Odds and ends

• How might one spend a Saturday as a family in January in Colorado? Doing yard work. In short sleeves. We trimmed the bushes and bagged leaves. Some people were watering their lawns!
• The mothers' "playdate" happened! On Thursday four of us left our husbands to put the kids to bed and went downtown to a wine bar, where we sat on couches by the fire and managed to talk about things other than our kids*--politics, the State of the Union, careers, immigration policy, the Colorado art market, everyone's career, and how to do a house swap with people in Europe--for several hours. This is a small town, though: The guy behind the counter mentioned running into our husbands at a nearby bar when they were out for their boys' night last week. It was so nice to spend some time getting to know people our age socially. We really missed that during our years in Princeton, especially after we left grad school housing. Now we're hoping to alternate the men and women going out every few weeks. 
• Tom and Edith are deep into Lord of the Rings, both the movie trilogy and the first book. Amazingly, she doesn't find it too scary. In fact, she has started going straight to bed after watching the movie, no need for stories, songs, water, anything. If you had told me we'd ever see such a day, back when she was 3 and bedtime was agonizing, I would have fallen on the ground and kissed it.
• Tom has received his kevlar vest and standard-issue police coat (no badge). He has learned that if at any point he's in a squad car alone with someone who has been apprehended, and the doors and windows of the car are closed, anything the person tells him is privileged information, and he can't be summoned to testify about that conversation. But if the windows are open, the confidentiality clause doesn't apply. You wonder how these rules get made, no?
• Yesterday Alice and I were playing in the driveway, and she instructed me to sit down "criss-cross applesauce." I asked where she had learned that expression. In the nursery at church? She nodded:

"We sit criss-cross applesauce at holy time."

"Do you sit criss-cross applesauce at bunny school, too?"

She shook her head reproachfully.

"Mommy, we not have holy time at school!"

Guess she'll be fully ready for church and state distinction when she heads to kindergarten...

Incidentally, if you ask Alice about holy time, which she seems to really like, the first thing she'll tell you is that the Holy Spirit is there. They also read the Bible, receive a blessing, and sing songs about God the Creator--but she likes the Holy Spirit best.

*(Okay, there was some discussion of the kindergarten curriculum and how our kids are faring in school. I have a kindergartner and a toddler; S. has a kindergartner and a second grader, B. has a kindergartner and a third grader, and K. has a kindergartner, a toddler, a second grader, and a third grader. And she's the most calm and collected of all.)

Bunny school

Alice's first day of school...in Colorado! Of course, she did attend full-time daycare back in New Jersey, but that seems like a lifetime ago now--and at her age it almost is. She has only the haziest memories of that time in the infant class at Dupree. And so today felt like a first day all over again.

And boy, was she ready. The only tears came last night at dinner, when she wanted to go to school "RIGHT NOW!" and cried because she had to wait until morning. She has been talking for months about having a class of her own, like Edith's. Yesterday I asked Edith to tell me about her day at school, and when she didn't respond, Alice jumped in, "She read books. She read the book about the mitten. She learned about mittens." Alice based her report on her last visit to Edith's class to volunteer with Tom--but it spoke to how eager she is to go to school and have a day to report on herself.

At drop-off this morning she made a beeline for the shopping cart that had interested her when we first visited the school, and she never looked back. I could barely get a picture of her, she was so intent on getting into her playing.

She did fine all day, and when we arrived, we felt like we were meeting a newly grown-up little preschooler.

As you can see, her day included pigtails (yet another preschool teacher puts the lie to the idea that my daughters' hair is too fine for me to do anything with it). Alice also had acquired a new bead-and-pipe-cleaner necklace featuring her name, a first day gift from one of the teachers, and a bead-and-pipe-cleaner bracelet she made herself. Finally, there was her daily project, a Study in Yellow Paint on Cup Holder.

Alice seems perfectly happy with "bunny school"--so called because after our day spent touring a couple of preschools, we distinguished this one from the other by reference to the bunny in the kitchen, whom the girls had noticed first thing and were delighted to help feed. Indeed, that first visit clinched the daycare decision for us. The other place we visited had seemed perfectly fine, in a big, lots-of-kids, competent-friendly-teachers, well-organized-system wort of way. We liked that it had been founded in the 19th century by two nuns concerned that poor children in this rough-and-tumble territory get good care while their parents were off in the mines and that the school continues its commitment to serving all children regardless of ability to pay.

But then we visited bunny school, and we were struck by how immediately comfortable Alice was. The director is the owner of a larger arts-oriented preschool in town, but her first love was younger children, so ten years ago she founded a pre-preschool in her backyard, constructing several outbuildings and turning them into a lovely little, homestyle school for the 18-months-'til-pottytrained set. Somewhere halfway between a full-fledged daycare center and in-home care, bunny school has about 12-15 children, 4 staff, and several rooms, including an immacuate homey kitchen,...all sized to little people. When we visited, the director met us in the kitchen while she was feeding some children a snack and doing cot-linens laundry, and rather than start a formal tour, she invited us in simply to join them for awhile. Alice made straight for the refrigerator magnets and within a minute was chatting away about letters with the director, who got right down on the kitchen floor and chatted back. That was pretty much it...(especially after we determined that the price was even better than our bracket at the not-for-profit center).

So unlike in New Jersey, we don't get a written gram giving us the details of Alice's day, complete with a record of dirty diapers, time sleeping, and foods consumed. But at pickup the director told us that Alice had been a delight all day and seemed perfectly at home. In fact, by afternoon she was asking to be with the three year olds, and the teachers felt she was fully up to it (ah, the well-adjusted younger sibling), so she went with them to their little building after naptime, for preschool projects and play. That's where we picked her up, coiffed, bejeweled, chatting with little Henry, project in hand. She's ready to go back tomorrow.

Of course this was the first time Edith and Alice have attended two different schools, and it was sweet how eager Edith was to pick up Alice with us and to hear all about her day. She prodded her little sister with almost as many questions as we did.

Edith's own school excitement today was twofold. (1) She got to be class weather reporter for the day--her favorite classroom job, despite the fact that weather on the Front Range is hardly ever anything but sunny and dry. (Wish we could take your latest snowstorm for you, Northeast!) (2) The kindergartners' third-grade reading buddies came to work with them today, and Edith's buddy, Bella, surprised her by bringing her a bag of hand-me-down clothes. We were interested to see that our kid, who generally is indifferent to clothes except as they scratch, tug, or bother her, went through this bag of offerings from a big girl with avid attention, admiring every item and asking us to do the same. She has laid out the outfit she wants to wear tomorrow. It's a welcome change, given how hard it's getting to find something comfortable enough that she'll wear it without complaint, but what does it portend for junior high peer pressure?

And the reason Alice started bunny school today was that Tom started his internship with the CSPD. That's right: Our family minister spent a day in a squad car, learning about high-tech dispatch control centers, gang activity, suicides, jail, and bereavement assistance at the scene of an accident or crime. Arguably even more of a novel departure than bunnies and bracelets. Stay tuned.

Alicisms

Having said recently that Alice speaks clearly and has eliminated most mispronunciations, we wanted to document (and hang onto!) those she does still employ, while they last:

blub   As noted previously, that red stuff that doctors draw from your veins, or if you're a toddler, that oozes from your scrapes. Or if you're a Coloradan, that's apt to well from your nose in the dry air.

snoggy  Fortunately (and knock on wood), we've had only a few blubby noses this winter, and even fewer snoggy ones.

privery  When Alice uses the potty, a concept with which she continues to dabble, she wants her privery.

slippely  Be careful: the remaining ice on the sidewalks is quite slippely.

ronkin' chair  Alas, this pronunciation is already headed toward extinction, which is too bad for such a cozy place to snuggle.

crackamole  I completely agree with Alice that the avocado-based condiment for chips or burritos is crackamole.

tawbing  a.k.a. skyscraper. Though in Colorado, even 8 or 9 stories might earn your edifice recognition as a tawbing.

out the crunky  There are not usually any tawbings out the crunky, where we sometimes drive on Sunday afternoons.

***

Playdates for everyone! 

On my birthday, we hosted the family down the street for dinner. The woman in the family shares my birthday, and her husband's birthday is the next day. Their youngest daughter is Alice's age, and their second youngest daughter is Edith's age...though Edith gets along best with the two boys, a first and third grader. Any way you slice it, everyone had a friend over.

A few days earlier, Edith had had a playdate with another neighbor, a boy from her kindergarten class. We actually share a surprising number of connections with his family as well: Not only are Edith and M. in kindergarten together, and not only do they live around the corner, but M.'s father is my colleague at CC, and his mother and Tom went to the Fletcher School together, earning their Master's degrees in diplomacy the same year. That said, we hadn't seen too much of them since school started. But after Edith's playdate, the father called to ask if Tom wanted to go out for a beer with him and two other guys from the neighborhood, both of them (incidentally) fathers of kindergartners--one of them the same father we'd had over for the joint birthday celebration. At dinner that evening, Edith and Alice were sympathetic to the idea that as the only boy in the household, Daddy needed some time for playdates with other boys, so he didn't go nutty surrounded by all girls all the time.

But now the mothers are thinking about their own girls' night out...

Meanwhile, Alice may soon be having her own regular interactions with other kids, as we think we've found a good childcare setting for her, to begin when Tom starts his part-time internship at the end of the month. Details still in the works. Stay tuned.

ML(N)K

I've said Alice is a little repetition machine, but even so, sometimes she stuns us. She's really getting into letters and is throwing around the word "spell," since I think she's heard the rest of us using it frequently with Edith. Mom-mom gave her a Little People zoo for Christmas, one animal for each letter, and it's among her favorite gifts. This evening she and Tom were playing with it while Edith and I read, and from the other room I heard her say, "G...G is for giraffe...What letter for rhinoceros? R!" and so on.

But then at dinner she really got me. Edith was wearing her Boger Elementary School T-shirt (a few years ago a school was named for my great-great-grandfather, one of the first superintendents of schools in his North Carolina county), and Alice wanted to know what Edith's shirt said. I told her.

"Boger! Boger Mommy!" she said. Just this morning we'd been going over who had what last name in our family.

Then she asked, "Daddy...What spell Daddy?"

I guessed that she meant,"What's Daddy's last name?" and told her: Lank.

"Daddy Lank! L-N-K, Lank!" she shouted. While my mouth hung open.

***

As far as I can tell, Martin Luther King has not been mentioned at Edith's school. This week they're studying penguins, and next week they're focusing on Jan Brett's The Mitten. Last weekend a friend from my childhood hometown visited us with her fiance. She's also a transplant to Colorado, and she was talking about her efforts to find something to do for MLK Day, as we agreed that growing up in the school system and town we did, singing "We Shall Overcome" regularly at school assemblies and participating in MLK and black history plays and activities from age four onward, we found it odd not to have any celebration.

Now that Edith attends an overwhelmingly white school, I especially want to do something to celebrate the day with her. I've combed the local events listings, and the best I can find--actually, the only thing I can find appropriate for a young child (i.e. not a scholarly address to a university community)--is a big MLK march in Denver. But to be honest, getting our crew up to Denver at the crack of dawn would be a bit of a feat for us, and I'm not sure a march in the cold on too little sleep is going to inspire our kiddos.

Does anyone have suggestions for ways to honor the day meaningfully with a kindergartner, in a predominantly white city, without public events in which to participate?

A gift

 

Our school district's winter vacation finally ends tomorrow, so Edith will be headed back to school in the morning and can deliver this belated Christmas present to her teacher...unless they have a snow day.

***

A quiz. We asked each daughter what she'd done in Sunday School this morning. Who gave us which information?

(A) Another kid pushed me, and Miss Morgan asked him not to push her friend. Brian cried for no reason. We had project time, and we learned that Jesus was baptized by John, but John thought he should be baptized by Jesus instead. Between services we watched "Frosty the Snowman."

(b) "Bada boo-jee."

Ask and ye shall receive...

We were lucky that the storm that crept up on us December 30 and 31--not even mentioned in forecasts two days earlier--did not prevent Mor-mor, Grandpa, and Uncle Peter from making it out for their visit safely and on time. It did prevent us from getting up the hill to our neighborhood from the main road, after a harrowing one-hour, five-mile drive home from downtown. As a result Tom spent a full day at the dealer getting a set of snow tires put on the car that cost as much as a used car itself might have. But thank goodness, they did the trick. My snow envy did not factor in our slip-sliding all over the Front Range.

Alice and Grandpa

Once we had the snow tires, we had a harder time with the mountains indoors than out!

Stymied by 2,000 pieces, most of them purple wildflowers

A tour of campus was the chance to take a photo we've meant to get since moving here. I've said the college is welcoming of staff and faculty kids, no?

 Incidentally, for the curious:

Edith went home and promptly created corners around the house for everyone else, lest we be left out. She even proposed to open a company selling individual corners.

At the Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park -- a dinosaur lover's paradise

Our first visit to U.S. Olympic Training Headquarters, right downtown, and well worth it

An afternoon with Uncle Bob and Aunt Debbie, down from Denver

Spring training begins