Mud Mud MUD

I wish this picture were me. But it is! But it isn’t. I am not four years old and squishing in the mud at preschool, glopping clunky Tonka trucks on their way to heaven knows what business. I am 44 years old, and I am receiving texted photos of my baby at preschool while tippity tapping away at my office keyboard, sipping Sweet Leaf mint & honey green tea, and trying to ignore email messages. I am wearing black pumps, not mud socks, but at the same time, this is me. On some level I am four years old and I just want to get in the mud pit and get my hands dirty.

Letting It Loose

Photo:  Creation of an Abstract Mural, Glass, by LaurMG, Creative Commons

I just wrote four paragraphs about creating art, and about how I put my creativity on hold when I was in college and never let it back out of its cage after that and how it has fought me ever since, and I read back over those four paragraphs and I hated them even more than I hate run-on sentences. So I used my conveniently placed “delete” key and now you don’t have to suffer through them.

What I want to say is this:  I feel an art project coming on this weekend. And I’m also feeling a very strong push to go back to school for some kind of artsy endeavor. I miss making things. And I want to explore how to coax that part of myself out to stretch and sniff the air.

How is that going to happen? I have no idea but I feel I am being called to do it, so I better figure it out. 

I’m thinking I may start with Bliss Habits, which is rolling out “Summer Camp for your Inner Child.” What the heck, what do I have to lose?

Nuggets

Photo:  3 pigs craft and flannel board story - Creative Commons, by Mommachels-Flickr

I have only touched briefly on the school changes that have happened with us over the past few months, but I want to give a bit more background because this has impacted us a great deal. Around December of last year, it was becoming painfully clear that (1) due to staffing changes, Ceeya’s preschool was not providing the type of care we had become accustomed to; and (2) it was becoming cost-prohibitive to send her there. The preschool was struggling financially so it was understaffed and couldn’t afford to bring in different teachers, and we became aware of an exodus of kids from the school.

Ceeya’s preschool teacher had taught 3^rd and 4^th grade previously but she had no classroom experience with this age group. I didn’t feel she was engaging the kids at the appropriate level – she seemed to default to arts and crafts and coloring, which I felt was a missed opportunity for this age group. They are little sponges for information at that age, and school can be so much fun for them. I also noticed that Ceeya’s toileting hygiene started to slip because the teacher wasn’t as on top of it as the previous teacher. The children in the class were a mix of three-and-four-year-olds, so they were all potty trained but still at the age where I would say they needed regular reinforcement on how to wipe and wash their hands.  At home in the bathroom with her I realized she had stopped wiping at all and no longer even flushed the toilet. It was infuriating and I had to have repeated conversations with her about how important it was to keep herself clean. I also had conversations with the teacher that seemed to go nowhere, since there was no change.

As things deteriorated, we started working with Ceeya at home in the evenings and on weekends with materials we got from Lakeshore and various online sites because we felt her fine motor skills were stagnating (a relevant concern due to her sensory processing issues) and quite frankly because she was bored with school.

At the same time, I started looking into other preschools in our area, most of which were (1) just as, if not more, expensive and (2) not accepting new students. The situation was looking desperate. And then the skies parted and the fates conspired to have me run into a former coworker/ friend/ neighbor at an event that I would not usually have been at, but was asked to attend because another coworker had a dentist appointment. And there, my problems were solved, because she told me about a FREE LA Universal Preschool (LAUP) program in our old neighborhood, which was collaborating with a FREE pilot pre-K program at Viva’s school (which, hello? How did I not hear about it?). They were in need of additional kids for the program because it was still new. 

So in February, Ceeya began attending two FREE educational programs and our only cost now is before and after care, which saves us $500 a month. Instead of coming home with coloring pages, Ceeya now comes home with sheets to help her trace her name. She is learning to read sight words (the, and, this, etc.) and can read some books by herself. In LAUP, they have done a unit on the life cycle – so they have hatched real live chicks from eggs, they have a tank full of tadpoles, and they recently acquired caterpillars and are learning about chrysalises. She has a new best friend named Miles, who is crazy about her.

All of this is great, except for one thing:  the naps.

Due to the structure of the LAUP/Pre-K programs, there is no nap time scheduled for these kids. The person running the LAUP program also runs the after-school program, which includes older kids. There is no separate quiet space for the younger kids to nap.

Ceeya is awesome when she’s well-rested. When she’s not, it is – how do you say? – challenging. Basically, she falls apart at the slightest perceived provocation. Witness, last week at around 5:30:

I have just gotten home and I have gone into the other room to change my clothes. Ceeya and Viva have unpacked their lunches and are sitting on their bed talking.

Ceeya:  Guess what we had for snack today?

Viva:  What?

Ceeya:  Tacos and chips.

Viva:  Chicken nuggets.

Ceeya:  [falls out screaming and crying]

Mama [runs into their room]:  What happened?

Viva [wearily]: I have no idea, all I said was chicken nuggets.

Ceeya [after 3 minutes of unintelligible cry-talking]:  I said I had tacos and she said I had chicken nuggets!  [screaming and crying again]

Mama: I don’t think that’s what she meant.

Ceeya:  But I didn’t HAVE chicken nuggets! I had tacos!

Mama:  I understand. So if YOU know you had tacos, then you had tacos. What difference does it make what she says?

Ceeya:  Because she is MEAN.

Viva: WHAT? Oh my God. I didn’t even –

Mama:  Viva.

Viva:  What?

Mama:  She is deliriously tired. Let’s not make things worse. Let me talk to her. Why don’t you go relax yourself in the other room, okay?

Viva goes off in a huff. I am left to put Ceeya back together from a little puddle on the floor.

And repeat this scenario in various incarnations to infinity, and that is what our life is like right now on the weekdays. Sometimes Ceeya passes out at about 6:30 and we have to bathe and pajama her in a half-conscious state. Sometimes depending on his schedule Sweet Dub is able to pick them up from school at 2:30 and can manage to get Ceeya to take a nap by 3:30 or 4:00, but by that point since she wants to sleep for two hours she is impossible to wake up. Either way, it is not a good time.

 

For future discussion:  Ceeya just misses the cutoff point (must be 5 by October 1) for kindergarten for the fall. Her pre-K teacher says there is no point to her doing another year of pre-K. In the meantime, Viva’s teacher is saying that Viva is at the top of her 4^th/5^th grade class and she won’t have anything left to learn in 5^th grade next year. I really wish I could just take one year off and take the kids out of school and travel. There is that whole pesky “how would we eat” dealio though.  Hmmm…

 

April is the Cruelest Month

Photo: Creative Commons, by allison.hare– Flickr

April…April is a helluva month.

 

We kick off April on the very first day with Viva’s birthday, which is fantastic, and it should be all fireworks and bonanzas from there. But just a few days later, we reach the anniversary of my grandpa’s death. And about a week after that, the anniversary of Sweet Dub getting laid off. (This year it is three years since he lost his well-paying office job, and three years of financial struggle as he has worked various freelance photography and videography jobs and done his damnedest to get some TV projects off the ground. We are trying to morph this into the anniversary of the day his own business was founded, turning lemons into lemon bars if you will. Some days we are more successful at this than others. Yesterday Sweet Dub got a flat tire and it turns out he needs two new tires for his truck. As we no longer have an emergency fund or any financial wiggle room, it was hard to put a positive spin on this.) A week after that is the anniversary of my grandma’s death.

 

So to recap:  for our family, April comes in like a drumline and goes out like a fugue. Added to that, last week was just ungodly in the number and magnitude of horrific events occurring across the country and the world.

 

Again, trying to look at things from a different perspective:  there is certainly room for something spectacularly amazing to happen later in April, to balance things out in the future. (Hint, hint, Universe.) I would not be opposed to that.

As Sweet Dub says, “It’s not much of a success story if there is no struggle.”

It's Personal

In my Internet travels today, I came across this article, in which the author describes how she read her 5-year-old daughter’s diary.

Her daughter had asked repeatedly for a diary so she could be like her older brother. She was clearly thrilled to have it, and happy to be a big kid and have her own secret book with its own key. She told her mom not to look, and she laboriously wrote down her secrets in it. The mom, Kim, started to worry that something was wrong.

She unlocked the diary and was pleasantly surprised at what she found. Her daughter, who at nearly 6 years old is still mastering how to print, was merely cataloguing all the things which made her happy.

Her relief was so great that she took a picture of the pages with all their adorable misspellings and posted them on the Internet – I’m not sure why, except to reassure the Internet, who probably was not all that worried about it, that her daughter was perfectly fine.

To me, it’s one thing if her daughter left the unlocked diary lying around; particularly if she left it lying open. It would be difficult to resist a peek. But she didn’t. Kim rationalized unlocking it by creating a problem that didn’t exist:  her daughter was being secretive, thus she must have something to hide.  

Again, this is a 5-year-old girl.

Every child is different. But if she suspected something were seriously wrong, Kim could ask her to draw a picture. She could ask her if something’s bothering her. She could just talk to her. She doesn’t describe anything that I can see would trigger this sort of reaction – for example, was her daughter having trouble sleeping, did her eating habits change, was there some sort of radical change in her personality?  It sounds to me like her daughter was having a pretty developmentally normal moment, establishing boundaries, indicating that she is an individual with opinions and ideas that she is working out.

I understand some parents believe that they have the right to poke around their child’s rooms and through their belongings. To a certain extent, I agree that a child cannot expect unconditional privacy – sometimes poking around through their things is the way you find out there’s a fundraiser at school, or that they need $4 for a field trip. But if unlocking the diary did not already cross the line, publishing the thoughts that an evidently sweet and happy kid believed were private certainly did.

With the omnipresence of technology in everyday life, sometimes we forget that blogging and the Internet have not actually been around that long. We forget that we are kind of making these rules up as we go along.

I have shared before that Viva and I keep a mother-daughter journal. While I may occasionally share the things I write to her (as long as they are not too personal), I would not share anything she wrote in the journal with anyone without asking her. And honestly, I would think twice about asking her because I AM her parent and thus the power differential already exists. I wouldn’t want her to feel she had to comply.

I guess what I am trying to say is:  ease up a little bit out there, Internet parents.  Tread carefully. And this is as much a reminder to myself as it is to anyone else.

Don't Mess With Boston

"...I've found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay... small acts of kindness, and love." -Gandalf the Grey, The Hobbit (the 2012 film version, apologies to the purists)

Copley Square, Boston. Image courtesy 123rf.com, royalty-free stock photos.

I was born in Boston, and grew up there. One of my earliest memories is of being in Copley Square, leaving the Boston Public Library with my mom and sister, and running into my great-grandmother (my father's grandmother) Mabel on the way to the subway. I remember it because she was very old, well into her 90s then, but she was still out and about, on her way to the library from the bus. I remember it, too, because she stopped to talk to us even though it was chilly out, and I remember she looked at the three of us with such great love. I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 years old. It was a small moment, in the scheme of things, but I rarely went through Copley Square after that without thinking of her.

As a teenager, I hung out in Copley Square frequently after school. I went to movies there, I ate ice cream there, I had pizza there. Hell, I went to the prom in Copley Square. 

After college, when I moved back to Boston, I worked on Boylston Street, a few blocks away from Copley Square proper, and I spent endless hours there after work and on my lunch hour. So yesterday, when I saw a tweet that there had been an explosion at the Boston Marathon, and then went to CNN.com to see the mayhem and devastation of a bombing in Copley Square -- I can't put into words how sick I felt. It was akin to seeing my backyard blown up. My backyard, where a friendly neighborhood block party went terribly, horribly, sickeningly wrong.

I'm sick, and I'm enraged. And it is not making me feel any less so that some are using the funerals of people killed in this tragedy as a jumping-off point to make some bizarre religious-political statement. I don't think Jesus would approve!

I can only hope that this horrible tragedy brings people together to build something positive. Boston deserves better than this. We all deserve better than this.

Life Lessons: Dealing with Conflict

What I would prefer to do.

Has someone ever said this to you?  “I don’t like confrontation, so…”

Does anyone really LIKE confrontation? I guess some people do get a charge out of arguing and trying to prove their point. To some people it’s a game. For me – having grown up in an unpredictable household – my survival instinct is always not to make waves, to fly under the radar, or whatever non-confrontational metaphor you’d like to insert here.

However, I have been trying in my grown up years to alter this tendency – not to become confrontational, but, when there is a conflict, not to back away from it. Today, I have been dealing with a work situation in which I have been treading very carefully and diplomatically around a top executive who felt they were being taken to task for something that was outside their control. I do not feel this person is completely absolved in this situation, but I can’t outright say that. Hence, I’ve been trying to tactfully suggest ways we can fix the situation without making things worse.

It appears to have blown over – the most recent emails I’ve received thanked me for clearing things up and my boss even went out and bought me a mini chocolate cake in appreciation (which for some reason, no matter what I do, will only appear here upside down. Ain't nobody got time for that.):

 Are you confrontational? Or are you an avoider? Or somewhere in between? 

 

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. – Richard Bach