Love & a Steady Hand

He finally did it!

If you are not certain what it is that he did -- or who he is in the first place, you should probably go back and read all the archived entries, because you are clearly new to this blog and need to catch up.

"He" is Matthew -- beautiful, stubborn, reluctant, lovely. "It" is pooped in the potty. And he asked to go. Actually said, "Mommy, I need to poop in the potty!"

Today, before I knew this was poop in the potty day, I went to the Y to un-sign him for 3 year old preschool. But while I was there, looking at the art cart (which promises unlimited access to glue and scissors and a ridiculously large range of other art supplies that drive me NUTS at home) and the play house and the fishtank and the books and games and puzzles, I realized how much he will simply adore this school. So instead of un-signing him and making his spot available for some kid who is already completely potty trained, I paid for his first week and promised to bring back the paperwork on Thursday.

So when I came back to pick him up and discovered that he had somehow known that this would be a good day to demonstrate his readiness, it just felt very very right and I was glad that I had made the decision I did.

Now we have to get through the next few weeks without accidents. He is still not very good at getting all the pee out in one attempt. I need some big kid to show him how it takes a couple of tries... Anybody with a local big kid who wants to volunteer him?

(I know that sounds really weird, but I think that's the solution. He just doesn't realize it's normal to wait a few minutes between pees when you have a peeing appendage, so if he saw a big kid doing it right, maybe he would understand that he's not really done when he finishes the first squirt... I don't understand how they manage those things. I really don't get it at all.)

Today was better

Despite the fact that I had to wake the kids up -- and you have to understand that this is a life-time first, usually they are waking ME up -- and we were running late to school, today was overall a better day.

Matthew is running a little fever, so he was slightly sluggish to start with, but that just meant he wasn't quite as upset as usual. We met Diana & Avery and had breakfast -- so strange to be together without our eldest kids. To have them both in full-day school is just weird! I mean I'm happy they are doing well, but it just feels like some other life...

Mara skipped across the playground to go stand in line with her class and on the way to school we had talked about how I was feeling kinda left out, so could she try really hard to remember one thing to tell us when she got home. She did a great job and told lots about her day at dinner.

She is now reading Shake Them Halloween Bones to her brother. You'd have to know the book to really understand how funny this is, but she is reading it with all the inflections and getting the rhythms right and everything. It's very cute. And her brother is absolutely ADORING the experience!

Tim has gone to Stanbery's open house, I finished Mara's sweater over the weekend and we are about to have a "play bath" -- that's the kind where you get the washing over first and then play as long as you want (well, almost as long as you want, since they never want to get out of the tub).

I'm feeling better overall! Thanks for the support. I've needed it badly!

The first weekend

Oi! I did not expect the complete meltdown of the big girl as soon as I saw her on Friday afternoon! I should have expected it, but I didn't.

Look, I cannot be supermama every minute of every day!

So I had forgotten how hard it must be for her to be at school all day, trying to be grown-up and do everything right and act like her peers -- all of whom are probably doing the same thing and trying to be great big first graders. I had not taken into account that there would need to be a safety valve someplace to let off the steam of accumulated emotions and stifled temper tantrums and the sheer volume of exhaustion that the long long school days must bring on.

Just because I forgot, didn't mean it wasn't gonna happen. And so we have discovered over the past two days that Mara's safety valve is the weekend.

It's not a complicated situation really. At home, safe with her family who will love her no matter what, she feels comfortable enough to act like a total jerk. She can yell at her brother that she wants alone time and he should buzz off because she is reading "BY MYSELF!!!!" She can throw a hysterical fit because she wasn't in the mood for any of the five things we offered for dinner. She can tantrum because I forgot and put the toothpaste on for her, instead of letting her do it alone. She can scream to be alone, but then beg for "Mommy and Mara time" (but with NO MATTHEW, JUST US!). Mostly she just bursts into tears for no particular reason at all.

And she absolutely refuses to talk about school. She loves it. She just doesn't want to share it right now. I think that telling all the minutiae of her day feels like rubbing off the sparkles. If she tells about how lunchtime works, it's not just hers anymore. And while I can respect that, I feel so incredibly left out of her world right now. I really didn't expect to feel this shut out for at least another five or six years.... Sigh.

I am full of respect for her ability to cope like this. If she is freaking out this much at home, it probably means she isn't freaking out at school, and that's good. And it shows, oh so graphically, that she really does trust our love for her. She doesn't have to be tentative in her letting go -- she can just blow out all over the place and know that we will still hug her and say it's gonna be okay. Now, the tantrums are going to have to calm down a little. And she is going to have to at least try to give some time to her devoted brother, but we always knew this was going to be an issue.

Even if I had forgotten for a little while.

First & Second Days

Here is my first grader and her teacher:

She had a fantastic first two days of school. Yesterday we asked, "Was anything too hard?" "Nope." "What about too easy? Was anything too easy?" "Nope. It was all just perfect."

Then later, she was sharing the cupcake that she hadn't had time to eat at lunch and she said to her brother (as he munched cupcake with chocolate all over his face), "You know being in first grade is hard work!" He just nodded, very seriously.

In fact, Matthew's reaction has been the hardest part of this whole process. He sobbed hysterically when we left her yesterday. The depth of his grief was unparalleled in his experience thusfar and it was very difficult to console him. We went to Bob Evans for brunch with Grammy and then he played at her house for an hour -- didn't want to come home AT ALL!

Today was better. A few tears, and lots of "I miss Mara. I really do miss her!" and lots of needing to be held, but he was better when his buddies came over to play in the morning. That was surreal in and of itself. Having all the boys here (with Rosemary as the only girl since Amelia was at Montessori today) and no big girls just felt so weird! And the development of the boys just in the past few months is enormous! They played so well -- four little boys jammed in the sandbox together and there wasn't even any fighting. We had to tell them several times not to pour sand on each other's heads, but even that was incredibly low drama.

I can't believe I have to do this whole routine every weekday until June. It is really against my basic nature to be up this early, let alone showered, dressed and breakfasted!

The Ultimate Update

We went today for the testing. Mara did very well. Was polite and helpful as usual and the final word just came this afternoon.

She will start first grade on Wednesday (the first day of school) in the classroom we wanted her to be in (I decided it was probably not the best idea to post it here in case of stalkers etc.).

We are VERY excited!

Updating the Update

I am now the squeaky wheel that is getting some grease. Mara has an appointment on Monday morning at 10 for the first in the series of tests that will determine where she ends up school-wise.

This first one is an IQ test, which I find very frustrating. We are interested in having her go ahead to first grade because she has mastered the academic benchmarks for Kindergarten completion as posted by the state of Ohio's Department of Education website. We are not interested in advancing her because we think she is a genius. (Okay, we do think she's a genius, but that's not why she needs to be in first grade...) So I am a little bit irritated that we are not starting with benchmark tests.

After all, I'm sure there are plenty of kids in all three of those first grade classes who are practially morons, but THEY get to be in first grade. One of the reasons, just one of many but a significant one, why we didn't try to send her to kindergarten last year was the need for her to score some near-genius level on the IQ test in order to qualify, and I am going to be extremely pissed off if that gets repeated in this process. If they say the IQ score is insufficient, I am going to really fight to make sure we are able to test on benchmarks instead.

Tim is ready to go to the superintendent, and if necessary at the end to pull her out (Mara, not the superintendent) and homeschool her, if they insist that she is not ready for first grade. I could get you a long list of kindergarten and elementary teachers who would gladly write a letter attesting to Mara's preparedness and I just hope it won't come down to all that.

So keep your fingers crossed that the curse is temporarily postponed and for the moment she will not be a child just like me, because I thought it was really fun to deliberately screw up tests like that, having taken lots of them as a kid. I'm hoping that she will still think doing her best is more fun than trying to mess with the heads of the testers. (I do think the curse has shifted to Matthew for the moment, so maybe Mara will be in her Tim-like "I must please grown-ups and do my very very best" phase on Monday)

I am nervous. But at least I am completely distracted from the fact that my baby may be leaving me for all day, starting Wednesday!!!

Update on Disaster

Had a meeting with Mara's principal today. His wife is being induced with their first child tomorrow, so I was grateful that he could see me on incredibly short notice.

It was good -- he was very understanding, though not quite sure about district policy -- and the Curriculum and Instruction boss lady will be contacting us, hopefully tomorrow, to set up some before school starts testing to see whether Mara should go ahead and move up to 1st grade. Our shared goal is to get the question resolved before the first day of school.

Mara and I talked a little bit about it today. She did some reading and writing with Grammy -- 100% on the 1st grade sight words list, about 95% on the Dictation test (where she reads a sentence and Mara wrote down the words), 100% on level 12 reading, somewhere around 96% on the level 14 (2 errors out of 106 words in the book) and another 90+% on level 16, which was 7 errors with 2 self-corrects out of 190 words. So that was pretty good, but not very surprising on the whole.

We talked about how when kids come to school for the first time, they get to do some reading and talking with teachers so the school people can be sure that every kid is in the right place. After that, some kids are ready for kindergarten when they first come to school and some kids are ready for first grade. "And second grade?" she yells from the back of the van. I said "probably not second grade, but who knows. Let's just wait and see what the school people say."

She asked at lunch why Preston gets to go to full-day school and she only gets half-day school. "Well," we asked her, "what would you think about going to full-day school?" "Cool!" she says, eyes gleaming. She thinks she would like to pack her lunch. "We need to find a lunchbox!"

So now we just wait. But I am glad we have the principal on our side now and the ball is rolling. I just didn't want to wait until she had already started getting used to one classroom if she was going to end up in a different one...

Now I'm getting excited again!

Disaster

We went to the open house for Mara's school tonight. I am about ready to cry.

First of all, I assumed "Open House, 6-7 p.m." meant, "come on over anytime between six and seven and we'll all get to know each other in an informal setting" But what "Open House, 6-7 p.m." really meant was "Be here by six, because we don't want to have to repeat all this basic information we'll be telling you and if you are late, there will be trouble!"

We were late. There was trouble.

Mainly in the form of the 70-ish year old mother of Mara's teacher, who opened the door for us, greeting us with "You know you're missing something!" I was confused. I counted the kids, one three-year-old, one five-year-old. I counted the adults, yep, one mom, one dad. We all had clothes on. We all had shoes on. I had no idea. I must have looked perplexed because then she read me a brief lecture on the theme of punctuality: "You were supposed to be here at six. It started at six. You're missing things!" She did not enjoy hearing my apology and confused explanation of why we were late (like the part where I didn't understand the basic terminology of the event). We later found out that she volunteers almost every day in her daughter's classroom, so we'll be seeing her often and if the kids come home and say there were two Ms. B____'s in the classroom, that was probably why, so we shouldn't be confused.

Since we had missed the classroom portion of the meeting, we trailed along for the building tour. The lights were not on in most of the building. Only the kindergarten was having its "open house" so the building, although very nice, had the feeling of a ghost town. The teacher giving the tour has a teeny little voice that did not AT ALL carry over the 53 kindergarteners and their parents and siblings and whoever all else had come to see the show. Unfortunately, the other kindergarten teacher, the one with the "big cheerleader voice" (her words, not mine), is new to the building and this was actually HER first tour too, so she couldn't be much help. Which she told us from the back of the mass of bodies straining to hear Ms. B_____ whisper to us (standing on a chair in her stocking feet) where we should have our kindergarteners line up to come into the building.

When the tour ended, we got to go back to the classroom. I looked around and felt my heart sink to a glob of lead in the bottom of my stomach. Because this is not a classroom where our daughter belongs.

And I hope you will not think me a snob when I tell you that Tim and I both knew it just looking around. There were little posters of things like shapes (and their names), colors (and their names). The last straw was an electronic Barney book. But I think I might have kept my head on straight had the next thing not happened. Since we had missed the beginning, we waited until the end so we could find out what we missed. After going over a few little basic housekeeping and school supply issues, Ms. B. explained that each child's pocket folder should be marked on the outside with first and last name. On the inside, one pocket would be labelled "Return to School" and the other "Keep at Home" That made sense to me. We would know, as parents which papers to keep and which to send back. Pretty straightforward. But the explanation wasn't over. It was good to have these words written out, she clarified, because seeing the same thing written on the folder every day helped kids start recognizing words and letter sounds.

Hmm. Words and letter sounds. Words and letter sounds????

My daughter can read silently. You know, in her head. Without moving her lips. Without following the words along the page with her finger. She hesitates sometimes over compound words, but her list of sight words is phenomenal. More than a year ago we had to give up spelling things over her head, because she understands immediately when you spell out loud. Sometimes you don't even have to finish the word before she has intuited what is going on and yells out whatever you were trying to be sneaky about. She is, in fact, frankly much better (and faster) at understanding words spelled out loud than I am. She can even do a lot of words backwards. This has been especially problematic when the moms of her friends want to talk about things like birthday parties and Mara yells out "Wow, cake!" or "Cool, Will, you're getting a book and a puzzle!" As far as she knows, spelling is just a nifty code that you're SUPPOSED to try and figure out, so if you know the answer, why the hell not be joyful and holler about it?

So it's a really good thing she'll have this handy folder to practice on.

When I told her teacher that Mara is already reading quite well, the look on her face was not one of delight. She was obviously not thinking, "what joy, what fun, a reader. We'll do such amazing things together!" Nope. The look on her face was one of sheer terror. And she immediately shifted into "Maybe she should be in first grade" gear. Which would have me a little freaked out, except that I agree with her. The faster we can get my kid out of this classroom, the better I will sleep at night! And maybe that makes me a snob or a whatever, but for heaven's sake, this classroom looked like a place that Matthew would be RIGHT at home! Sheesh. Words and letter sounds??? Shapes??? Colors???

Look, I expected to be freaked out by sending my darlings off to school. I really did get that it was going to be gut wrenching. But I didn't think just going to the open house was gonna make me want to puke!

I am such a jerk. I really am such a jerk. I know that most kids DON'T have Mara's advantages. She is chock full of privilege as a kid with reading parents who love to read and who are able to provide a zillion language experiences, including books and word games and writing all over the walls and everything else we've done. I know all that. I know that for probably the majority of the kids starting kindergarten in her school this year, walking in tonight was the first time they've seen print in such abundance, including on the walls. For too many kids, this kindergarten experience will be the first time anybody takes the time to talk about colors and shapes and numbers and letters. Tonight was probably the first time some of them will even have books in their hands -- let alone books they could take home to be their very own. I know that Mara and kids like her are the exceptions, not the rule.

It breaks my heart to know all this. It breaks my heart that so many kids are going to have so much catching up to do in order to be ready for first grade. It breaks my heart that EVERY kid doesn't get what my kids (and the kids of my friends) have had so naturally in their lives. Every kid, every single one of them, should get what my kids have been able to have. All of them. And it breaks my heart that the reality is so far from what it should be for most kids!

But at the same time, I can't sacrifice my kid to all that. I won't do it. She needs more; she's ready for more than this particular classroom can provide. And if it doesn't happen in a smooth and easy fashion, I know we're just going to have to fight for it. I won't pull her out, because she needs more than I can provide -- I know this about myself. I am not nearly good enough for her. But no child left behind can just get the hell out of my way, because I'm all for supporting the public school system, but eventually a mama has to draw a line. And I think I'm about to get out my crayons! As Tim's mom says (and bless her heart for being behind us on this one because she isn't always), the school system has to serve the kids who are behind, but it ALSO has to serve my kid too. And if that means I have to fight for first grade, or gifted programs or whatever, so be it. I am more than ready for that fight and Mara's not the only kid who needs it.

I hate that the evening went this way. The one really good thing, though, is that we worked really hard not to let Mara see any of the stuff that's going on about it. Tim took the kids out to the playground so I could talk to her teacher and I have very deliberately not been talking about it in front of her. Grrrrrr.

It all comes down to this, and I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating: parents who wish for beautiful smart brave strong sensitive kids clearly have no idea what they're letting themselves in for!

We bought it!

Well, today was the big day. Sarah kept the kids and we went for the test drive. It was not the longest test drive ever -- this time the dealer guy was with us the whole time and he had a specific route he wanted us to take, but we had driven the other van pretty extensively, so we had a sense of how the thing would handle and the route we took today did cover all the essentials of hills and curves and highway and town and all that stuff, so it felt okay to be doing it that way instead.

And we thought for a few minutes that the guy was gonna try and talk us up to a higher price, which would have seen us walking out the door, but he didn't and we bought it.

We pick it up tomorrow at 9 a.m. after they finish the detailing (vacuuming and washing it and all that kind of thing...). I'll try to post a picture then.

I am so excited!