A big day and little doings

When we went around the room sharing bits about our day this evening, Edith told us that she'd had a "pretty big day." First, she had been chosen to lead the pledge of allegiance. She doesn't actually know the pledge of allegiance beyond "...the United States of America," but that doesn't seem to matter.

Next, she had been the first to spot one of the class's "sight words" in the daily message from Mrs. Hammel on the board, and she got to use the see-through fly swatter to swat it, then draw a circle around it. Thanks to Edith, the whole class was alerted to the presence of is in the morning message. "And that was the longest sight word anyone spotted, too. The others were...a and I. But is is a whole letter longer."

Finally, she screwed up the courage to slide down the pole on the playground. In the past, she explained, she'd watched other kids do it and thought she wanted to try. But then she'd get to the top, put her hands on the pole, and be too scared to wrap her feet around it and drop. However, today she was talking to "a girl who seems kind of nice and I like to talk to her--her name is Kayla, I think," when Kayla went down the pole. Edith knew that if she wanted to continue her conversation, she'd have to follow Kayla or be separated from her. So down she went. And she liked it!

"So you can see, it was a pretty big day for me."

May we all always appreciate the joy of such ordinary big days.

Meanwhile Alice didn't trumpet the fact herself, but Tom considered it a big event that she "peeped and pooped" in the potty. Otherwise, she and Tom enjoyed their usual routine: drop Mommy at work (opening the back window so Mommy can lean in and kiss Alice in her carseat), then do errands (a favorite new word of Alice's), go to a playground, and go hiking before an afternoon nap.

Alice has gotten rather short-changed with all the kindergarten excitement on this blog, so here are a few updates about her.

She currently enjoys announcing our ages, which she has memorized, even if she has no idea what she means:

"Ali one!"
"Edie five!"
"Bailey [the neighbor girl] five!"
"Mommy firty-four!" (Note: It sounds too close to forty-four for comfort.)
"Daddy eight!"

Sometimes you'll have a conversation like this:

"Alice, you're a sweetheart."
"No, I no sweetheart, I darling."
"Yes, you're darling."
"No, Mommy darling, I honey."
"Are you my honey?"
"No, I one."

She is an avid fan of the Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird and the Sesame Street Platinum Hits compilation CD, much as Edith was of The Sound of Music and the Sound of Music soundtrack at the same age. Every morning, the vociferous requests come in this order: 1. Mommy milk! 2. Beffast! 3. Big Bird!

Thanks to Sesame Street Alice now sprinkles daily conversation with some fantastic words, including amphibian and easygoing. She talks pretty much non-stop.

She also notices everything. Today we passed a building on campus that we'd never been by before, but she got an obscured sidelong glance through a window and announced, "Gating!" I looked, and sure enough, I could glimpse just a bit of the curved white wall at the end of an ice rink. "Deedee gating. Ali too little gating."

She's even taking notice when you don't realize she's watching or listening. Tonight on the way to dinner she started walking in a funny, crouched, cautious way. I asked what she was doing, and she said, "I careful, I no slip on rocks hiking." They hadn't discussed it, but it seemed that from her perch in the baby backpack she had observed Tom's gait shift on loose gravel during their hikes.

She is as social as can be, calling a big hello to the neighbors or waving at my colleagues with a grin when she sees them around town. When the family picks me up on campus and we walk around, she's delighted to announce "Oooh, lots of people!" whenever we run into a cluster of students. In researching childcare options we've talked briefly about in-home options but are pretty sure Alice will be happiest where there are plenty of other children (all other things being equal, of course), so we're leaning heavily toward daycare settings.

She is working on color words, mostly in the context of shouting whenever she spots a Jeep. (Edith and Tom have been pointing out Jeeps to me, and it didn't take long for Alice to join in the game.) White Jeep! Red Jeep! She's right about 25% of the time, but she's perpetually confident in her pronouncement. (Incidentally, those from households that use "yellow blue things" will appreciate that Alice's favorite shirt is the one she calls her "blue shirt"...that is, her yellow blue shirt.)

Unlike Edith, who never went through a why stage, we're starting to get whys from Alice when our conversation has not sufficiently satiated her appetite for interaction and information. More often she'll ask what? or who dat?, the latter applied to objects as well as people. Our answers will often prompt a knowing, Oh! Yeah!, as if we'd reminded her of something she'd forgotten.

She's a happy little thing but opinionated. Her squeals are piercing when we don't sit in the chair she wants us to sit in, or when she thinks a meal should be over or someone should be answering her question or the sun shouldn't be shining in the window. As a youngest, she's determined to make herself heard.

Taking her cues from Edith, she has started demanding stories in the car. One day I told a silly tale about a princess who takes a trip from her mountain home to the sea to go fishing, and since then Alice has demanded, "Mommy, tell dory princess tuna!" She and Edith have conspired to wrest the Princess Tuna chronicles out of me.

Otherwise, they've started entertaining each other every now and then, which is marvelous. One night they played with Edith's model horse collection in her room, Edith conducting an elaborate fantasy story while Alice was just happy to be included and allowed to touch the toys. Another evening Edith was acting out an oceanic adventure on a campus quad when she called to Alice on the other side of the lawn, "Get out of the boat!" and Alice promptly called back, "Oh yeah! Ali get in da water!"

Those moments reconfirm a sense I've had recently that we have passed into a measurably easier phase of parenting. (Knock on wood, knock on wood.) When you walk around a town with a baby and young toddler in tow, or a toddler and preschooler, so many people stop to smile and admonish you to appreciate these, the best years, because they go so fast. Harried and stressed as I tried to keep track of my offspring and make conversation, I'd nod and mumble pleasantries while silently wondering whether the person who stopped me had suffered amnesia about their children's toddlerhood or whether I really failed to appreciate how much harder it gets later.

Well, adolescence may offer its own challenges and playing chauffeur to kids in multiple extracurriculars may prove draining in its way, but right now we're at a point where I can look back and say definitively that the present is easier than what came before. I used to fantasize about the day when at least one of my children would be able to get into a car and buckle herself in, thinking what a huge difference that one small change would make. At last we're there, and in fact, it does make a huge difference in our hourly quality of life. Not only can Edith get herself in the car, she can get on a bus alone. Indeed, someone else takes her to school and brings her home. She's happy to go and happy to return. She can play outside with her friends and watch for cars and be trusted not to throw herself off the top of the jungle gym. She can get herself a spoon and a yogurt, can open the container, and can throw away the trash when she's done. She can dress and undress herself (even if she still needs prompting). She climbs into a bunk bed each night on her own. After stories we can leave the room while she's still awake, without scratching her back or changing CDs or singing an endless round of songs. And in the morning she wakes to an alarm, gets out of bed without yelling for us, and comes to say hello.

At 21 months Alice is sweetheart, darling, and honey all rolled into one. But toddlers are also unrelenting work--a combination of intense engagement, constant vigilance, and sheer physical labor. I look at one of the people we've met here with children younger than ours, a three year old and a seven month old. And I can see that she's in a different place than we are, always a bit distracted and bleary and beleaguered, even as she contrives to function as an adult and a professional. That still describes us plenty of the time, too. But suddenly there's a bit of freedom to stretch and breathe here and there. It's a good feeling. I'll try to appreciate it, because it goes so fast. And because it makes for a series of pretty big days, one after another.

A week in bulletpoints

Note: I started this post a week ago but took five days to complete it. The delay is symptomatic of the new pace of life, even if it means the days referred to are now the week before last.


Last Sunday: We get up before church and attend an annual balloon launch here in town. I think it's beautiful; the rest of the family is in a rather foul mood for having gotten up and out the door by 6:30am.

Monday: My first day of class. I'm now teaching on the "block plan," an intense schedule in which class meets every day, Monday through Friday, for three hours...like a graduate seminar on steroids. After my first class I have lunch with a colleague who started here when her kids were about Alice's age, and I ask how she did it. She describes going to bed at the same time as her kids, then getting up in the middle of the night to get back to work. I think this sounds horrible. In the evening I keep my Princeton schedule and after the kids go to bed, return to work until 1 am.


Tuesday: Edith's first day of school -- see previous post.

Wednesday: Edith's first church choir practice. Seems to go well. While there I introduce myself to the adult choir director and ask about joining. He is warm, but after I read the 12-page booklet in 9-point type detailing the rules of the choir (which include applying for a leave of absence when one needs to miss several rehearsals and not looking bored or sleepy while sitting in the chancel), I realize this is not a commitment I can make at this time. Even if I did have the 3-6 hours/week for rehearsal, I don't think I can promise not to look sleepy.

I'm too tired after teaching all morning, prepping in the afternoon, and spending the evening with the kids to go back to work after they're asleep. 


Thursday: I get up at 4am to finish prepping for the day's class.

Open House at the elementary school. In this district, you bring your kids to Open House and let them show you around. I get a 20-minute lesson on mastering the monkey bars before we even get inside. It's amazing the confidence and sense of ownership with which she moves around the school after just a few days.

Friday: I get up at 2:30am to finish prepping for the day's class.

Weekends really mean something at this college.

Saturday: Edith's first ice skating lesson. Prompted by this exposure to skating last spring. The class starts by chanting a mantra, "We love falling! We love falling!" And yes, she loves it.

Incidentally, if you know ice skating, you know we're in pretty elite skating country here. Over Edith's head hang banners listing local skating club members who have gone on to win significant competitions...

We spend the afternoon at a local waterfall. It still blows me away that we can go places like this for a casual afternoon outing.

We'll see how many more such outings I'm awake for.

An American institution

Yesterday Edith joined the ranks of American public schoolchildren. Some Americans get misty-eyed when the flag rises over a baseball game; others get goosebumps on hearing the strains of "God Bless America." Elite liberal academics supposedly are cynical about it all, detached and critical and forever ironic.

So let me say here and now, as an American cultural historian, that my country's system of public education brings out the unapologetic, goose-bumpy, misty-eyed patriot in me.

 I know there are serious problems with American schools. Most unforgiveable is the fact that the quality of a child's education depends on how much adults in his or her neighborhood are able to pay in taxes, a grossly unfair scheme. There are crowded, underfunded schools across the country. There are violent schools where kids aren't safe, and there are students whose predominant experience of school is alienation or boredom. There are teachers who aren't adequately trained for their jobs or who lack the talent to teach effectively. And almost all teachers are underpaid for what they do.

Nevertheless. I find the premise of the American public school system amazing and on balance, the reality is impressive. As a country we commit to educating any child who walks in the door, no matter the background he comes from, the language he speaks, or the medical conditions or disabilities he brings with him. Last winter when we were registering Edith for kindergarten in Princeton (before we knew we were moving), I watched the school administrators engage cheerfully and competently with parents who came in speaking three different languages--Spanish, Korean, and Chinese--in the hour that I was there. We have friends whose children live with extraordinary physical and mental challenges, and we have seen how the educational system makes room for them and figures out how best to serve them. We have friends and relatives who work in that system meeting incredible and often unexpected needs in the children they teach and care for, every day.

Even in dealing with less urgently needy children, the teachers and administrators I know exhibit incredible energy, creativity, compassion, and dedication to a daunting job. I look at Edith's kindergarten teacher, in a well-supplied classroom with a skilled principal and multiple support staff, and I still marvel at all she will do to mold twenty-five young children into responsible, functioning members of society. I know that some parents wring their hands when they think of schools overlooking their children's individuality, teaching to a common denominator, treating all students as part of an undifferentiated group. Certainly I don't want my daughters to get lost in the shuffle, or to be taught by people who fail to appreciate the most important elements of who they are. However, I think one of the great things about school is precisely that it teaches a child she is one among many, that it is imperative to figure out how to operate as part of a broader civic community and to contribute to it. And if that process is painful at times, in the end she may discover it is deeply rewarding.

At one point in graduate school we were grappling with the question of assimilation. How exactly have different immigrant populations come to feel part of the American body politic? What is the process? I was musing on this question to my mother, wondering about our Scandinavian ancestors on the plains in the Midwest, removed from urban culture, not speaking English. Mom said without hesitation that her grandmother and great-grandmother's generation came to feel part of America by attending public school. They learned not only the language but poetry, narratives, and cultural customs that allowed them to claim their place in society. Yes, I know the question of assimilation is deeply fraught. Much of my professional work involves examining cross-cultural encounters and deciding how to understand and evaluate them.

Be that as it may. At the end of the day I believe wholeheartedly in a free, public school system. I believe in its fundamental educational and civic mission. I believe in its centrality to who we are as a country and what we can achieve as a society. And I'm ridiculously excited that my oldest child is now a part of it.

As for Edith, she's just excited to ride the schoolbus.

It should be apparent that everyone chose their own outfits this morning. When a storm started brewing over all things sartorial, I let go of my first-day perfectionism and decided that sending Edith off in good spirits was more important than making sure she wore clean, wrinkle-free, matching clothes and functional shoes (never mind a cute new outfit). Alice meanwhile was hopeful that "Alice ride Mommy's lap schoolbus."

Headed to the bus stop. As you can tell from these pictures, I'm still trying to figure out how to photograph in the intense Colorado sunlight.

She never looked back. 


As for us, we held it together until we got in the car and turned on NPR. They were interviewing tearful mothers on the street in Boston as they said goodbye to their college freshmen. We laughed with the freshman apologizing for his mother's three-day crying jag...and then we choked up, casting sheepish glances at each other.

Waiting for sister's return at the end of the day. About five seconds after the bus left in the morning, Alice started asking, "Edith all done schoolbus?" It may or may not be coincidental that she sank her teeth into Edith's shoulder upon their reunion.

Unlike my first day of public school, when I was dismayed to run out of fingers and toes on which to keep track of the things I wanted to tell my parents, we had to pull details out of Edith. At first she put off our battery of questions by explaining that she needed a break, "until my head perks up a bit." Fair enough. But eventually we resumed interrogation and so pieced together a recap:

The day started a bit boring but then got fun. She can't remember what it was that was boring--or fun. Edith's kindergarten is like Ramona Quimby's kindergarten: they have two boys with the same name, whom they have to call Dylan P. and Dylan G.* It's like Ramona Quimby's first grade, too: they are making art projects to display in the classroom for Open House night. The most surprising rule is that you can't play tag on the playground equipment; you have to go to the open field. The most disappointing rule is that you can't climb on top of the monkey bars. (E: "Bother. As Pooh would say.") Edith could recall which animal was associated with each letter of the alphabet on the classroom wall. The class listened to three stories, all of them about the first day of school. One described someone feeling nervous on the first day of kindergarten...and it turned out to be the teacher! Edith's teacher told the class that she always gets nervous on the first day of school. Edith drew us a picture of a house with a horse and the six-headed Scylla inside--only three of the heads were tucked underneath where you couldn't see them. She forgot her lunchbox in the cafeteria.

Most important, she liked it.

*Note: That's nothing compared to Mommy's class. In a seminar of 20 I have two Roberts, two Jameses, two Chrises, two Maxes, and two Wills, which I think must be some kind of newbie hazing. But at least I don't have to label their cubbies.

Music to a parent's ears

This past week Edith attended kindergarten orientation, then returned to school a couple of days later for pre-testing/ assessments. On Friday we decided to run by the school to purchase pre-paid grocery cards, for which the PTA gets a small return. I went into the office to get them while Tom sat in the car with the girls. Later Edith told us,

"I thought we were going to school for some activity, like more tests for me. I love it so much that when I found out I wasn't staying, I was pretty bummed. Yeah, I love it so much."

Addenda

• Edith is up to $14 in stuffed animal sales. I'm floored.
• We've been to kindergarten orientation and it looks promising on multiple fronts: friendly teacher, whose voice sounds like that of Edith's beloved preschool teacher, Ms. Chrissy; friendly kids, eight of whom live on our block(!); lots of neat stuff in the classroom; fantastic playground; and a bunch of parents who seem like possible friends for us, too. One of these parents turned out to be Tom's former classmate from the Fletcher School at Tufts...in addition to being our neighbor and the spouse of one of my new colleagues.

The school playground

• Speaking of our neighborhood, here are new angles on the view that we've happened on in the last few days. I hope I never get over my awe at the beauty of this place. I've started biking to work, and I wish you all could be along for the commute--it's breathtaking (in more ways than one).

Looking toward downtown, where the college is. My bike ride each day is from near where I'm standing as photographer  to the high rises in the distance. Guess whether it's easier biking to work or back home?

Our neighborhood can be seen in the foothills here: above the highway bisecting the picture, to the right of the red rocks.

Looking down on Garden of the Gods