And so it begins...

A has been through his first set of standardized tests now as a first grader. His school doesn't get into a tizzy about the first graders; his teacher explained that test writers are mean, sneaky people trying to trick kids so that they see it as a game.

She had a copy of his tests at his last parent-teacher conference. He'd missed one question in the reading comprehension section. It was a story about a girl who went to run in a race. She and her dad went to the five-lap race, her dad cheered, and she won first place. She got a medal. So the question he got wrong was:

A at the end-of-trimester awards ceremony

Why did Kira's father clap?
a) because Kira ran five laps
b) because Kira won the race
c) there were toads in the road
d) equally unlikely answer

A picked a, because Kira ran. The correct answer, according to the CA Board of Education Mean People Who Trick Kids Dept. was b, because she won. I'm just bursting with pride that he got this one right and the people who wrote it got it wrong.

He's right. Kira's dad should have clapped because she ran, not because she won, or Kira's dad would be a superjerk.

Mad Skillz

Mr. L is obsessed with sunglasses, except he doesn't call them sunglasses. He calls them DJ glasses.

So this is how he looked when we went to go pick up his brother from school. We were stopped by his brother's kindergarten teacher, who said, wow, you're a pretty cool-looking guy today, L said:

"I'm a DJ with mad skills."

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.

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?

First day of kindergarden

Sniff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Read before you sign

Yesterday I went to Wal-Mart. I really, really don't like Wal-Mart. I don't like how their guaranteed-lowest-price policies have affected suppliers, I don't like how big they are, I don't like the store layouts or lighting or flooring, I don't like that they have become the largest employer in the country with such crap low-end service jobs. (I'm not going to judge you if you shop at Wal-Mart. The prices are the lowest and money's tight.) Baby L had a birthday present duplicated and it was purchased at Wal-Mart, and I don't feel like throwing money into the street, so I was at Wal-Mart.

There was a petitioner table set up outside the Wal-Mart that had a sign: "Stop big box stores." I did a double-take. The Wal-Mart has not called the cops to drive away the petitioners collecting signatures to ban Wal-Mart?

On the way out, I stopped. "Sign here," a woman directed me, and I said, "I want to read the draft of your proposition." So I did.

Two weeks ago, in San Diego, the city council passed an ordinance that would force big-box developers to conduct community impact studies--how will these stores affect local business studies--before developing a store. (I'm sure they're conducting these studies already to determine where to put a store; they're just not keen on sharing that info with the community at large.) The mayor tried to veto the measure, and the council overrode it.

The petition is a referendum that would strike that measure and put any development of a Wal-Mart to a public vote. I don't know if you've noticed this, but with certain obvious exceptions (Hi, Meg and Carly!) elections seem to swing in the direction of who's got the most money. Wal-Mart has a lot of money.

The guy I talked to began trying the tactic on the sign, big box stores are coming into our community, and I said, "But that's the complete opposite of what this measure does. This measure breaks what the city council just fixed to let big-box stores into our community."

Then he changed tactics: we live in a free enterprise society, bigger companies than Wal-Mart have come and gone, Wal-Marts are good for their communities because they bring jobs and give back to the community. To which I said, more free the more wealth you have; we are seeing the greatest concentration of wealth in the hands of a few than we've ever seen in this country; the jobs are crap and they're not giving back nearly as much as they could.

No, I did not sign it. "But you're here bargain shopping," he said to me.

"I'm exchanging a present."

I've seen similar signs outside my beloved Trader Joe's in the liberal bastion of Hillcrest; I'm wondering how many people signed it without reading it. How despicable and desperate do you have to be to advertise the exact opposite of what your measure does to get signatures?

Movie day: too tired to read

Yep, it's movie day, also known as Mommy-is-sick day. My throat is sore, my head is thick with snot, and I'm just dumb today. I could crawl back into bed and sleep, but so far, the children are not accommodating my wishes by taking their naps like they certainly should be. I'm frankly too tired and unaware to go for a drive to put them to sleep. I already had a home improvement project gone awry, so I'm taking the hint and limiting the amount of damage I can do today.

So. Ponyo goes into the DVD player and I close doors to adjacent rooms. Mr. A watches Ponyo. The baby climbs all over the furniture. I stare into the middle distance in a stupor until someone yells. I would like to drink large pots of tea but unfortunately I do not trust myself with hot tea and babies. I'm not even reading, people, and I got a new book in the mail today, a picture book. That's how tired I am.

Advertising or article?

C and I are trying to instill un-merchandised joys in our kids. We decided that we couldn't teach our kids that the best things in life aren't things you own while supplying them with lots and lots of things. God knows they have toys and games, but we try to err on the generic, open-ended, unbranded side. We don't have Transformers, Spiderman, Zhuzhu pets, and the like. A has some Disney shirts and that's about it for the branded things. (Toy brands we have: Lego, Playmobile, Melissa & Doug, bring it on.)

I was reading a magazine with A and he started asking me about the articles, specifically, a "Top Twenty-Five Toys This Christmas" kind of article. I explained to him that it looked like an article but it was actually an advertisement, which is a picture or story to get me to buy something from a company. [Note: I know lots of this is whoosh, over his head. But I didn't talk down to A when he was a baby and I'm not going to start now.] We tried "guess the ad" through the rest of the magazine and that's difficult for a grownup, let alone a four-year-old.

We drove to school that morning and A saw a picture on a billboard that had been in the magazine and pointed it out. So then we had a discussion about advertising again and all the ways companies advertise: magazines, radio, Internet, movies, billboards, clothing. I tried explaining to A that when he wears a shirt with someone else's picture on it, he's advertising for that company, and that I thought he was special enough that the only shirts we let him have with people or characters on them were the ones he really liked: Buzz, Pooh, Tigger.

He thought about this, and then said, "I want a shirt with all my friends' names on it so I can advertise them."

We do have the sweetest boy in the universe. Amazingly, adorably sweet.

Halloween

A decided he wanted to be an orca for Halloween. A killer whale? you say. Like Shamu? the locals say. Yes, a killer whale, or as it is known in its less pejorative way here, an orca.

Naps for all small children and I sewed. My last iron was tossed haphazardly into a box in the move and the steam reservoir did not survive, so a new iron was purchased last weekend. It's a fancy Rowenta and I can honestly say I've never felt this way about an iron before. It irons like a happy five-hundred-degree slice of heaven; I feel like I should have Snow-White-esque woodland animals holding up my skirts as I iron.

I got most of the costume together, which only meant two trips to the dreaded Joann's fabrics. I have not placed the all-important white spots on either side of the orca's head, nor have I put the actual eyes in place. And I was debating whether or not the costume looked like a sixth grader's craft project and whether I should resew some seams or rethink the entire configuration, when my darling husband said to me, "He doesn't care. All he will remember is that he wanted to be an orca and his mommy made him an orca costume." So then I felt better. I'm a mommy who made her kid a costume, yay!

The orca's just one of several projects going here, but next week C is off for comp time for the awfulness that were the 70-to-80 hour workweeks and we'll get traction, I swear. Now I just need to get L and A together for a little mommy-indulgent Halloween photo shoot...

[Edited to add images: boy as orca, brothers as Calvin and Hobbes. Enjoy!]

Vowels and consonants

We've started teaching A to read. Well, not true. We've been reading to him since he came home from the hospital, and that's part of teaching A to read. I read from early, early and don't remember learning to read, so I just assumed A would have picked it up by now because we read all the time. I'm surprised L doesn't read yet either.

Then I realized, hmm, maybe I'm a little naive about these things.

His pre-K teacher told me, "A's got a memory I can't believe. That kid remembers everything." They were learning new songs, and A knew all the words before the teachers. He's interested in words, books, and songs, and he's got a good memory. Time to read.

So I got a book on teaching reading through phonics, since C learned phonics and his guesses on pronunciation of new words are more to the mark than mine. The book we have talks about the difference between consonants and vowels, as well as the different types of consonant sounds (voiced, unvoiced, nasal). I thought this was a little much but lo and behold, he was able to differentiate for me between the different types. ("That one doesn't need air, Mommy.")

We're up to M now. Now everything that has words is "Look, there are some vowels and consonants on there!" Not letters. Not words. Vowels and consonants.

We've had a couple instances where I'm not sure if he was reading or just memorized something. I'm guessing memorization since his Pre-K has an extensive library and so I don't know all the books he's read. When we actually finish the book, it's going to be difficult to get a book the Pre-K doesn't have to test him.

Mama, hi, A!

Baby L has been saying, "Mama, mama, mama," when he's hungry or when I am not nearby, so we're getting pretty close to calling that his official first word. He's been sick and unhappy, but he's getting better, which always makes me remember how cheery and happy he is by nature. When he's not sick, he's one of the happy generation. When he is sick, I think he's how most people walk around in the world.

But now he's got words popping out all over. He signs for milk, just like his brother did. (It's important to be able to get food.) Yesterday, while we were playing, "How big is L? So big!" over and over again, he stopped to wave at me and say, "Hi!"

This morning, C called out the window to A, who was in the backyard, "Hey, A?" and baby L said, "Aaaaaaaaaa-ay." Someone told me that the first baby's first word is, "Mama," and the second baby's first word is the first baby's name, since it's the word he hears the most. We'll see if he repeats it.

A feeding L

Four is not a discreet age

A and I had a conversation recently. He said, "L has such pretty hair that I think he should be a girl."

And I explained that yes, L had pretty hair, but that no, it didn't work that way. L was a boy and he would remain a boy. "But we can make him a girl," A said so I explained that L had a penis just like A did, that boys were boys because they had penises, and that L was going to continue to have a penis and be a boy just like A.

Of course, per Chekhov, you don't put a gun on the mantel in Act 1 without it being fired in Act 3.

So I picked A up from school yesterday and the aide stopped me. "Your boy is so funny." Apparently, there had been some gender divisions on the playground, where the boys were going to do some things without the girls and there was some discussion as to who qualified. Never fear, A was there.

"Listen everybody," he announced. "Wait and listen to me. Boys are boys because they have penises, and girls are girls because they do not have penises. So the boys have the penises." The aide apparently whooshed them all inside without further discussion--or gender verification--but she wanted to know where he'd come up with that bit of information.

The baby got into the cat food

Yep, that day has come. I always think 8-9 months of age is about the apex of babydom, and then the tumble to toddlerhood takes on speed.

My baby can now pull himself up. He usually doesn't get as far as his feet, although he has, but this means several things:

• The crib is no longer exactly safe and the mattress needs to be lowered.
• All the outlets are now fair play for tiny little fingers. This means things that had been placed on outlets (like the CO2 detector and the open-garage-door monitor) are now completely in play. The CO2 detector sounds an annoying and ear-splitting screech when it's mostly disconnected from the wall.
  
• The cat food, which had been out of reach on a box, is now well within reach. I think a file cabinet would put it out of reach but that might be at the max of my heavy lifting abilities.
• The computer power button is within reach.
  
• Items on the couch, chairs, and A's bed are all fair game.

Of course this happens while C is in the middle of mandatory overtime, so certain triage messages will be put into place until then. Triage is the mode of the day, especially since I haven't been able to get both boys to nap or sleep at the same time during the day consistently.

If you've got tips, I'd love to hear them, because if I don't get some time to myself soon, I'm going to lose it. All our babysitters are waylaid by illness or jobs, or I'd be calling out the cavalry for a movie and a junk-food binge, trust me.

"Mommy, I am not ruding you!"

Another month, another entry. Little L just rolled 9 months, thus starting his period of being out longer than he was in. He's quite the little character. He's such an amazingly good-natured baby, but I think he's going to be the mischievous one. He just has that glint in his eye sometimes. No real signs of separation anxiety yet, but he has gotten to the ever-annoying "drop things to see if they fall" stage.

A is back in preschool, same teacher as last year. I've been told that all the boys chase the girls at recess, "except A, because he is sweet." That he is.

At lunch today, we rearranged our chairs on the patio so everyone was out of the sun (ah yes, California, where all meals are eaten on the patio every day in our gorgeous, gorgeous weather). A had his feet up on my chair and I asked him to move them since we sit upright to eat our meals.

Then he started laughing. I looked down and he'd put his feet under my seat.

"I'm sticking my big toes out at you, Mommy!" he said. Indeed, he was. "I am not ruding you, Mommy; I am just silly." Somehow, rude has become a verb in this house.