31 March 2007
30 March 2007
preschool
Today Jonathan and I enrolled Blue in a preschool!
It is at the local Catholic church, and we all went by today to check it out and observe a current class of three year olds. I got so weepy. I am pathetic. But I couldn't help it. The kids were so cute and the room was so cheerful with great big murals on the walls and all the little crafts on the bulletin boards and the tiny little chairs around the tiny little tables...
Blue marched right into the classroom and said "hi" to the kids. She is such a riot.
...................................................................
This morning when I put her to bed after the Battle of the Toast, Jonathan and I took the toys out of her room. Not in a crazed, mean way or anything. But we had been mulling over the idea for a while. She tends to just play in her room for hours when she is supposed to be sleeping. We were thinking all the toys are just way too much of a distraction. So today, we decided, especially if she was being sent to her room for not touching her breakfast, it would defeat the purpose if in her little head, she was just going up to her room to play for a while! And, it seems to be working. She went right to sleep this morning and also tonight.
Any way. So Blue walks into the room and says "hi" to the other kids and I introduce her to the director of the preschool who was giving us the tour.
Blue says, "Hi!"
Director: "Hi, Blue!"
Blue: "Mommy and Daddy took my toys away."
!!!!!!!!!!!
Luckily, the director misunderstood. "Mommy and Daddy made you leave your toys in the car?"
Mommy and Daddy, in unison: "Yes! Yes, we made her leave her toys in the car." and "Blue! Did you see this little kitchen! How fun!"
.......................................................................
Blue and the director were playing with some little dollhouse people while Jonathan and I looked around:
Blue: "Where's the Baby Jesus?" Jonathan and I looked at each other. Awesome! We're not Heathens!
Director: "Alright, Mommy and Daddy, did you two coach her on that?"
I laughed and explained that Blue has a Fisher Price Nativity set.
The awesomeness of her Baby Jesus comment was instantly negated when I asked Blue to help me put away the dolls two seconds later and she said, "No!" and hit me.
I was mortified. I assured the director that Blue would not hit the other children, that she really only hit me. And that was only occasionally. (I wasn't about to tell her about the Lion, or poor Sam Davenport for that matter!)
And then the director said the coolest thing. A thing I desperately needed to hear today. "She misbehaves with you because she knows it's okay. You're Mommy. She knows you'll love her no matter what she does."
Which made me get all weepy again.
Anyway, the important thing is, even after seeing Blue smack me around, she is still allowed to attend the school! So she will start this fall.
I think this school is wonderful. The teachers seem very nice. They have a beautiful, very secure playground. The children are taught a French word every day by one of the nuns. (Which will be wonderful. And a nice addition to the Spanish she is learning from watching Dora and Sesame Street.) They go on little field trips, like to the pumpkin patch for Halloween and they have a Mother's Day function and a "Donuts with Dad" for Father's Day.
Blue seems very excited. She loved the playground. And I can't wait for her to get to really spend time with children her own age. I think she picks on the poor Lion mostly because she is so little and doesn't know any better, but also because she is bored hanging out with just Lion and me all the time. I also think it will be nice for Lion to have me to himself 3 times a week.
Bluee and I went shopping this evening, and as we were walking out the door she asked if we were going to preschool. I said, "Not yet, honey. You'll go to preschool after your birthday." So in the car, she asked if today was her birthday.
I cannot believe my girl is almost old enough for preschool! I cannot believe she hit me right in front of the director!
It is at the local Catholic church, and we all went by today to check it out and observe a current class of three year olds. I got so weepy. I am pathetic. But I couldn't help it. The kids were so cute and the room was so cheerful with great big murals on the walls and all the little crafts on the bulletin boards and the tiny little chairs around the tiny little tables...
Blue marched right into the classroom and said "hi" to the kids. She is such a riot.
...................................................................
This morning when I put her to bed after the Battle of the Toast, Jonathan and I took the toys out of her room. Not in a crazed, mean way or anything. But we had been mulling over the idea for a while. She tends to just play in her room for hours when she is supposed to be sleeping. We were thinking all the toys are just way too much of a distraction. So today, we decided, especially if she was being sent to her room for not touching her breakfast, it would defeat the purpose if in her little head, she was just going up to her room to play for a while! And, it seems to be working. She went right to sleep this morning and also tonight.
Any way. So Blue walks into the room and says "hi" to the other kids and I introduce her to the director of the preschool who was giving us the tour.
Blue says, "Hi!"
Director: "Hi, Blue!"
Blue: "Mommy and Daddy took my toys away."
!!!!!!!!!!!
Luckily, the director misunderstood. "Mommy and Daddy made you leave your toys in the car?"
Mommy and Daddy, in unison: "Yes! Yes, we made her leave her toys in the car." and "Blue! Did you see this little kitchen! How fun!"
.......................................................................
Blue and the director were playing with some little dollhouse people while Jonathan and I looked around:
Blue: "Where's the Baby Jesus?" Jonathan and I looked at each other. Awesome! We're not Heathens!
Director: "Alright, Mommy and Daddy, did you two coach her on that?"
I laughed and explained that Blue has a Fisher Price Nativity set.
The awesomeness of her Baby Jesus comment was instantly negated when I asked Blue to help me put away the dolls two seconds later and she said, "No!" and hit me.
I was mortified. I assured the director that Blue would not hit the other children, that she really only hit me. And that was only occasionally. (I wasn't about to tell her about the Lion, or poor Sam Davenport for that matter!)
And then the director said the coolest thing. A thing I desperately needed to hear today. "She misbehaves with you because she knows it's okay. You're Mommy. She knows you'll love her no matter what she does."
Which made me get all weepy again.
Anyway, the important thing is, even after seeing Blue smack me around, she is still allowed to attend the school! So she will start this fall.
I think this school is wonderful. The teachers seem very nice. They have a beautiful, very secure playground. The children are taught a French word every day by one of the nuns. (Which will be wonderful. And a nice addition to the Spanish she is learning from watching Dora and Sesame Street.) They go on little field trips, like to the pumpkin patch for Halloween and they have a Mother's Day function and a "Donuts with Dad" for Father's Day.
Blue seems very excited. She loved the playground. And I can't wait for her to get to really spend time with children her own age. I think she picks on the poor Lion mostly because she is so little and doesn't know any better, but also because she is bored hanging out with just Lion and me all the time. I also think it will be nice for Lion to have me to himself 3 times a week.
Bluee and I went shopping this evening, and as we were walking out the door she asked if we were going to preschool. I said, "Not yet, honey. You'll go to preschool after your birthday." So in the car, she asked if today was her birthday.
I cannot believe my girl is almost old enough for preschool! I cannot believe she hit me right in front of the director!
Mid-Claire
As I was dragging dinner
kicking and screaming
from cans and plastic packages,
three-year-old Claire was dragging the magnet tin
from the back of the pots-and-pans cabinet.
Together we spelled CLAIRE on the refrigerator —
bold, bright.
Red, yellow, green, purple against white.
I went back to the problem of dinner,
Didn’t notice until late that night
that somehow CLAIRE
had become MID CLAIRE.
Random letters she had plucked out and stuck on?
Or some kind of message
from her three-foot-tall self?
Take note — Claire’s not through here,
forget about tidying up,
putting magnets back in tins,
tins back in cabinets.
In the midst of Claire,
dinners are cobbled,
beds are made with lumps,
questions are asked and asked and asked,
the same questions,
the same ones,
the same.
Every day insisting she’s trading places
with her one-year-old sister —
“I’m your baby who crawls. Will you tell Daddy that?”
Every day thirty or forty times.
Every.
It’s how I live now:
The doorbell rings —
Oops, sorry, you’ve caught me mid-Claire,
my hair in a towel,
dishes in the sink,
newspapers unrecycled.
Maybe it’s that I live now,
down in the dirtpiles of raw emotion
I had choked down for so long
swallowing my rising gorge
lest the mess kill me.
Now I catch other people’s vomit in towels or my shirt,
gather collapsed crying forms from floors when I’d really rather join them.
“Claire is ready for the world,”
said a mother we met at the park
in the beautiful confident cadence
I've always envied in African-American women.
Claire, not yet walking then,
was trying trying
to climb a ladder
taller than me.
From her arrival
I’ve woken up mid-Claire.
Never a baby to mew or babble in her crib,
she graveled awake
from silent and sleeping
to all rasping, scratching cry from the throat
as if her first breath were an exhale.
Now still all exhale
talking all the while
every breath an engine for speech.
Every breath.
I don’t want to die mid-Claire,
Don’t want to be cut down in the prime of Claire,
Couldn’t bear
to miss a beat
of spoken air.
Donna Levine Gershon
it all started with a piece of french toast
Parenting is hard. It is, as they say, not for wimps.
I had a horrible morning with Blue. She would not eat even a bite of her french toast. That I made for her. That she usually loves. Not a single bite. So after 2 time-outs and much me screaming like some psychopath, I sent her to bed. And now it is very quiet up there, so I think she may just be very tired and possibly napping already.
After I sent her to bed I went into my room and cried my eyes out to Jonathan. What is the matter with me? How can I lose control--so utterly--over toast? I don't want Blue to be afraid of me. I don't want to be some crazy Mommy Dearest.
And he said all the wonderful things he should say: that I am fine. That it's normal to lose it sometimes. That he even heard Kathy Davenport of all people screech at little Sam the other day (which I have trouble picturing, but very reassuring nonetheless). That maybe children should be a little afraid of their parents. It's a good thing--then they might actually listen to you.
And I know all of this. I do. It's just... I hate losing control like that.
Especially over food. How many articles have I read and how many times have I told myself or Jonathan or anyone within speaking distance, "I will not make food an issue. Look at all the eating disorders out there. Look at Nicole Ritchie for God's sake! Where'd she go? ...blah blah blah... The minute you freak out and turn it into a battle for control, it's over. ...blah blah blah... Kids want control over something, and this is an area where they can have it. Just leave a kid alone and they will eat." Then what happened? Then I have Blue who is so tall for her age and so skinny and what do I do? I turn food into an issue.
It is so hard. I want to be Mommy. Nice, comforting Mommy. Not Mommy who goes all crazy and screechy over a piece of toast... I'm not saying I'm going to be one of those moms on "Nanny 911" who cannot discipline their children at all because they want their children to like them. I mean, I am stronger than that. And I know that rules are important. That little children actually need them, need consistency and ritual in their daily lives. I get that. It's just hard. How do you choose these rules? And how important are they? Does not eating breakfast really merit 2 time-outs and being sent to bed? What if it's my Blue not eating breakfast? My Blue smirking at me when I threaten time-out if she doesn't at least take a single bite?
I will stop being so judgmental of those poor women on "Nanny 911." I will. I will be more supportive of all moms in general from now on. Because it is hard. Haaaard.
One day, maybe my Blue will be a mother. And she will call me all upset like I called my mom this morning. And I will tell her, "It's going to be okay. Little Whatsit will be fine. Look how great you turned out (because she will turn out great, with or despite my help), and I was a mess. I even went psycho once over a piece of french toast!"
I had a horrible morning with Blue. She would not eat even a bite of her french toast. That I made for her. That she usually loves. Not a single bite. So after 2 time-outs and much me screaming like some psychopath, I sent her to bed. And now it is very quiet up there, so I think she may just be very tired and possibly napping already.
After I sent her to bed I went into my room and cried my eyes out to Jonathan. What is the matter with me? How can I lose control--so utterly--over toast? I don't want Blue to be afraid of me. I don't want to be some crazy Mommy Dearest.
And he said all the wonderful things he should say: that I am fine. That it's normal to lose it sometimes. That he even heard Kathy Davenport of all people screech at little Sam the other day (which I have trouble picturing, but very reassuring nonetheless). That maybe children should be a little afraid of their parents. It's a good thing--then they might actually listen to you.
And I know all of this. I do. It's just... I hate losing control like that.
Especially over food. How many articles have I read and how many times have I told myself or Jonathan or anyone within speaking distance, "I will not make food an issue. Look at all the eating disorders out there. Look at Nicole Ritchie for God's sake! Where'd she go? ...blah blah blah... The minute you freak out and turn it into a battle for control, it's over. ...blah blah blah... Kids want control over something, and this is an area where they can have it. Just leave a kid alone and they will eat." Then what happened? Then I have Blue who is so tall for her age and so skinny and what do I do? I turn food into an issue.
It is so hard. I want to be Mommy. Nice, comforting Mommy. Not Mommy who goes all crazy and screechy over a piece of toast... I'm not saying I'm going to be one of those moms on "Nanny 911" who cannot discipline their children at all because they want their children to like them. I mean, I am stronger than that. And I know that rules are important. That little children actually need them, need consistency and ritual in their daily lives. I get that. It's just hard. How do you choose these rules? And how important are they? Does not eating breakfast really merit 2 time-outs and being sent to bed? What if it's my Blue not eating breakfast? My Blue smirking at me when I threaten time-out if she doesn't at least take a single bite?
I will stop being so judgmental of those poor women on "Nanny 911." I will. I will be more supportive of all moms in general from now on. Because it is hard. Haaaard.
One day, maybe my Blue will be a mother. And she will call me all upset like I called my mom this morning. And I will tell her, "It's going to be okay. Little Whatsit will be fine. Look how great you turned out (because she will turn out great, with or despite my help), and I was a mess. I even went psycho once over a piece of french toast!"
28 March 2007
baby
Little Lion Man has spoken. A real word:
baby
That kid is so self-absorbed! All he ever talks about is himself...
baby
That kid is so self-absorbed! All he ever talks about is himself...
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