off or the teacher didn't pair him off, and at the end he told me he hated it.  Also, I wasn't so thrilled with the way the teacher managed the class time, and well, to me it just seemed a little....violent?  All that grabbing and pushing and wrestling? 

As I was telling Rod about this, I asked "so are there any martial arts classes that are, you know, a little less violent?  With less focus on learning how to beat people up?"  And Rod looked at me like, "well, my goodness, I sure did marry a crazy stupid person, how did that happen?"  and he gently explained that most martial arts had to do with, you know, defending one's self.  And he asked "what exactly are you looking for, then?"  To which I could only reply, "well, like yoga, maybe, with some macho power moves and yells?" 

So dear readers, what are the differences among karate, jiu jitsu, tae kwan do, capoeira, aikido, kung fu, judo, kendo, etc.? Which is best for an energetic oversized five year old with a squeamish mother? Our quest for the Right Class continues.

Carl and I finally planned his upcoming fifth birthday party, which will be at one of those indoor, giant inflated things to bounce on places.  I'm not so excited about it, because it's not a very original idea and it will cost me money, but in the pro column, let us note that it is easy to plan and I won't have to clean house.    Now if I can just figure out what to give him.  Oh, sure, there's Legos, but it seems to me Mommy and Daddy should be a bit more original in their gift-giving.  A friend of a friend offered up a chihuahua mix puppy and I thought it was destiny, or at least kismet, but Rod still says no.  Maybe the party will be the present.

Ruby opened up a bit about the things she feels she needs to work on at school: getting faster at doing basic addition/subtraction/multiplication, reading long numbers out loud, and maybe spelling.  She also thought it would help her to have a chart of things she needs to work on, including those items plus reading and piano practice, for instance.  She seems to like charts, and I know at school she figures out what she's going to do when using a chart called her "work plan" for each week. So, I need to help her pull that together.  This fall, Ruby's taking an extracurricular creative writing class, piano, and the same dance/theater class she did last year.  This is a little more busy than I originally bargained for, but we can't give up the latter two, and the first one is a pilot program we want to get started at the school, so I'm sending her to it.  Also, I have relented and agreed to let her join the Girl Scouts, so she can live out her dream of selling cookies, and that means another meeting or two each month.

In other news, the pulmonologist said that my pneumonia was indeed a weird looking case, but he thinks I'm making a fine recovery....it just takes weeks for one's lungs to clear out, sorry about that, honey.  We spent the weekend swimming, working on a volunteer project, going to sleepovers and various kid and adult parties, and doing stuff around the house.  I'm in a cleaning out frenzy, sparked by Ruby's relocation to Carl's room and an upcoming children's consignment sale, where I hope to make a million selling off the kids' outgrown clothing and no-longer-treasured belongings, assuming I can sneak them out of the house when they're not looking. 

Ruby's garden has yielded a handful of okra, one Japanese eggplant, two poblano peppers, and two banana peppers.  Rod and Ruby made fried okra last night and it was actually good.  Ruby even liked it, so score one for the garden!

I was all excited for my kids to hear the President's speech this morning, because I think the ruckus over that was completely and utterly ridiculous (and yes, I'd feel the same if it was one of my least favorite presidents from the other party giving the speech), and that it's useful to have an authority figure other than Daddy and me telling them that education is important, hard, and worthwhile.  Plus, I discount the whole "political brainwashing" argument: I know I watched plenty of Reagan speeches on school time in the 80's, and I managed not only to survive, but to become the bleeding-heart liberal that I am.  My kids are way smarter than I am and they can think for themselves.  But, I guess Carl's teacher decided the class was too young, and Ruby's class was out at one of their ancillary classes at the same time, so I guess I'll have to summarize it for them later.

Carrots

Parental insight for this week: our kids like external rewards.  I don't think I'm really all that motivated by performance incentives. Sure, it's nice to get a prize, but it's rare that the promise of one makes me work harder at anything. 

I finally figured out that my kids like to have an incentive to work toward.  Ruby's school has a new policy of sending the kids out to walk around the track if they arrive early in the morning, and they're all supposed to walk two laps at the beginning of recess.  Ruby hit on the idea of keeping track of her laps, which I thought would be interesting.  We could make a map showing how far she's walked, for instance. But Ruby kept asking what she would get if she walked so many laps.  She wanted a prize!  So I agreed to a reward at 30 laps and one at 60.  I figured it would take her two or three weeks to get to the first level.  Then Ruby walked ten laps the next day at school. That's 2 1/2 miles!  So we're raising the prize bar a bit, but she's still interested enough that she tries to get to school early to have time to walk. 

Ruby has asked for an incentive chart before.  We talked about one last spring for piano practice and reading, but I never followed through.  I wanted her to do those things because she enjoys them and because she's supposed to, not because she's trying to win a toy.  But talking to other parents, it seems like incentives are pretty effective for some kids, and I guess I'm willing to give it a shot if Ruby's one of them.

And then there's Carl.  Toward the end of the first week of school, his teacher told me his behavior was not as good as it needs to be.  My darling child was playing too rough with the other boys, and he and his new pal were so involved with each other that she had to separate them in circle time and at lunch.  I really had hoped that Carl was beyond all that, that he had matured and evolved enough to do better.  It was depressing. 

I took the boisterous boy wonder home, and talked to him about our expectations for his behavior,and how he's a big kid now and needs to act like it.  Finally, I told him that he wouldn't be having any play dates after school if I didn't get "good reports" from his teacher.  

Yesterday, I asked his teacher if Carl was doing any better.  She said yes!  much better.  She had taken him aside and explained that he wasn't a three year old anymore, and that she wanted him to be a role model for the younger children.  She said Carl stressed to her that he was turning five soon.  She told him that five year olds learn to read, and if he wanted to do that, he needed to get serious and do the work to get ready.  She told me that it's clear Carl really wants to be able to read, and that he seems a lot more motivated since they talked.  Last night, Carl told Rod and me all about some sound/letter work he did at school, so I have to agree.

This morning, Carl told me goodbye, I said "have a good day," and he said "Good report, right, Mom?"  "Yup," I said, "I want to hear a good report so that we can do something fun this afternoon." 

In other news from school, Ruby does not like her in-class reading buddy, but she does like her kindergarten reading buddy.  She is learning long multiplication (is that what you call carrying to the next column?) and does not want to practice her spelling words any more than she did last year.  The homework load has been adjusted this year, though, and should be lighter overall, so I told her to quit complaining.  I'm so supportive.

Finally, some pictures of the so-called garden, pathetic, tiny and neglected as it is, we get very excited whenever anything that might be a flower, fruit or vegetable appears:

Okra has surprisingly pretty flowers

The eggplant makes nice flowers, but no eggplants.

What is this, a zinnia?  We caught Ruby pulling off the blossoms.  She thought it was like the basil, where you want to pinch off the flowers.  Oops.