Summer update

We're wrapping up the first week of summer, with mixed reviews so far. The kids have been relating to each other in three ways (in more or less equal amounts):

1) fighting like demented ferrets

2) playing together (mostly with small animal/people/houses-type toys) in a peaceful, persistent way

3) happily and manically screeching, laughing, running around, and yelling

States 1 and 3 make me insane, which means I'm insane 2/3rds of the day. I'm getting better about just ignoring both of them, but when I'm tired or in a hurry, I'm pretty incapable of handling it with grace. Something to work on, I guess.

Duchess is participating in the very low-key parks and rec swim team, which means an hour swimming every weekday. She's still warming up to it, but I think she'll soon make some friends and feel more confident. Skipper, after watching the swim team practice for three days, is getting excited for her swim lessons in a few weeks, and has decided that she WILL put her face in the water.

Duchess left school in tears, because she found out on the last day that the Nerd King is, after all, headed off to The School for Smart Kids. Stupid smart kids. Also, in case you're interested, this year's round of budget cuts hit only the disadvantaged kids at Duchess's school. The school will maintain a .5 FTE PE teacher and .5 FTE librarian, and add a .5 FTE music teacher, but will lose a total of 1.0 FTE in reading and ESL assistance. 

What else? There's a lot of stuff going on around here. In the first four days of summer vacation, we had several firsts - Duchess was stung by a bee,* the girls met one of their cousins (and loved him so much they have requested that he become their brother), and the girls drank their first lime rickey. Skipper now substantially overestimates her ability to drive both her bike and her scooter, and keeps her knees scraped up and bruised at all times. We found a candy store that sells a wide variety of gummy candies, which is thrilling. Duchess has read a tall pile of books already. We have THREE exciting trips coming up in the next few weeks, and in general this summer already feels packed with excitement. If I can just come to better terms with states 1 and 2, I think it's shaping up to be an excellent summer.

*She handled this as might be expected, with much sobbing and wailing and general freaking out. Skipper, of course, immediately pitched a fit because I was paying too much attention to Duchess, threw her scooter on the ground, and refused to move. As we were half a mile from home, at the tail end of a long errand-running trip that had involved quite a bit of shitty behavior, this was a pretty maddening episode. Luckily, Duchess pulled herself together admirably (to be fair, this also might have been expected - Duchess is a ridiculous over-reactor, but she usually rises to the occasion when necessary), and Skipper recognized that she was not acting in her own best interest, so after about fifteen minutes of deep unpleasantness, we finally managed to start limping home.

It's the first day of Summer Reading!

Skipper and I are at the library, looking for books in the non-fiction section, in companionable silence. She's looking for books on dinosaur fossils, and I'm looking for anything that might be fodder for Duchess's hungry brain.

Skipper: I wish I was a bee.
Me: Why do you wish you were a bee?
Skipper: So I could sting people.
Me: Who are you going to sting?
Skipper: I don't know. Just somebody.

It's not about me.

Yesterday Skipper and I met up with another kid who's going to be attending the preschool program in the fall at the local school. The kid and her parents seemed like lovely people, but I found the meet-up very stressful. I mean, it's always a little stressful meeting new people, particularly in an artificial let's-build-a-relationship-so-we-can-maybe-share-childcare-and-provide-emergency-backup-for-eachother way, but this was particularly exhausting and demoralizing for me because of Skipper's behavior. She refused to interact with the other kid, who kept hopefully inviting her to play, and wouldn't talk or look anybody in the eye. She watched the other kid very carefully, glowering through the curtain of her hair, but that was all she offered.

This is totally normal for Skipper, and I'm confident that she will eventually warm up to this kid (who seems like exactly Skipper's cup of tea, actually). Skipper's behavior is not entirely out of the realm of normal for preschoolers I have met, but she's definitely toward the end of the shyness continuum, and I haven't really figured out a way to handle it. I don't mean helping her handle it - I have no idea how to do that, since nothing I have done so far has made her less shy, and I suspect it's pretty baked in - I just mean handling it myself. I feel like I should apologize for her antisocial behavior, or explain that she's always this way (not a sociopath, I swear!), but I really don't want to be APOLOGIZING for my child's personality, or making public generalizations about who she is. (In front of her, I mean. Obviously, I make public generalizations about her behind her back all the time!) I swing back and forth between these two opposing feelings, and end up feeling like I failed both to help this other family understand the context for her unwelcoming behavior AND to make her feel that it's okay to be shy and that there's nothing wrong with her.

I want to let my kids be themselves, but I also want other people to see them positively, or at least as the complicated, worth-getting-to-know people that they are. I think this tension will get more challenging for me over the next couple of years, as Duchess bounds toward adolescence and Skipper stays shy. I cannot keep up with the kind of strength of character that parenting seems to require, though I swear I'm building it as fast as I can.

Camping

Skipper decided last night that she wanted to sleep in the play tent in the back yard. Duchess, who had to get up early for a swim meet, was not allowed to camp, but Skipper decided she would camp by herself. This is her at 7:30 last night.















And this is her at 9 last night, when Duchess announced she was not able to sleep without Skipper in her room, and Cook and I (who had not expected that Skipper would actually fall asleep) determined that because she can't operate the back door, it was probably best to bring Skipper in.

More Science Fair photos

Electromagnetism

Duchess has been working on her science fair project. Tantrums have been thrown, and the end product isn't exactly awesome, but Duchess has learned quite a bit about how hard it can be to get your methodology working smoothly, and about the puzzlement of unexpected results. Plus, she's put quite a bit of time into drawing cartoons about the dangers of electricity, because science.

Mudshark

Some of my favorite parenting moments happen when my kids accomplish something in a big, rapid leap, catapulted by a lucky confluence of circumstances There are times (fewer of them after the first two years or so of each kid's life) when Cook and I are able to provide the right object/idea/strategy/whatever at the right time, when that the kid is really ready for it, physically and emotionally. Usually, of course, we don't get the timing quite right, or we offer the wrong object/idea/strategy/whatever, and that's okay; it's just life. We do miss some of the optional windows entirely, but the stuff that really needs to happen usually happens eventually. When it all falls into place at the right time, though, it's great fun for everyone.

This weekend, we had one of those moments. Duchess got a new bike,* and we subsequently happened to drop by the home of the Blond Family, who keep an armada of bikes. Skipper mentioned her jealousy over Duchess's upgrade to Papa Blond. She was promptly given a bike (the Mudshark!) that L and R Blond have outgrown (though they were still using it to do wheelies and such, because that's the sort of thing the Blonds do on an idle afternoon), and she insisted on taking it to the nearby playground that very afternoon so she could learn to ride. 

Everything came together just right. Within ten minutes, she was pedaling around the playground. Cook and I were a little taken aback, since it took a LOT more pain and time to get Duchess riding a pedal bike by herself. Duchess started learning to ride a bike when she was older and quite a bit taller, on a bigger bike. Skipper wants to learn, she has seen other kids and adults riding a lot (and spent a lot of time in a trailer watching me and Cook pedal), she's nailed down the balance bike thing, and her center of gravity on this tiny bike is about 14 inches off the ground.

Skipper could not be prouder. She's not ready to go pro, having not yet mastered the management of pedals,** but she's looking pretty good. So here are your videos of one of the great achievements of Skipper's life so far, featuring wedgie-picking,** weird distracted narration by me, and nauseating camera movement.

* An old but decent bike in reasonably good shape, miraculously procured off craigslist for $25 in one of those great deals that we almost never manage to land. We had a pretty excellent weekend.

** Her feet slip off the pedals, and she keeps accidentally braking (while never remembering to brake when she actually needs to).

*** I asked Skipper if she really wanted to ride a bike while wearing a dress and rainboots; she felt it was an ideal outfit.

I ate this book

For a while, I volunteered doing "story times" for kids in a Head Start program in Oakland. In order to qualify for what turned out to be a terrific volunteer gig, I had to attend a training led by a commensurately terrific children's librarian. We had to introduce ourselves and say something about ourselves, and when my turn came, I was so excited that I got up and said "I EAT books!" and then had to inarticulately explain that I am not a crazy person, and I meant that I LOVE reading and I tend to get absorbed by the world I'm reading.  I'm a Method reader! I mean, I don't dress up or anything, but I'm definitely right there with the characters.

I just finished reading a book that I totally ate. Part of what sucked me in* is that it resonates strongly with my personal sense that bad things are just a breath away all the time. The protagonist of this book keeps dying and then living her life again, avoiding by luck or by her own efforts whatever it was that killed her last time around. The first part of the book is all about children dying unexpectedly (and escaping death during the next go-round and then dying some other way). You can see how it snagged my attention, given that I think of my kids (and life in general, actually) as simultaneously tediously indestructible and terrifyingly vulnerable. 

Anyway, it's a good read. You should take it on your next plane trip. Get your own copy, though, because I ate mine.

*I read this thing all day. I propped it up next to the sink and the cutting board and the frying pan, and I ignored the actual human beings in my life all day. When Skipper and I left the house (late) to pick up Dutch from school, I tried and failed to remember the experience of dropping her off that morning; apparently I had been thinking about the book more than what I was doing. Thank goodness I don't have a job.

The future

Eating lunch at the table with Skipper today.

Skipper: Mom, do you remember Pitstock?
Me: No. Who is Pitstock?
Skipper: Pitstock, the unfortunately cool guy I'm going to marry.
Me: ... Pitstock ...the unfortunately cool guy ... you're going to marry?
Skipper: Yes.
Me: ?
Skipper: When I come and visit you when I'm a grownup, Pitstock will come with me.
Me: ?

Pause

Skipper: Well, I would like to marry somebody named Pitstock.

Ground Control

One of the things I've been enjoying about my involuntary unemployment is the opportunity to get to know Skipper a little better. Only a little, because she's still a mystery. While both my kids are a mystery to me, Skipper has always been a bit more opaque. I can't say I'm really getting a grip on who she is, but I'm getting something. Today I had the pleasure of seeing her face when she heard somebody on television say the word "gutsy" * - she totally cracked up. She thought that was the funniest word she had EVER heard. Gutsy! Hah!

We watched NASA TV on and off on Monday, monitoring Chris Hadfield's trip home from the International Space Station. NASA TV is fairly (no, extremely) boring, but Skipper hung in there for a surprisingly long time. It turns out that I shouldn't have been suprised - apparently she had thought that Chris Hadfield was making all those videos just for us, so of course she's invested in his adventures. I was slightly concerned that the Soyuz would crash and then she'd have to go to therapy for years, but everything turned out well. We even got to watch him get extracted from the capsule in a weird parody of birth, and be propped up, pale and wobbly-looking, in a camping chair. Welcome home, Chris! We'll be expecting your visit soon!

And this is a bonus photo of Duchess and O Blond reading a graphic novel on the porch. I think they're both wiping their noses with their hands, which makes it a rather less charming moment.

* Yeah, my four-year-old was watching "The Voice" with me. So? Shouldn't preschoolers get to hear the wisdom of Shakira?

Us Updates

1) Skipper got a green flag from a speech therapist, who concluded that there are no issues with her speech that won't be cleared up by a few more years of growing and talking, and surmised that the issues with her comprehensibility mostly stem from the speed (rapid) and volume (low) of her speech.

2) My housekeeping is lagging behind. There's so much to do! And it's so boring! And I have blog posts to write! However, things are noticeably (to me) cleaner around here, though I'm not going to win any prizes, or even impress anybody unfamiliar with my previous practices.

3) I'm doing a lot of volunteering, and it's totally compromising my ability to get housekeeping done. Dang.

4) Skipper is getting excited about her Japanese schooling adventure. Because she loathes transitions, we're trying to get her as comfortable as possible with this one. We walk past the school at every opportunity to watch the kids at recess* and talk about what's going on in there. We've been giving carte blanche to visit the school after the schoolday is over and before the secretaries go home, and we'll do that a few more times before summer starts. Skipper has already started contributing part of her allowance to her "Summer-After-5th-Grade-Trip-to-Japan" jar.**

5) Tomatoes are planted! It's been hot here, and summer feels moments away.

6) I've planned out the entire summer. Duchess will be doing swim team and a couple of cool camp-y things, and Skipper will be doing a few activities, too. She wanted to sign up for a lot more, but I argued that her history of non-participation suggests it would be best to start slow. I'll let you know how that goes.

7) Duchess has signed up to do a science fair project testing how changing different variables affects the strength of a homemade electromagnet. I'll let you know how that goes.

8) Duchess is testing this weekend for the next level of her martial arts program, and has been invited (along with a couple of her classmates) to join a class for 10-12-year-olds, taught by the woman who runs the school. She's excited to be testing, and very proud to have been recognized as a serious student. Whatever else the faults of this particular martial arts studio, they are really good at making students feel like part of a loving, supportive community, and when Duchess walks in their door, she feels like it's her place.***

9) Antarctic Uncle, aka The Best Houseguest Ever, has left for another year.

10) We did successfully refinance (did I ever tell you that?), consolidating two loans and saving ourselves some money. Hurrah! The house also appraised 20% higher than we paid for it, which is nice.****

That's the news, mostly.***** All is well.

*If anybody was going to report a slack-jawed preschooler and a frumpy lady wearing socks with sandals to the police, I'd be worried that they'd call us in as stalkers.
** Duchess is already very jealous that Skipper gets to do an immersion program (and I share her regret, as Duchess has a knack for language, and would kick ass at learning in two languages), and almost blew off the top of her skull when she heard that Skipper would have the opportunity to actually go to Japan. We promised her that we'd save an equal amount for her to take a trip of some kind, too. Thank goodness we only have two children.
*** Another small sign of how parenting goes to weird places. I never thought I'd have a kid doing martial arts, given that I never liked them myself. I see why she loves it - the community feeling, the rules, the clear protocol for improvement, the uniform - it's all stuff Duchess loves dearly - but I didn't see it coming.
**** Though I'm left to imagine how much higher it COULD have appraised if I'd ever washed the windows.
***** Cook has all sorts of work and extracurricular excitement going on; I'm leaving him out not because he's boring, but because he's private.