Simple gifts

Between all the moments of peak excitement--visits, trips--were some smaller moments this summer that reminded us of the joy of simple gifts.

We returned to the college farm a few times to help out, and Edith got to help inaugurate their new composting system. A couple of months after pony camp, she was still a fan of shoveling poop.

Her favorite activity at the farm, however, was hanging out with the chickens. She could spend upwards of two hours in their coop, observing, playing, and hunting eggs.

In July Edith got us to go green and start drying our clothes on a line. It proved really easy to rig up, and so far Edith enjoys helping with the hanging. As for energy savings, check out this Slate quiz on domestic energy use that Uncle Peter put us onto. How sharp is your sense of the relative energy use of different household appliances? (Mine was pretty bad!)

Then there's always hanging out with pirates.

Not that these everyday pleasures were always enough to keep us cheerful. Edith has been out of school for 3 1/2 months now, and the summer admittedly got long there at the end of August, as we started getting out of bed a bit wearily each morning, wondering how to keep everyone happy and occupied for yet one more day, and how to get any adult work done around the edges.

But our last summer hurrah was the overnight camping trip Edith had begged for, a one-night trial run for us, and by and large it was a success. That is, we pitched a tent, slept in it (or at least, lay down in it through the dark hours of the night), kept ourselves dry, and fed ourselves over a campfire. Fall arrived on cue for Labor Day weekend, however, so after an evening thunderstorm cleared out, the weather dropped to about 40...and it hasn't risen above 72 yet. While it has been delicious, our crowd perhaps was a bit underprepared for wet and cold together on the night we were roughing it. Double sleeping bag layers didn't entirely do the trick, though hand-knit woolens were useful. But we made it through, and a majority of the family wants to do it again.

Once again, the church ranch proved a boon, as we camped at one of their primitive campsites on the property. It was really pretty--and we enjoyed good company from the ranch manager and his son during our campfire, too.

The ranch folks also loaned us a shmancy tent, tall enough to stand up in and wide enough for the girls to roll around

At some point during the night, Alice tried every sleeping bag in the tent, empty or occupied.

We enjoyed a woolens fashion show as the temperature dropped.

***

With Labor Day behind us, Edith will finally relinquish her self-declared status as a "nothing grader" and start school tomorrow. Last week we went in for Meet Your Teacher afternoon, a.k.a. Fill Out Forms afternoon and Parents Stock the Classroom with Supplies That Taxpayers Are Unwilling to Fund, Like Pencils and Paper, afternoon. On the latter I'll probably have more to say later. On the former, how is it that we are a highly advanced technological society in which people can call almost any information into their palm at the press of a thumbprint, and plenty of people out there could download all of a stranger's personal information with a few minutes' work...but when dealing with the education system, one still has to write out by hand one's name, partner's name, child's name, address, parnter's address, child's address, multiple phone numbers, child's birthday, insurance policy number, dentist's personal phone number, dog's allergies, and neighbor's cousin's back-up social security number...eight times over, when all of those things are already printed on the first sheet of paper--every friggin' year? Can an operation as large and established as a public school system really not come up with a way to store and retrieve this information as needed? There seems to me to be an obsessive, almost talisman-like quality to the ritual: as if someone hopes that if the main office, and  and the nurse, and the classroom teacher, and the phys ed teacher, and the bus driver, and the playground aide, and the lunchroom staff, all have their individual copies of all identifying information about every child on their individual clipboards at all times, maybe nothing bad will happen.

But I digress. Edith got good vibes from Meet Your Teacher Day, and despite all the forms, so did we. Mr. Pletsch is a new hire--and who am I to doubt first-year teachers?--who shook Edith's hand solemnly and welcomed her to first grade. In one of those fifty-steps-in-place/one-tiny-step-forward moments that made a mother's heart sing, Edith looked Mr. Pletsch in the eye, smiled, and said clearly, "It's nice to meet you."

For our own nerdy part, Tom and I were excited about what we learned is coming down the first-grade pike (pipe? I've never known, both seem to make sense). In addition to previous years' activities, the class will have Spanish three times a week, drama, public speaking practice, and recess before lunch so the restless kids don't throw all their food in the trash in a race to get to the playground. There's morning and afternoon recess, too. Homework for the first time, but only on Fridays, due by Tuesday, which seems just right--and congenial to the family schedule. Lots and lots of reading and math, and--a new one for Edith--spelling! I assume that means the conventional spellings on which the greater-English-speaking public agree. We'll see what Edith thinks about this push for conformity in an area in which her creative spirit has heretofore run free.

The morning after Meet Your Teacher, Edith was scheduled to go in for a few hours of pre-testing, which they do with all the kids at the beginning of the year. The schoolbus was due at 8am, but she was outside at the bus stop at 7:15. She sat there singing happily by herself (all the neighbor kids had other time slots) for 45 minutes. And she returned at lunch brimming with excitement at having gotten to read her teacher three books, define the word zucchini, draw a fairy in the woods, and get her vision and hearing checked. I think the kid is ready to go back.

Alice, of course, is just one step behind, not missing a thing. In fact, the first thing she said when she woke up in the tent on our camping trip was, "Mommy, I'm going to tell Mr. Pletsch I like camping."

She has also been just a step behind in our Very Harry Potter summer. Although no one has been reading the books to her directly, she has picked up plenty, after a fashion. The other day I came on her perusing a tome on the bed.

It's not uncommon these days to see our two year old, being nagged or teased by her big sister, stick out an arm holding a spoon and yell, Expelliarmus! (Tom and Alice also came up with a new spell -- Exsmelliarmpits! -- which you should hope an enemy doesn't use on you at the wrong moment.) The other day Alice overheard someone being mean and announced, "I'm going to send him to Oscar-bon." Thinking Sesame Street, it took me a moment to figure out what she meant. And one night at dinner she told me, "Mommy, I'm never going to kill you." Oh good, I said. "Yeah, and I'm not going to poke you either, because we don't do that to our friends. That's not nice." I nodded. "I'm just going to curse you!" she shouted with glee.  Er, I'm sure she meant that in the nicest way possible.