“I don’t want to wear jeans today. I want sports pants. I have gym.”
“On Thursday? I thought it was on Friday.”
“MOOOOMMM! YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE!”
He’s not even seven years old yet.
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too cool for school
Two pictures:
Two announcements:
“Wow, I did not expect the kindergartners to be SO small.” (This from the first grader.)
“The second day of school is always the best. Because it’s usually a Friday.” (Also the first grader. They are so wise.)
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Weird mom confession: I kind of like going through my kids’ backpacks at the end of the school day. I have yet to come across any moldy food or illegal items, and sometimes there are gems like the principal’s hand-drawn diagram of the new circular drop-off area: “This map is not drawn to scale, for Mr. J. should never be confused with a cartographer.”
(Anyone else muttering “North to pick up! South to drop off, moron!!”)
Also, when you open up the backpack of a kindergartner, you might find a treasure like this one.
And then you’ll feel hape too.
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Jo took her first few cello lessons in a borrowed classroom in an elementary school (not her own school). The teacher (not her music teacher, the one whose classroom it is normally) had tacked up a poster listing “The Essential 55: Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child.” Since this poster was right above Jo’s head while I observed her lesson, I had time to peruse the rules. They started out making a lot of sense: things like “follow along when we read together in class,” “you must complete your homework every day” and “when a substitute teacher is present, all class rules still apply.”
Then things started to go off the rails and I kind of stopped paying attention to my kid’s lesson.
#31: “In a hotel room, leave a tip for the hotel workers who clean your room”
#43: “On escalators, stand to the right and walk to the left”
#46: “No talking in a movie theater during the movie”
Huh? Turns out these are from a book of the same name by “award-winning educator” Ron Clark, which gets polarizing reviews at Amazon.com. I haven’t read it, but I am mystified as to why learning to leave a tip for a hotel housekeeper will make my child a successful student. A polite person, maybe–even a considerate one. But will it help her grasp an academic concept or practice a necessary skill? I certainly hope she won’t be staying in any hotel rooms without me anytime soon.
I know that many students arrive in the classroom sadly lacking in manners. I think it’s fair for a teacher to want to teach them the basics of etiquette (even though I think it’s unfair that they have to, since it means parents aren’t doing their jobs). But is this teacher overstepping his bounds? Or just … odd? Or making a joke? I started out thinking it was hilarious, but now I’ve moved on into “sad.”
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Two big kids, off to school.
I can’t help thinking in nevers and lasts instead of firsts.
The good nevers and lasts, like “never paying for child care again” and “last time shuttling from this drop-off to that drop-off.”
And the bad ones, like “Never again being the mother of a baby or a toddler or a preschooler.”
Like so many other parents today, I’m sad because I feel the door closing on this time in our family’s life. I know the tears sliding down my cheeks today are not for the brave boy with the Superman backpack. They are for the boy who’ll never go to kindergarten.
But this is not the last day without him. It is only one of many.
And it is the first day in a new and exciting world for my kindergartner. When I pick him up today, I’ll compose myself and celebrate with him.
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It’s the time of the year where I resort to bullet points.
- Although I’m sure it was really apparent from the video, the piano concert went well. Somehow it kept me busy from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., though.
- Jo got braces, with blue and purple brackets. She hasn’t complained at all of any pain or discomfort (she’s tough, this one). I think the advantage of having them when you’re 8 is that it still feels special to be different. She’s not–yet–worried about trying to look like everyone else.
- Someone nominated me for “best parenting blog” at ParentsConnect, which was awfully sweet.
- We’re saying goodbye to a lot of lovely teachers: the librarian, music and kindergarten teachers at the elementary school, and the assistant director and another teacher at the child care center. The teacher who is retiring was Opie’s very first caregiver in the nursery when he was all of three months old and kind of a cranky little pill. I’m feeling rather maudlin about it all, especially the thought of my boy starting kindergarten in just a few months. The other day it occurred to me that when he loses his first tooth I might collapse into a heap.
- In happier news, I wrote about my sister-in-law’s totally sweet potty-training books over at the Full Mommy.
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Here it is! 60 seconds of my 5-year-old humming, making kissy noises, and filming the ceiling of the gym. Oh, and that whitish blob that occasionally appears in the bottom left corner of the screen is me. At :53 my part comes in (dee deedle dee dee deedle dee dee dee!). At 1:01 the video stops before the song does. Some videographer that kid turned out to be.
Yep, I abandon the blog for 10 days and this is what I have to show for it! Enjoy.
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My daughter’s school has a piano keyboarding program. Twice a week for 30 minutes, a heroic teacher instructs an entire class on basic piano skills. Each child plays a full-size electronic keyboard, with headphones so the teacher can listen in. Kids advance at varying speeds depending on their ability, so they are not all playing the same song or even using the same music book at the same time.
We also, space being at a premium, do not have a dedicated music room. So every Tuesday and Thursday morning before school, parent volunteers (I’m one of them) set up 25 stands, keyboards, stools, music stands, and headphones, plus a complicated network of extension cords. And every Tuesday and Thursday morning before lunch, we come back to put it all away. We are a small, but dedicated bunch. We’ve contemplated “Keyboard Roadie” t-shirts and theme songs. We pretty much danced in the streets when we got some new cabinets that allowed us to store the keyboards horizontally instead of vertically.
Of course, twice a year the kids put on a show for their classmates and parents. For the upcoming spring concert, the teacher asked a few of us setter-uppers and taker-downers to perform with our children. And so next Thursday night, I will be plinking and plunking along with the Group 1 kids–that’s one step up from kindergarten, y’all–as their accompanist for two songs (those beloved classics, “Pumpkin Party” and “The Tooth Fairy”).
I am very nervous.
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At least according to the (pre)school pictures. Seriously:
Overlook the graininess and the fact that I forgot it was picture day and he’s wearing something dumb and it looks like someone licked his forehead right before the photo was snapped.
The pose. Is that not the most ridiculous way to pose a FOUR-YEAR-OLD for a photo? Lounging, but not quite, against a fake rock? With his hands folded in the prissiest possible way?
And then, beyond the fake rock, there’s the ridiculous fake grassy meadow, and fake rustic picket fence.
People must buy these pictures, because why else would the photographers continue to use the cheeseball poses and the cheeseball backdrops?
I would like to know, who are these people, and what is wrong with them?
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Digging through four bags of garbage (chicken-nuggety, milk-cartony, banana-peely garbage) to find something. Something that you are then going to put in your child’s mouth.
So, yeah! The retainer! Went in the cafeteria trash can on the second day back from spring break. Awesome.
There we were after school, next to the Dumpster, picking through the lunch remains, wearing rubber gloves. And pretty much every adult that passed us gave a sympathetic, knowing look and said “Retainer? Been there. Sorry.”
I feel like I checked another one off the Mom Life List, right there.
- Emergency room: check, check.
- Peed on, pooped on, puked on: check, check, check.
- Said goodbye to kids at day care, at grandma’s, at kindergarten: check, check, check. (Not college, yet.)
- Pulled diapers, pacifiers, breast pads, matchbox cars, and Barbies out of my purse at inopportune moments: check.
- Subsisted on less sleep than a CIA detainee (for years on end): check.
What else?
And yes. We–I–found the retainer.
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