Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving

"I am thankful for my family!" A announced at dinner, and yes, we all agreed. Young Masters A and L do not care for sweet potato pie or cream puffs with warm chocolate sauce (although they both did like the chocolate sauce and whipped cream), and so I am not sure whose children they are. A still does not eat mashed potatoes, so I'm really not sure where he came from.

But they are blissfully asleep, C is cleaning our kitchen as he has been doing all day, I have a cat purring in my lap, and we are happy.

We are heading out right now to shop. Kidding! We are heading to bed. The only thing on schedule for us tomorrow is a playdate and some elving, that is, some present-making.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Well-adjusted

My new working definition of well-adjusted is when we have old family friends who we haven't seen in literally years over to our new house, and I made sure to clean up the bathrooms so they were spic-and-span shiny, and after we'd chatted for hours and everyone had been to the bathroom and the friends departed and we'd all had a lovely time, I went to the bathroom myself to discover a small child had heaped tampons and breast pads in mammoth gargantuan piles upon the counter and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, because really, nothing else can be done at that stage, no?

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Holy cow, three months

Hello, blog, my name is Kim. I'm sure we've met before...

Baby L went for his 18-month checkup today. In a haze of sleep-deprivation, I missed the scheduled one last Wednesday (to be fair, they still had not updated our contact info--one year later--so I didn't get a reminder call), then called the office to reschedule and they offered me September. September! I got all Bryn Mawr on them, "No, that will be unacceptable since this is his 18-month checkup and he'll be significantly older than that in September, so what are you going to do to accommodate my child sooner?"

He's fine. He's average height and weight (25 pounds, 33 inches) and has a HUGE head. This makes me feel better since I've been moving him into 2T shirts that hang on him since I can't cram his huge head through the neck holes of his 18-month shirts. He says enough words according to the doctor, apparently, like mama and daddy and bread and doggie and rock, but I would like him to use more. They can't start talking fast enough for me. It's fine if he lives on bread, milk and fruit, as long as those foods are healthy.

Mr. A is graduating from preschool this week (sniff), a month earlier than anticipated due to the state of California's incredible budget deficit. He will be moving on to swim lessons and hopefully camp but oh boy, I will miss preschool. I just caught the end of the preschool ceremony, but got there in time to listen to the kids brainstorm what they would be doing in kindergarten. "Reading books!" "Writing!" "Problem-solving!" "Being principled!" "Following directions!" "Listening!" A raised his hand and then announced, "I would like to learn about octopuses, since they are soft and can't fight like sharks so they shoot their oil out so the sharks can't see and then they run away." I love that kid. Love him.

Thursday, March 03, 2011

If I write about this, it will become funny

I know it's not a good week when I clean my desk. Why would I clean the rabbit warren of papers, photos, cans of cat food, books and pens that is my desk? Well, I'll tell you: the cat threw up on it. Nothing like some cat vomit to make you clean. But this was apparently the warning shot, as it were.

We had a lovely day at the park with friends, and Mister A came home exhausted and I snuggled him and put him down for a nap. What did I not do? Send him to the potty before the nap. He had not gone since preschool. This is a long time for a small bladder.

Years ago, our beautiful kitty Niles climbed into a plastic bag and got the handle caught on his neck when he tried to get out of the bag. He panicked, then literally pissed himself while rocketing around our house, looking for a safe place to hide from the scary bag that clung to his heels. He made a beeline for the tiny channel of warmth under our waterbed, spraying urine the entire way. We had to drain the bed and steam clean the carpets immediately. It was an insta-nightmare of cleaning.

I had a flashback to that today.

A woke up from his nap sick and disoriented with a need to go NOW NOW NOW. Half awake, he became convinced that what he needed to do was get his pants off and he would stop having an accident. He got his pants and knickers around his ankles and discovered this was not the case. Now hobbled by his clothes, he stumbled around his room, peeing freely, down the hallway, peeing freely, and was finally able to get his sopping wet pants off in the library. At this point he remembered that he should have gone to the bathroom and he burst into tears with embarrassment.

I was rocking the baby to sleep. I went to comfort the crying half-naked boy and discovered puddles of urine. If you imagine two dozen puppies having a free-for-all pre-paper training, this is what my floors look like. Exactly what you want with a crawling baby in the house.

Baby L is cutting four molars right now, huge purple bulges in his gums with sharp white edges peeking out, and molars are the bitch. I have considered giving the baby Vicoden. I have debated the merits of single malt versus bourbon for the fourteen-month-old set. Baby L needs to be held every waking minute or he screams.

Do you know when you can't hold a baby? When you are on your hands and knees scrubbing the floors of urine. Do you know when the baby can't be with you? When you are in a veritable river of urine, doing a check on every fool thing on your child's bedroom floor to say, "Splattered or not? Wet or not?" Baby L doesn't scream much, so holy hell, when he screams, he has a year's potential of screams ready to go in one intense, never ending blast.

Babies are all asleep now. The floors that were urine-puddled are shiny clean. C's back to work for a long haul night. One load of urine-soaked toys has been through the wash, two more loads of urine-soaked bedding is in the dryer, and I've got three more urine loads to go tonight, plus a bathtub full of water-safe things that need to be disinfected. Time to debate the merits of brandy versus single-malt for the mommy.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Ding dong

One of the stories we've heard of the previous owner of this house was that he was so antisocial he had his doorbell removed completely. He had to have one reinstalled to make the house ready for sale. Instead of a 1950s-era ding-dong chime, we have an electronic tone that gives a deep, electronic beep beeeeep when the doorbell rings. There's basically a button stuck to the outside of our house (mounted, I'm sure the writer for the manual would want me to say) and a doorbell part that plugs into an outlet that makes the bell noise.

When we first moved in, the doorbell receiver was stuck into the most accessible outlet in the house, which meant hours of entertainment for the baby. So it was moved out of baby reach.

I noticed that our doorbell was ringing when nobody was pushing the bell. We're in an urban environment, and there are a lot of doorbells within our area. Apparently, someone else was on the same wavelength. But it didn't happen too often and added a bit of mystery to my day: will there actually be someone at the door?

But then there was a day where our doorbell kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing. I looked out the front window and there was our neighbor, across the street, installing a new electronic doorbell. On exactly the same wavelength, apparently. The default, I'm guessing. Beep beep, beep beep, beep beep.

I disconnected the doorbell. When C came home, he took down our doorbell and figured out how to re-assign a code (ah, engineers). But before he changed our the doorbell button over, I sat inside my house and rang the doorbell about a million times and watched my neighbor go into and out of his door to see what was wrong with his new doorbell.

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Yikes, he's a climber

Baby L has started standing unassisted, but yesterday he discovered his inner climber. Or his outer climber. I would go out of a room, come back, and find the baby sitting somewhere new, like on a bin of Christmas stuff waiting to be put away, or in A's bed, or on a bookshelf waving a lamp around. A was not a climber, and L is. Holy cow, climbers are scary.

The best/scariest moment was finding L standing on a table next to the Christmas tree. He was standing all by himself, on top of a table that is maybe two feet high or so, looking up at the tree with determination. Lo, Everest, I have found you and you will be mine. No, no, no. Tree's going out today before he is able to put his schemes in motion.

The half-life on the crib just started ticking.

The funniest part is that he's able to stand as long as he's not thinking about it. Once he seems to be aware that he is standing, he falls down or has to grab on to something. He'll be cruising along furniture, see that A has something, and let go of the furniture to have his hands free to grab something. He takes the toy and waves it around until he wants to move. Then he realizes he's not holding onto anything and either falls on his bottom or grabs something for balance.

We took him to the doctor's yesterday because he's been getting up in the freaking middle of the night and we assumed he was sick (little head cold and some fluid in the ears, but nothing major), but now I realize he's hitting the standing milestone and is waking up in the middle of the night the way people do when they're learning something new and are excited about it.

Monday, January 03, 2011

Picking schools

I know; I haven't posted about my baby's first birthday (which was fabulous) or Christmas (equally fabulous) or New Year's (mellow but still...) or any of that. Little baby L stood alone today for the longest I've seen him do it; he only seems to do it with holding one toy in both hands. No toy, a toy in one hand, two different toys in two different hands, no standing. He's an odd duck. And he's standing!

But this isn't even about that. Mr. A is four, and he'll be kindergarten-ready next year. This means we have to pick a school. When I was a kid, there was a school in town and I went to it. There was one elementary school, one middle school, one high school. Simple and done. Even friends of mine who lived in larger places, the story is pretty much the same: there was a school and you went to it.

But times have changed and you don't just go to the school anymore. We are here in shiny San Diego, and San Diego has a bewildering array of choices for the public school attendee: magnets, voluntary exchange, charter, home (your home school as opposed to homeschooled). We do have a home school, which I can see by looking over my shoulder right now, but it is not a great school, so we're going elsewhere. We have to get our applications in by February, and it's frankly bewildering.

Do you want a school that focuses on international cooperation or one that will have him fluent in Mandarin Chinese by the time he leaves sixth grade? How about Spanish? French? German? Do you want him to start piano and violin lessons in kindergarten or one that focuses on math and science? I.B. or cooperative learning models? Do you want a charter, which acts as its own independent little kingdom, for better or worse, or a magnet, which has a clear focus but is not as independent as the charters, or a traditional school, whatever that means nowadays?

He's four. He seems to be a well-adjusted, sociable little soul who is bright and likes reading and playing. He is inquisitive and analytical, as much as a four-year-old can be. He's got a memory not to be believed.

And yet, we (C and I) don't know what track to put him on. Will it serve him better in the long run to be bilingual or a pianist? Should he go to a school with emphasis on all-around skills or one that emphasizes science and math (or English and writing, or collaboration and problem-solving, or music and the arts, or...)? Experiential, child-focused, traditional, KIPP-based teaching? And do we want him in a year-round school or one on the traditional school year?

I don't know how other people pick. There should be a manual, or a decision tree, at least. We're lucky because I'm pretty sure A will be successful where ever he goes, and I have enough sense to realize not every parent can say that. This terrible weight of responsibility that goes with parenting: am I squashing a brilliant musician by trying to send him to a science school? Or am I crippling him for the 21st century job market if he doesn't go to the science school or the Mandarin Chinese school? Of course, encompassing these discussions is the fact that whatever school A does to, L will probably go to also. Poor second children; you all get hosed by being second.

All of this is complicated by the competing lotteries, application processes, etc. This one has a lottery followed by an interview. This one is a lottery, with preference for geographic areas divided into three levels of preference. This one is a straight lottery, with 200 applications expected for 23 slots. Even if we found The Perfect School, there's no guarantee we'd get into it.

If C and I were of the same cloth, this would be easier. It's not that we're in disagreement about any of these issues; we're aligned in mutual confusion. It would be easier to say, "Well, we're both engineers, so science it is!" C and I have great knowledge bases and interests in highly divergent areas, so that gives no direction for the children to land.

Ultimately, the reassuring thought I keep coming back to is that A will surprise us, whatever he chooses to do. And whatever he gets his heart set on doing, he won't be undone by the well-meaning fumblings of his parents in picking out an elementary school. Making sure he's equipped for lemonade-making with whatever lemons he is handed is our job, but ultimately the lemonade-making will be A's job.