Tag Archives: schooling

Eighty-Two — The Weather

Mornings are dark lately. I have to turn on a light before I get out of bed. My morning routine is getting harder and harder, even as I go to bed earlier and don’t drink before bedtime and don’t snack, etc. It’s just Autumn.

I know a woman whose name is the same as a season. Let’s say Spring, though it is not Spring. And in the few years I’ve known her, I’ve heard no fewer than four different people — also adults — make her name into a comment on the weather. I think that might be the worst. Weather small talk is bad enough, name small talk is bad enough, mix the two and how is this woman smiling at all, ever? I guess she’s aptly named. Like if I was named Storm Cloud.

This morning it rained and rained and rained but by noon it was sunny. My kids came out of school each wearing one of the other’s rain boots. Neither noticed until I pointed it out. One size 1 and one size 12. This morning they were mad and grumpy — maybe because their boots didn’t fit? — but by three o’clock they were happy.

There was soccer practice for Eli in the park at 5:30. Arlo ran around the outer perimeter of the park, lapping all the other soccer practices, his red hoody bobbing in and out of view. At one point, a rainbow appeared in the sky. All the five year old boys stopped playing soccer to stare at it. Arlo stopped next to me, panting. “I’m going to see if I can find the end,” he said, and took off running again.

“Imagine thousands of years ago,” said the soccer dad next to me on the bench. “What must people have thought when they saw rainbows appear in the sky.”

What would you think if you had nothing to explain a bright band of colours lighting up the sky. I would make up a story about seven gods who tired of the sky being only blue or only black and starry, who were bored bouncing on trampoline clouds all day, so they went to the other side of the earth and fetched giant buckets of paint and giant paintbrushes and they each made a beautiful streak of colour across the sky.

Art is important.

Eli has brought home reams of paper from school; almost all are drawings of square-bodied Minecraft characters holding sticks and saws and pickaxes. (One was a sheet of paper with only the word C A N D E printed neatly on it.) Dark crayon swirls over the heads of these poor people as they try to make their worlds out of nothing at all. I am hopeful his kindergarten teacher has heard of Minecraft (and understands that he does not play it, merely watches other people play it)(usually on youtube)(this counts as entertainment) otherwise I am afraid I will get a call to meet with the guidance counsellor about my son’s Violent Art.

How do I end this post? I have to cover the barbecue because it will probably rain again tonight and a wet barbecue invites mildew and terrible flavours.

The end.

Eighty-One — One Week

This week was only four days long because Monday was a professional day. At first I was upset about this because MY TIME MY TIME but by last night I realized that if this week had had five school days in it, we would all be biting each other right now. Yes. You and me and the kids and that guy over there. Everyone. Biting. Because we are all so tired.

This post was going to have pictures, but then when I looked at the pictures from the week there weren’t any, so you’ll just have to imagine all the pictures in your head. Web 1.0.

Last night we went to the elementary school to meet Arlo’s teacher and see his classroom. There was a welcome back barbecue before meet the teacher but we declined because the barbecue is disgusting and now that we’re at grade two, I refuse to eat more gross burgers. NEVER AGAIN. I made the mistake of being honest with Arlo when he asked why we weren’t going to the barbecue and then I heard him telling someone else that, “[my] mom doesn’t like the food very much” so I should probably watch my mouth? Although I have asked several people in the past week if they planned to go to the barbecue and they all made the ick face and said no, so I think the gross burger is a widely acknowledged thing, which makes me wonder why they don’t switch to a better burger? And before you can say it, no I will not be sitting on the PAC and suggesting the better burger. Thanks.

Anyway, after meeting the teacher there was playground playing and then we the Adults were tired and wanted to come home and the children wept bitterly because they NEVER GET TO PLAY THERE and I pointed out that they do, actually, every day, sometimes more than once, and Eli said BUT NOT IN THE EVENING and he had a point but still, we dragged them home, tired and tireder, from all the playing and learning of three days of school.

This morning, Eli was sad before 8:30 am because his lip was chapped. And then he said his feet hurt. And then Arlo said his ankle hurt. And then they just stood in the kitchen staring at me, yawning.

“Put your shoes on, please,” I said.

“How much..how..how much..is a PSP [Playstation Portable game playing thingee, which he is determined to buy himself]?” asked Arlo, not putting his shoes on.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Put your shoes on, please.”

“Can you look it up on the Internet?”

“Sure, while you’re at school I’ll do that. But before you go to school you have to put your shoes on.”

Arlo took a deep breath and sighed the kind of sigh people sigh when they are hoping you will notice they are sighing.

I ignored him.

He sighed again.

I became amused and laughed a little, the kind of laugh where you just exhale really hard and then it’s a laugh and it surprises you so you keep laughing.

“Why are you laughing?”

(And you can’t stop. Because you’re tired.)

“WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?”

“I..because…I’m imagining you guys…as kittens,” I said. This is not as random as it seems; we had been talking about cats a few minutes earlier.

Eli laughed too. Because: kittens! Haaa ha ha.

Arlo kept sighing.

“Put your shoes on, please,” I said.

So he did.

The walk to school was slow and complainish, but when I met them after, they were roaringly happy. One more successful week, filed away. OK, there was one good picture.

Friday the 13th walk to school.

Friday the 13th walk to school.

Seventy-Nine — Sweet Relief

Today was a gift.

We all woke up happy and mostly healthy. It was sunny, but not blisteringly hot, and there was a bit of that edgy September morning chill. I made Arlo oatmeal and Eli drank a glass of milk and I had coffee and wrote in my journal out on the porch. I had remembered to move the chair cushion last night so it wouldn’t get wet from the sprinkler that goes off every morning at four o’clock. It’s taken me all summer to remember to do that.

“Can you play Monopoly?” Eli asked me while I was packing lunches.
“I’m packing your lunch,” I replied.
“Am I going to SCHOOL TODAY?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“ALL DAY! FINALLY!” he said.

Indeed.

Also that’s as many words as he’s uttered at one time since last Sunday.

At 8:45 we got backpacks on and walked to school. My tank top was a bit optimistic, a bit more yesterday’s weather but it was a refreshing walk. We were caught up to by the neighbour kid and his mom and we walked companionably to school, the mom and I talking about resort vacations and the kids talking about whatever they talk about. Minecraft, poop, Lego.

The bell rang and Arlo went off to his classroom. I walked Eli to the kindergarten door and gave him a hug. “Bye,” he said. Parents were hanging around the door, peeking in the window, but I resisted the urge and walked away. Back down the hill, alone, carrying nothing but my keys.

It was 9:05 and I had five blessed solitary hours stretched ahead of me like an empty road. This was it, the moment I’d been waiting for for five years. Five years of spending all day every day with two small children and here we are, down to none. Not even a cat to bug me. (sniff)

I went for a run. I came home. I showered and stretched and folded some clothes and put them away. I made myself a smoothie out of a banana, some blueberries, some pineapple coconut water and the remains of my morning coffee. It tasted vaguely like a fruit mocha and was not as horrible as it might sound. I read things on the Internet. I tweeted. I went to Safeway and the liquor store and the vegetable market. I had lunch and read some more things on the Internet. I washed dishes and free-wrote for ten minutes and ate black licorice and did a load of laundry.

I walked in a most leisurely fashion back to the school and at 2:00 the door opened and Eli came out. He pulled his spare underwear out of his backpack, put it on his head and ran around the kindergarten playground with a few other kids. Then we hung out in the big playground for a while, because the big kids didn’t get out of school until 3:00. He found a cool caterpillar and played with two boys from his class.

After the bell, and Arlo joined us, we stayed at the school and played until nearly five o’clock. The weather returned from warm to September chill and I had trouble finding sunny spots to stand in. Two parent friends and I stood around and chatted while the kids played the kind of game you store in your head as a rebuttal for when people say kids don’t know how to play any more. Something about leaves as money and other leaves as taxes. There was robbery and tax evasion and restitution paid.

Reluctantly, we came home, had ice cream, then dinner, then more ice cream and now I’m having beer, and I want to say Thank You Friday, for being the day I spent this whole week wishing I could have.

Seventy-Seven — A Short List

In an attempt to kick-start some positive thinking, I challenged myself to come up with Ten Great Things about Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. Hope to see my list on Buzzfeed soon!

1. It’s not really a disease. It’s a non-life-threatening illness.
2. There’s no bodily fluid to clean up.
3. It takes a few days to resolve, but when it’s gone it’s gone; no lingering cough, asthma, or sinusitis.
4. Kids really appreciate their food after not being able to eat for five days.
5. Adults don’t usually get it, or not nearly as bad as the kids do.
6. If your kid gets it during a week when he was supposed to go to two birthday parties, you save money because he can’t go to the birthday parties.
7. You also save money on groceries.
8. You feel absolutely no guilt about letting your child sit and watch tv or play video games because a) he hasn’t eaten anything but pain medicine in five days and is weak b) he had to miss school and two birthday parties and c) tongue blisters trump everything.
9. If your child misses school in the first two weeks of September, he might avoid any number of other illnesses making their way around the school, like the kind with the bodily fluid clean-up.

**The time between thinking up numbers 9 and 10 was spent doing yoga, showering, having a snack and cleaning the kitchen. Approximately one hour.**

10. In our particular case, the sublime ridiculousness of calling your child in sick for his first two hours of formal schooling, ever, and thinking about what a great story it will be, The Boy Who Started Kindergarten in October Because His Big Brother Kept Bringing Home Gross Viruses. (working title)

11. Bonus: Lots of sympathy from other parents, especially the one whose child infected yours. But you can’t feel too smug since her child is one of FOUR in the family and all four had it at the same time and wouldn’t that be like all the circles of hell swirled up into one giant, horrible Hell Smoothie?

12. Bonus two: At least I only have two children.

Three cheers for immunity! Hip hip (hooray!) Hip hip (hooray!) Hip hip (hooray!)

Seventy-Two — Please Don’t Make This Blog Into a Film

This summer has had a couple of themes. Swimming was one theme. You might have noticed it? Let us not talk about swimming again until next year. Amen.

Another theme has been Diary of a Wimpy Kid. These books, which are written in diary style and comic font and have lots of pictures, have completely consumed my kids for months. Arlo was bringing them home from the school library last year, but not really reading them, but this summer he started really reading them. Like, fast. Like, we were at the public library every few days picking up another one in the series. Then he started over again with the first one.

Of course if one child has [anything] the other child has to have one too, which is why we’ve had two library copies of every Wimpy Kid book in the series kicking around the house all summer long. Ask me about my fines!

We still read to the kids, of course, even though they can read to themselves just fine, so bedtime or chilling out time means I get to hear Diary read out loud, or read it myself. It’s not my favourite book, but it makes Saint Aardvark laugh for real sometimes so he gets to read it, if at all possible.*

And then the kids re-discovered that there are three Wimpy Kid movies on Netflix so one of those movies has been in constant play during screen time for a week now and I’m getting to that saturation point I remember so fondly from their toddler days, when I would find myself analyzing the motivation of the blue Wiggle or the psychological makeup of Caillou.

To that end, the things I have observed this summer about the Wimpy Kid and the reason I will not be sad when we move on to a new obsession:

1. Greg Heffley (the Wimpy Kid whose diary we are reading) is a self-centred jerk and it’s amazing he has even one friend.
2. Everyone is EITHER mean OR gets made fun of.
3. Older brother (Roderick) is mean AND rude AND stupid (but I do love him in the films, he is adorable)
4. Adults are ALWAYS idiots.
5. Girls are EITHER horrible or unattainable goddesses.

Now, yes, I know, it’s not written for me any more than Pokemon and Beyblades were written for me. Broad brushes painting tired stereotypes are not the worst thing to find splashing around on your face, right? The series begins with Greg starting middle school — grade six — so I get that it’s reflecting a reality, that of the self-absorbed, insecure, cut-throat pre-teens and teens that populate such places. But is it really that bad? Or are we making it worse by creating this fictional reality for kids to find their reflections in?

You see what I mean about the analysis. Clearly it is time for summer vacation to end and for the real world of school to start up again. After repeated viewings of Diary I have to remind myself that my kids are only going into grade two and kindergarten, not middle school, and that they are not, overall, big jerks. And… breathe.

* He is, however, increasingly irritated by Eli making him start reading at the same place every night. Eli seems to love the first forty pages of the first book and SA just can’t seem to get past it. Poor guy. I’d offer to help, but I’m not going to.**

** THAT right there is Wimpy Kid behavior. Oh god. I’m going down with the ship.

Seventy — On Teaching

As the second week of the second set of swimming lessons draws to a close, I’ve been paying attention to the way my kids learn with different teachers.

Arlo’s last session was taught by a young man. He was a great teacher; enthusiastic with high-fives, in control of his class, able to see one person’s progress even as he was facing a different direction helping another kid float. When Arlo got the same teacher for his next session, we were all happy. The next day we were sad because that teacher was very sick and couldn’t return to teaching. Arlo’s class got a female teacher. She is very nice and competent (and perky!) as well but a little out of her league with a class of five, four of whom are boys, one of whom likes to cannonball and another of whom swims sideways.

Seriously, this kid leaves the wall with the group every time and ends up at 90 degrees from where he started. Woe betide anyone who swims in a straight line near him because they are getting run. the hell. over.

Arlo’s progress has been pretty good, but not fantastic in this second session. That’s OK. He’s still swimming and it’s a great twenty-five minutes.

Also can I just say: it has rained ONCE in four weeks of outdoor swimming lessons, which is like some kind of west coast miracle.

Eli’s last session was taught by the perky young woman who is now Arlo’s teacher. He did not submerge and therefore he did not pass. This session, Eli’s teacher is a different young woman. (She has fluorescent orange fingernails. You can see them from twenty feet away.) Eli spent all last week not submerging and playing with a rubber duck. This week, a new teacher joined the old teacher (so now there is an amazing 1:1 ratio of student to teacher) and the new teacher is a guy. Eli loves this guy. I kind of do, too. Today, three days after being taught by this guy, Eli submerged. Repeatedly.

So “good” teachers are the right teachers for a kid at any given moment in that kid’s development and that’s both impossible to predict, I think, and should serve to take the pressure off teachers to be amazing, life-altering, etc. Swim or school or music teachers. Any kind. You teach to the best of your ability and kids learn to the best of their abilities and if you’re lucky you make a love connection and if not it’s just a meh sort of time and if you’re really incompatible, well, don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.

I’m holding tight to this feeling as we approach another elementary school year. I hear a lot from other worried parents about this teacher that teacher which teacher. I think I know which teacher would be right for Eli. But in three weeks he’ll be a different kid again and I might be totally wrong. Time to let Big School swoop him up, tuck him in its fragrant armpit and help him decide what and who he wants to become.

Relinquishing control to other teachers,* some of the time. That’s what it’s all about.

*unless they’re really awful.

Twenty-Six — Keeping Track

Once upon a time, I gave each of my children a container of fish crackers and each was happy. I blogged about this in passing and a commenter said, “JUST YOU WAIT someday they will count the crackers to make sure they each have the same amount.” In general, harbingers of doom don’t do it for me, as I am not one to acknowledge someone’s rightness until well past the date the rightness occurred, so you telling me “JUST YOU WAIT” about anything basically makes me want to ignore you. Since becoming a parent, however, I have noticed that it’s sensible to file the warnings away. Odds are, someday I will need them, like the safety pins I keep in my wallet.

Lo, behold, I am remembering the warning now.

The past few weeks have been exciting because we had Grandma and Grandad staying with us. This was good on many levels; extra hands around the house so I could have a shower and grocery shop and not have to take a surly five year old with me, extra feet to walk the kid to school and back again. People to talk to and drink coffee with and drink beer with. People I like in my house! So good, on so many levels.

For Eli, it was good on an extra level: Treats. We went out for lunch. We went out for ice cream. We went to Costco and got fries after shopping. Two extra levels, I should say; the level where you get extra treats and then THEN! the level where you tell your older brother, who is at school all day, all about the extra treats you got.

This has awakened quite a rivalry between the children. Not something I think wouldn’t/doesn’t otherwise exist, but something that was dormant, like mould. Slugs? Shingles? Shingles. Now, even though Grandma and Grandad have gone home, Arlo still greets his brother after school with WHAT DID YOU DO TODAY? WHAT DID YOU GET? WHAT DID YOU GET ME?

Today was Fun Day (formerly known as Sports Day? No longer.) at Arlo’s school. He got to go to twelve different stations in the school, make a bead bracelet, eat a Freezie, hang out with his friends, and then had hot lunch which was pizza, lemonade and ice cream for dessert.

Today was Eli’s last day of preschool. I was volunteering at Arlo’s school so I couldn’t be at preschool for the final moments, when the door opens and the children sing “Goodbye my friends goodbye” with their mothers and fathers present and everyone sniffles. I couldn’t be there because I was helping make bead bracelets, a task which gets harder the closer you get to the hot lunch because no one can focus to save their goddamn life. ANYWAY I decided that for a treat I would take Eli to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.

So: Arlo got a Freezie, pizza, lemonade, ice cream, a morning spent running around with his friends and an afternoon watching Ice Age. Eli got cheese pizza at school and a Happy Meal after.

As an aside, what did I get during this same time period? I got to stand for two hours without so much as a bathroom break or drink of water, helping small children thread beads onto yarn that frayed and refused to be threaded upon, and do you see me complaining?

Oh, you do? OK.

Anyway, I would call it even between the kids, but that didn’t stop Arlo from “It’s not fair”ing all over the place after school.

To help even the score, he went to his friend’s house after school and this friend has a rather enormous supply of junk food, so when we came to pick him up he was surrounded by empty cookie bags, chocolate smeared all over his face.

Eli says no fair because he got no cookies. Arlo says no fair, because he still has no toy and Eli got a toy with the Happy Meal.

It is a good thing they’re cute.

Tooth finally dropped out this morning.

Tooth finally dropped out this morning.