Category Archives: School

Are You Ready?: A Countdown to School

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It’s all over—the trips to Wheeling and Rehoboth, art camp, drama camp and science camp, afternoons spent in the wading pool and evenings spent listening to the whir of the ice cream maker and anticipating the cold, sweet treats soon to emerge from it. Well, we’ll probably keep playing in the pool and making ice cream for a while longer. We can expect at least another month of hot weather, but Noah’s summer vacation is over. He walked through the gate as a second-grader for the first time this morning.

Here’s how he spent his last week of the lazy, crazy days of summer.

Tuesday, Seven Days:

“Go to bed and get up on ‘school time.’ Your body may have adjusted to later nights and sleeping in. Start now to get to sleep a little earlier each night, and get up a little earlier each morning, so that your first week won’t be so difficult.”

Betty Debham, “Are You Ready? Get Organized For School.” The Mini Page, The Washington Post, August 10, 2008.

Noah barreled into our room at 6:40 calling for Beth to play with him. Beth was wearing earplugs and either didn’t hear him or wasn’t able to rouse herself. She lay still. Noah kept yelling. I slapped her gently across the legs in hopes of getting her moving so Noah would leave the room before he woke June. No luck. June started to cry.

“Why is she crying?” Noah asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Finish up summer reading projects.”

I read three chapters of Dragon Slayers’ Academy #7 (The Wheel of Misfortune) to Noah. We were planning to visit the library in the afternoon to get Noah’s library reading log stamped and to pick up his last set of prizes. The log was supposed to be stamped at pre-determined intervals. We’d gone late for the second one (Beth somehow talked them into stamping it anyway) but we’d been there so recently that Noah was short a book for the third stamp. He was picky about what books went on the log. I don’t fully understand why he wanted to include some books he reads and not others, but I assume there was some complicated reasoning behind it.

I told him if he wanted his prizes today he’d need to include a book he’d read recently and not put on the log. How about the poetry book, the book of trickster tales, or maybe something he’d read to June, like The Lorax? I braced for his protests, working out counterarguments before he’d made any arguments. “Let’s put down The Lorax,” he said cheerfully. Noah is nothing if not full of surprises.

“Get ready for homework.”

As I was getting ready to take June to the bedroom for our nap, Noah asked me to make a list of things he could do during the nap. We brainstormed a bit and I suggested playing with his snap circuits kit, hopping on his hopping ball, and reading The Guinness Book of World Records. Noah said, “How about handwriting practice?” This was something we’d discussed recently. Noah’s first-grade English teacher asked us to work with him on his handwriting this summer and we hadn’t it done yet. Noah wanted to type and print out the alphabet so he could copy it. I said I thought writing it three times through would be enough for today. We went to the computer and after some deliberation he chose a font. Then he asked a lot of questions about how much space to leave between the letters, what to do if he ran out of room, etc.

After June’s nap I checked the sheet. Other than the typed line of letters it was blank.

“What goes in your backpack?”

As we left for the library, Noah noticed several bottle caps and some assorted rocks, all covered with yellow chalk dust, on the porch. “What are these?” he said.

“I think they were in your backpack. Beth emptied it out so she could wash it.” But why did he have bottle caps in his backpack, I wondered. Is it possible it hadn’t been cleaned out since he was in nursery school? That year his best friend collected bottle caps and for a while Noah did, too, in order to give them to Ethan.

“Oh, I remember,” Noah said. “They were from a game I was playing with Sasha.” I had a hazy recollection of the two of them playing at being geologists collecting jewels. It was sometime after they were farmers. It was in the past year anyway, I thought with some relief.

“Get plenty of exercise. Many kids in the United States don’t get enough exercise. Are you one of them? Here are some quick ideas to get you moving so you will be in shape for school.”

It’s a forty-minute walk to the Long Branch Library (http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Apps/Libraries/branchinfo/lb.asp) from our house. As we approached it, I was hot and tired. “This is my least favorite part of the walk,” I said. Most of the walk is quite pleasant; we go along a shady path that runs by the creek. The last stretch, though, is steep uphill on a crumbly asphalt path. It can be a struggle to get the stroller up it.

Noah grinned at me and dashed up the hill. I was only halfway up when he reached the crest, wiped his brow and said. “That was hard.” He sat down on the grass to wait for me as I slowly pushed the stroller up the rest of the hill.

When we left the library with his new rubber ball, a gift certificate for a free book from Barnes and Noble and a Curious George book we’d checked out, he ran all the way down the hill. “That was fun!” he yelled from the bottom.

“Your mom or dad may be getting your clothes ready for school. You can help. Try on last year’s tops and bottoms and make a pile of the ones that no longer fit.”

I was sorting the too-small socks I’d culled from Noah’s sock drawer the day before into piles based on size so I could put them away with his old clothes in the basement. At least two-thirds of the socks in his drawer were too small and the smallest pair (other than some of June’s that ended up in there by mistake) was marked 3-4 years. Unlike the backpack, his sock drawer really hadn’t been cleaned out since nursery school. He helped out by trying on pair after pair of socks. It was a hot day and he was sweaty so we powdered his feet to help him slip them in and out of the socks.

We never do a big back-to-school clothes shopping for Noah. We just buy clothes piecemeal during the year as he seems to need things, but over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve cleaned out his sock, underwear and pajama drawers. It feels like a small step away from chaos and toward organization.

“De-stress yourself. Sometimes the start of school can be a stressful time for kids…Ask yourself what is making you feel nervous or worried…Ask your mom, dad, a teacher or another adult you trust to help you.”

I could hear Noah crying in his room as I nursed June. I got away as soon as I could and came into his room.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Noah sobbed.

“Nothing hurts?” I said.

“No.”

“So it’s in your mind and not your body?” I said coming closer to the bed. “Do you want me to cuddle with you a while?”

He said yes and I slid into his bed next to him. He said he didn’t know what was wrong, he just felt upset. “I’m not usually like this. I’m usually pretty content when I’m falling asleep,” he said.

“Are you worried about school starting?” I asked. He said he didn’t know. Noah’s mentioned a few times recently that last year some second-graders told him that all the second-grade teachers were mean. This has been bothering him.

I actually remember noticing in high school and college that a disproportionate number of my friends said they had mean second-grade teachers. Always second grade, not first or third or fifth. Later I read that seven-year-olds are developmentally likely to feel unjustly put upon so I started to think maybe second-grade teachers aren’t any meaner than other teachers, but just perceived that way by their moody charges. (I want to say for the record, though, that my second-grade teacher really was mean.) I did not share this theory with Noah. Instead I told him that it was okay. Sometimes we have feelings and we don’t understand why. I wondered if we should dig further. I decided against it. I’d mentioned school starting in a week and he hadn’t really bitten. Plus while I was thinking about all this he’d started chatting about Club Penguin and an upcoming event on the site and he seemed to have cheered up.

“Do you feel a little better?” I asked. He said, yes, that thinking about Club Penguin made him forget “the mystery of the upsetation.”

He’s a mystery sometimes, my boy, and the answers aren’t all found on back to school checklists.

Wednesday, Six Days:

Wednesday Noah was out of sync and out of sorts for much of the morning. He broke his bedrail. He crashed into things, hurting himself and June repeatedly. June poked him in the eye while they were roughhousing. He knocked her over on the sidewalk as we were waiting for a bus and bloodied her knee. He kept sneaking up on her and yelling, startling her over and over until she said, “I don’t like you, Noah!” and then he looked wounded. I told him what she meant was that she didn’t like his behavior, not that she didn’t like him. (I remembered how she’d spontaneously thrown her arms around his legs two days earlier and said, “I love my Noah!”)

He came into the bedroom around two o’clock while June and I were napping to inform me he felt sick and thought he might throw up. I didn’t think he would. He almost never does when he says he will. Ten minutes later he was watching television and even ate some pretzels.

As I walked him to Sasha’s house for a play date later in the afternoon, I asked him how his stomach felt. It was fine. Did he remember how he’d been upset the night before? Yes. Did he have any idea why he’d been upset? No, and he didn’t seem particularly interested in the question either. He was in a good mood and he wanted to tell me about the plot of the Curious George book we got at the library the day before (Curious George Goes to the Hospital). He’d been reading it during June’s nap. June was sitting in the stroller, holding said book in her lap and paging through it. It had pictures of doctors and nurses and hospital scenes so she was well pleased with it. I gave up quizzing Noah and listened to his version of the little monkey’s medical adventures after swallowing a puzzle piece. At least it was clear what was wrong with George.

Thursday, Five Days:

I had the kids dressed and ready for our morning outing, a walk to Starbucks, when Noah asked, “Can we go to the playground instead?”

I hesitated. I wanted a latte, but how could I say, “Forget running around and getting some exercise, it’s time for empty calories”?

June, already strapped into the stroller, looked up at me. “Where we going?” she asked.

“To the playground,” I said. Noah had only five days of vacation left and we’d been doing errands (grocery store, Co-op, two libraries) all week. It was time for some play.

I let June out of the stroller about fifty yards from the playground when Noah took off running. She cried, “I want to walk!” She didn’t walk, though, she ran, trailing her brother. Their tanned, scabbed, mosquito-bitten legs flew down the path.

June headed for the slides and the twisty ladder, but when she heard Noah splashing around in the creek, she wanted to join him. Of course, she wanted to wade straight into the deepest part of the creek. I was trying to convince her to stay at the water’s edge and throw rocks, when Noah announced, “I have to go to the bathroom.” The creek always does this to him. I glanced back at the playground. If we’re alone I let him stand between the boulders and pee against a rock, but we weren’t alone.

“Is it an emergency? Should we go home?” I asked him. I wondered if this outing was doomed. He said, no, he thought he could wait.

June contented herself with throwing rocks into the creek for a while, and then we waded in the shallows together. When she’d tired of that, she clambered up onto the shore and practiced climbing her favorite tree. Noah followed her and gave it a try himself. He looked big in the tiny tree.

On the way home, Noah said he wanted lunch at noon sharp because that’s when he eats at school. I asked if he knew if he was still on the same lunch shift and he said, yes, the kindergartners, first graders and second graders eat together. I said that made sense, to divide the school in half. Slowly it dawned on him. “So next year I will be in the older half of the school?” The idea seemed to please him.

At home, we watched Sesame Street and made a batch of oatmeal muffins. Noah had picked out the recipe to bake and send to YaYa as a get-well present. We reserved half the batch for ourselves and to celebrate fresh muffins from the oven, I made scrambled eggs and veggie bacon for lunch.

It was a good morning, but after lunch, Noah said his stomach hurt.

As he had the day before, he recovered quickly. Elias came over to play in the afternoon and when his mom came to pick him up and asked Noah if he was excited about school starting, he surprised me by saying yes.

The mail came late so it was almost bedtime when we received the postcard that gave us Noah’s teacher and room assignments for the coming school year. He has Señora C in the morning and Ms. G (his after school science teacher from last year) in the afternoon. “So you know her already,” Beth said, sounding relieved.

“Did you like her?” I asked. I knew he did.

“She was nice in science class,” Noah said carefully, as if unsure what the second grade classroom might bring out in her.

Beth started suggesting questions we could ask his teachers at the Open House on Monday: “Are you mean? Do you hate children? Do you eat children?”

Noah laughed, and then he said doubtfully, “Are you really going to ask those questions?”

Beth assured him she would not.

Friday, Four Days:

It was 4:45, the end of an unusual day. Beth had stayed home from work to supervise a FiOs installation. June skipped her playgroup because she’d been sick during the night, though she seemed perfectly healthy once she woke up in the morning. Sasha came over to play in the afternoon (we squeezed as many play dates as we could into the waning days of summer). He will be in Noah’s morning class, the first time they’ve been in a regular class together. (They met in an after school science class in kindergarten and have been to science camp together two summers in a row.) Beth foresees some headaches for Señora C keeping them from talking in class. Once he found out he’d be with Sasha in the morning and that he had Ms. G in the afternoon, Noah seemed more cheerful about school. We let Noah and Sasha play on the computer even though Noah was already a half hour over his limit for the day. I’d done the same thing the day before when Elias was over. It was the end of summer and I was getting lax.

June and I had just returned from the post office where we’d gone to mail YaYa’s muffins and some hand-me-down baby clothes for my cousin Holly’s new baby, Annabelle (http://thedawgrun.blogspot.com/). Beth and Noah were in the kitchen, having just finished making orangeade and vanilla ice cream. Noah was scraping out the inside of the ice cream maker with a spatula and licking it.

I asked him if he’d like to go to the SCORE! Learning Center (http://www.scorelearning.com/) that evening and pick up the prizes for that summer reading log. The representative buttonholed Noah in a bookstore back in June. I was reluctant to have him participate because he was already enrolled in his school and library summer reading clubs but she won him over with talk of prizes. When we went to hear the sales-pitch, we were pleasantly surprised to find it was more low-key than I expected, not a hard sell at all. Plus we got Noah’s reading level tested for free. We knew one of the prizes he could choose that night was a coupon for free pizza, so if we went now we could go out for pizza afterward. He’d have to give up his hour of television, though, because the center closed at six. He surprised me by saying yes.

It was a long drive to the center and a long drive from there to pizza, but by 6:15, we were seated at zPizza (http://www.zpizza.com/), and Noah was eating his free pineapple pizza. Beth asked him what was his favorite book he read this summer. He wasn’t sure. Dragon’s Egg, I suggested. He’d read that one twice, starting it over almost as soon as we finished it, even though he knew he couldn’t double-count it on the logs. No, he thought it was the Dragon Slayers’ Academy series, but he couldn’t settle on a single title. He started to reminisce about his favorite scenes. Free pizza is nice, but listening to him laugh anew about jokes we read weeks ago, I thought that on some level he knows that reading is its own reward.

Saturday, Three Days:

Beth took Noah for a back-to-school haircut and to REI to buy him a rain jacket. (He lost his at school last spring.) When they returned, Noah said he wanted to go to the swimming pool. It seemed like a good idea—we haven’t swum nearly enough this summer—but Beth called and it was closed for a meet until six.

I decided to make do at home and filled the wading pool with water. June and I got in and played in it. Noah was hanging around in the yard watching. He put his feet in the water and I told him to go inside and change into his suit if he was going to get wet. He said okay and disappeared into the house. After a while, June wanted to know why he hadn’t returned. I speculated he might have forgotten why he went inside or changed his mind. Either scenario seemed likely. We came inside, June dripping water onto the floor, and found him on the computer in the study. I asked if he was coming back outside.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” he said vaguely as if he were speculating about the actions of some other, rather unpredictable sort of person.

I heated up some frozen tamales and made a salad with carrots and cucumber from the garden. After dinner, we ate the ice cream Beth and Noah had made the day before topped with chocolate Magic Shell (http://www.smuckers.com/fg/ict/default.asp?groupid=4&catid=8) and watched the first half of Herbie, the Love Bug. We got up to the part where the villain gets Herbie drunk on Irish coffee. I’ve never tried Magic Shell, but it’s remarkably like a dipped cone, which I haven’t had in years. Noah ate his ice cream plain. He hadn’t been that impressed with our description of the movie either, but he liked it and said it was funnier than he expected.

“Herbie, the Love Bug and Magic Shell. This is awesome,” Beth commented. I did feel a bit little like a kid on vacation myself.

Once he got in bed, though, Noah wasn’t feeling so carefree. Shortly after I put him to bed, Beth heard him moaning and went in to talk with him. He said he was “not feeling content” and that he guessed he was worried about school after all, especially about the teacher he doesn’t know. He was specifically worried about not being allowed to suck his thumb in class. I’d recently mentioned how he wasn’t allowed to in kindergarten (in the context of a discussion about how June won’t be allowed to have her pacifier at nursery school) and I guess I jogged an unpleasant memory.

In a way it seems strange Noah is so much more worried about second grade starting than he was before first grade, since he’s coming off a much better year than he was last year. It must be a developmental thing. He’s more able to look ahead and that makes him more likely to mull things over and fret. I told Beth that maybe once he’s actually in the situation it will be easier because he won’t have to imagine how it will be.

“But what if she is mean?” she said. I had no answer for that.

Sunday, Two Days:

Prior to grocery shopping, Beth was consulting with Noah about what he’d eat for lunch at school this week. He will pick a lunch for her to pack and stick with it for weeks at a time. This week, and possibly beyond, he’ll be eating rice cakes with orange marmalade, nectarines and bottled soy-fruit shakes for lunch.

When Beth, Noah and June returned from grocery shopping, Sasha called. Noah’s phone skills are still a work in progress so I put Sasha on speaker. He’s starting a band and wanted to know if Noah wanted to play drums. “It’s real, not pretend,” he stressed. Noah was unsure. Was anyone else already in the band? Yes, one other boy. What kind of music would they play? Rock and roll, Sasha answered. Could he play the accordion instead? Sasha seemed open to the suggestion. They went back and forth for a good five minutes before Noah said yes and after he got off the phone he was full of unanswered questions.

Would they make money off this band? Would they play in front of real audiences? Would it stay together until they were grown-ups? He takes everything so deadly seriously these days, that it’s no wonder he’s worked up about school. He went off to the porch with a little toy drum and practiced playing it.

Later that afternoon we went to an ice cream social for the Purple School. On the way, Noah informed us he might look seven, but he was really seven thousand. A wizard had put a spell on him, granting him immortality and sending him back to infancy to live his life over seven years ago.

We arrived at the playground. We ate ice cream cake. (June also sampled the goldfish crackers, pretzels and bananas. I don’t know why she’s so tiny; when she gets started she can really put her food away). We chatted with other parents. We signed up for our home visit from the 2s teacher, for our co-oping workshops and for our volunteer shift at the school’s booth at Takoma’s street festival in October. The kids ran around and played on the playground. June wanted to climb every ladder she saw and when she was on the swing or the seesaw or anything that moved, she wanted us to make it go “faster and faster.”

June doesn’t start school until a week and two days after Noah does so it’s not on my mind as much, but she’s on the cusp of a great adventure of her own. She’s more than ready. She loves to wear the bee backpack we bought her and she always says she’s going to school when she wears it. It might be hard for her to separate from us at first but I know she’ll do fine. She loves a challenge, especially when it takes her higher and higher and faster and faster.

Monday, One Day:

Noah was eating a bowl of oatmeal when I approached him with a to-do list for the day. He needed to practice his lower case alphabet five times, rate all the books he’d read this summer for his school reading log (one to five smiley faces), make a postcard with a picture and a description of one of the books, and make some corrections to his math packet.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m your mother.”

“I’m from the Middle Ages,” he said.

I explained he was in for an exciting day. After the Open House at his school, we were going to Barnes and Noble to pick up his free book. He’d ride in a car, a sort of cart that propelled itself without a horse pulling it. Then we’d go to a huge store filled with books, an almost unthinkable luxury for a medieval lad such as himself.

In between bathing June and starting two loads of laundry, I coaxed him into doing three of the alphabets and rating his books. I looked over the completed log. There were nineteen books on it. Twelve were about dragons. He’d given all dragon-related books five smiley faces. All non dragon-related books received two to four smiley faces.

I looked over his math packet while the kids were watching Sesame Street. There were a couple problems he skipped and some illegible answers, but only three computational errors in the whole packet. I flagged them and we went over them after he was finished watching television. June wanted to play in the wading pool. Noah didn’t want to join us, so I got him set up to work on the postcard. Up to now, he’d been co-operative and efficient about finishing up his projects, but this was hard. He didn’t know what book to pick, what character to write about, what to say, what to draw. It took him over an hour and a lot of prodding to write “Seetha is a dragon & and I love dragons. That is why I lik this book, Revenge of the Dragon Lady” and to draw a picture of Seetha, flying over a castle and breathing fire. I remembered why I sometimes hate supervising his homework.

At lunchtime, Noah said his stomach hurt and he didn’t want anything to eat.

Beth came home around two and we headed over to the Open House. We visited both his classrooms and chatted with parents. A lot of Noah’s kindergarten and first-grade classmates are in his classes. The immersion program is pretty small, so sooner or later you get to know almost everyone. We picked up information sheets from both teachers and volunteered to get permanent markers from Señora C’s wish list. Ms. G was giving out free books and Noah selected one of the few chapter books on the table. As we left, Noah said he felt less nervous and his stomach felt better, too. Come to think of it, he was hungry. I gave him some sliced nectarines I’d brought for him. I was surprised the Open House set his mind at ease since it was mobbed, especially in Señora C’s room, and we barely got to talk to the teachers. I guess it must have been seeing so many of his friends.

We headed out to Barnes and Noble to get Noah’s free book. We stopped by the café first because both kids were still hungry. He picked an Amelia Bedelia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Bedelia) book, and June wanted a book, too, so we got her Maisy Takes a Bath. And we ended up with a book about mice solving a mystery for Noah as well. I guess they count on things like this happening when they give out those reading log coupons.

Finally, we went to Gifford’s (http://www.giffords.com/) for some end-of-vacation ice cream. Noah slumped in his seat as he ate his coconut cone. He looked tired, but more relaxed than he had in a few days.

We returned home and the kids and I settled down to watch the rest of Herbie (“Hilarious!” according to Noah) while Beth did some last-minute school supply shopping and went to a nursery school fundraising committee meeting. (A word to the wise: never go the Staples the night before school starts.)

Today:

Noah turned the bathroom light on at six a.m., spilling light into our room. Beth got up right away to play with him, instead of waiting until 6:30 as she usually does. He said he’d been up since five. Noah’s an early riser so this isn’t as unusual as it sounds. I closed the door to our room so June could sleep some more but even through the closed door and over the whir of the fan I could hear his voice, excited and keyed up. By 7:25, he’d eaten, gotten dressed and was playing on the computer.

At his request, Beth walked him to school instead of putting him on the bus. He was goofing around in the front yard, posing in silly positions as I tried to snap a back-to-school photo.

I don’t think the teachers will be mean. I don’t think they will eat him. I hope not anyway. The only way to find out, though, is to dive right in. And I hope that seven thousand years of life experience comes in handy in the second grade.

A Fairy Tale Day

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June was in the bath, chewing on a toy boat and growling. I’d just finished telling her a story about a sea monster that menaced boats and the dolphin that rescued the hapless passengers. I held the sparkly purple dolphin squirter toy in one hand. June played the part of the monster with gusto.

Before she even had the boat completely out of her mouth, she was asking me for a story “about a queen and a prince.” Stories about royalty are popular around here. June’s first-ever attempt to play story-game with Noah a couple weeks ago went like this: “Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen and a princess. They had soap. They had a bathtub. The princess took a bath.” An impressively cohesive start, I thought, but after Noah took his turn and it was June’s turn again she just repeated her opening word for word. It never went anywhere from there.

I thought for a minute. “Once upon a time,” I started, “there were two queens who lived together with a prince and a princess. One day the princess took a bath. Then she put on a pretty dress and went to her playgroup. It was one queen’s turn to host that day and she had to stay on the playground with her guests so the princess did not run into the woods. They swung on the swings, slid on the slides, climbed the twisty ladder, rode on the pony and the motorcycle, threw rocks in the creek and had a snack. Then they came home, had a nap and went to drama camp early see the prince’s performance. Then they ate ice cream. The End.”

This was my plan for the day. It was a busy day in a busy week. On Monday June and I picked up the pottery the children had painted for my mother’s birthday at Color Me Mine (http://www.colormemine.com/). Noah painted a cat and June painted a butterfly, or rather the underside of one wing. She refused to touch the other wing or the top of the ceramic insect. Tuesday we mailed the pottery and went to Circle Time at the library. Tuesday evening Beth and I left the kids with a sitter and went out for Burmese to celebrate our anniversary. (The food was great; the uninterrupted conversation even better.) Wednesday we tried out the Co-op’s new story time. Thursday we went to the playground and I inspected the familiar space, trying to imagine what I might need for the next day’s playgroup that I hadn’t considered. The answer was a tablecloth for the picnic table that was covered with bird droppings. Every afternoon we took the bus to Silver Spring to pick Noah up at drama camp. During June’s naps I wrote a short article about the nutritional benefits of organic milk and produce. I’ve been doing research and editing jobs for my sister’s freelance writing business for almost a year but this was the first writing project I’d tackled.

After June’s bath, I put white barrettes in her hair and dressed her in a blue and white striped dress over a white t-shirt, white socks and black Mary Janes. “A dress for my birthday!” June exclaimed. The dress was a birthday present from my mother, but I don’t think that’s what she meant. She’s been eager for another birthday ever since she turned two in late March and she claims it is her birthday whenever she sees balloons. She’s probably worn a dress a couple times since March but it’s not an everyday occurrence for her so that it was some kind of holiday was a reasonable conclusion.

As I pushed the stroller—laden with five pounds of organic mixed green and red grapes (all sliced neatly in half), cheddar bunnies, whole-wheat bunnies, bowls, plastic cutlery, napkins and the tablecloth—toward the playground, June commented, “It’s fun to play with our friends.” I thought it was kind of funny, given that the kids really don’t do anything that could be described as playing together yet, but I was glad to hear she enjoys these weekly Friday morning outings.

We arrived just before the official starting time of ten a.m. I scanned the playground for familiar faces. There were three teenage girls sitting on rocks down by the creek and a grandmother with two little girls, one about the right age, but I didn’t recognize her. After a cautious conversational opening, I concluded the girl was not part of our group. I chatted with the grandmother a little while longer. She was from Hawaii on a visit to her daughter and her family. She wanted to know if it was always so humid here in the summer. Not always, but often, I conceded.

I got the picnic table set up with snacks, shooed an interested June away from it and pushed her on the swings, but June wanted to roam. I compromised with her. We could walk to the footbridge and look down at the water, but we were not going into the woods. She seemed agreeable. As soon as we were on the bridge, she took off running, the heels of her shoes clattering on the wooden planks. She’d made it a few feet onto the narrow, muddy path that runs into the woods when I caught her and carried her, twisting and kicking and apparently surprised and outraged that we weren’t going into the woods.

I looked at my watch: 10:10. I decided to let June start eating in the interest of keep her on the playground. She settled in happily. I’d bought her favorite snacks. Once she’d eaten a few bites, she looked around and noticed something was missing. “Where people?” she asked. “Where our friends?” I told her they were coming.

I watched as a dad with a two-year-old girl and then a nanny with another one arrived. Neither was from June’s class, but one of the girls stared so intently at the food I invited her and her father to join us. Why not? It was 10:20 and we had a lot of food. I asked her name and it was June! Someone had told me there was another June about my June’s age who frequents this playground, but we’d never met.

The other June and her dad began to eat. “You’re so good. You cut the grapes in half,” he observed. I was glad someone noticed. It took an hour. I’m sometimes a bit lax about choking hazards with June, but I’m conscientious enough not to serve whole grapes to other people’s toddlers.

June and I threw rocks into the creek. I let her get her shoes and socks and the hem of her dress wet and muddy. She found a little tree with sturdy branches just a foot or so off the ground and fulfilled a long-standing goal of climbing a tree.

It was 10:40 now and I was wondering, was I at the wrong playground? Was it the wrong time? The wrong date? Where were our friends? I decided if no one showed up by 11:20 we’d leave the food on the table with a note, go home and watch Mr. Rogers. It was a hot, sticky day and I don’t like to keep June out much past eleven anyway, as she tends to fall asleep on the way home if I do.

At 10:45, Hayden and his parents arrived. Then at 11:05, Mia and her dad came. It ended up being a very nice play date. I do better socially in small groups anyway and I got to talk to Hayden’s mom and dad long enough so I felt I got to know them a little bit. June and Mia had a good time watching each other throw rocks in the creek. The other June and her dad continued to hang out with our group by the slides and at the picnic table. Between the four kids and five adults, we ate more than half the grapes. I mentioned it was a really hot day, right? That’s probably why more people didn’t come, everyone concluded. Either that or a lot of people were on vacation.

Around noon, June wrapped herself in the baby blanket I keep in the bottom of the stroller and wore it like a robe. She wandered around, perhaps imagining she was a princess. She declares herself a princess (or a king, or a queen) quite often while wrapped in her after-bath towel. Then, still wrapped in the blanket, she lay on the grass near the picnic table where I was packing up our things, and she said she was going to sleep. Hayden’s dad said it was a “positive sign” that she needed her nap. We said goodbye to everyone and set off. It’s only a ten-minute walk but June was fast asleep when we got home.

I woke her so she could have a proper nap, lying down in an air-conditioned room, instead of a short snooze in the stroller on the porch. In the hour that followed, I had plenty of time to regret this decision. She couldn’t get back to sleep, but she desperately needed to. She was cranky, then mad, then full of despair. Finally, she slept. What am I going to do about naps, I wondered, when she gets out of nursery school at 11:30 and then we have a fifteen-minute walk home? But that was a question for another day. While she slept I exercised for the first time this week, and worked. I woke her up at the last possible minute to go to Noah’s drama camp. Actually, it might have been a minute or two too late.

We got to the bus a few minutes late and I didn’t know whether or not we had missed our bus. So when another one that takes a less direct route to our destination arrived, we boarded it, just in case. It was the wrong decision. At the place where the two routes intersect, I saw the bus we should have been on whiz by. We didn’t miss it after all. It was just running late. Then our bus got stuck in traffic the other bus’s route avoids. We were only five minutes late to drama camp, but we missed most of a song that all the kids were singing together. Noah had only one other part in the forty-minute performance. It was interesting, though, an improv game. He did well and the skits with the other kids were fun to watch, too. Once Noah’s part was finished, he sat down in a row of kids and counselors right in front of the audience. June, who had been loudly insisting we “go see Noah” the whole time he was performing, bolted from me and clambered into his lap. He threw an arm around her and they watched the performance together.

It wasn’t a perfect day, but fairy tales aren’t perfect either. They just have happy endings. Here’s ours: And then the queen and the prince and the princess had ice cream. The End.

Sing, Sing a Song: A Week of Music

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Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things, not bad
Sing of happy, not sad.

Sing, sing a song
Make it simple
To last your whole life long
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
for anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.

From “Sing” by Joe Raposo, performed by the Carpenters
(http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/singasong.htm)

The summer Noah was two, during a visit to Beth’s parents house, Andrea gave him her guitar to strum and he played it until his fingers bled. When we noticed and pulled him away, he screamed in frustration. Beth’s brother Johnny said we should tell this story to the journalists who would surely interview us when Noah was a famous musician. Knowing what we know now, I think he was probably having a tactile under-sensitive day, but it shows how sure we all were Noah would be a lifelong musician, and possibly an accomplished one.

Noah was passionate about music when he was two and three. He idolized Banjo Man, the children’s musician who plays at the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market. My mom bought Noah his CD when he was not quite two and almost immediately we had to institute a rule that he could only hear the Banjo Man CD three times a day. Noah called the ukulele he carried everywhere his “banjo.” We could not leave town (and sometimes not the house) without it and a few others instruments carefully selected from his ever-growing collection. The toy saxophone and the little accordion were long-time favorites. Whenever we visited relatives, Noah loved to give everyone an instrument and organize a parade through the house. He also enjoyed setting up his ukulele case as if he were a street musician and soliciting donations. We had to throw real money in the case; just gesturing as if we were throwing money was not good enough.

In those days, every Saturday night we would go to Savory and listen to Takoma Zone (http://takomazone.com/Index.asp?PA=0&XX=46&XX=48&XX=83). We’d stay for the whole Traditional/Bluegrass set and sometimes for a little of the Singer/Songwriter set. It wasn’t kids’ music, but Noah would cuddle up in my lap or dance in front of my chair for an hour or sometimes even two hours. I always looked forward to Saturday nights. I was teaching then and there was always work I could be doing at home, so to be away from the piles of papers to grade and lessons to plan, in a comfy chair with a snuggly toddler on my lap and a cup of coffee within reach was the most relaxing time in my week.

Noah was in a toddler music class then and when his teacher had trouble filling a session, she suggested we start him in pre-Suzuki lessons. He was two years and eight months old then, a little young even for Suzuki, but we decided to give it a try. At first it went well. Noah could pick out simple tunes as soon as he picked up the instrument. At a recital when he was three, he broke out into a variation of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” when he was supposed to be playing a single note. When he was three and a half, he insisted on dressing as a violin for Halloween. But his progress stalled almost from the beginning. He never seemed to get much better than he was when he started and he chafed under the strict discipline of the Suzuki method. He started complaining about lessons and never wanted to play the instrument unless we asked him too. So when he was four, we pulled him out of the lessons. I was thinking of it as a break, but he’s never gone back to playing, and he doesn’t play his other instruments much either. I wonder sometimes if music was just a passing fad for him, like so many others we’ve seen come and go, or if he had something truly special and we squelched it by pushing him too hard, too young.

I have been thinking a lot about all this recently because June is the age Noah was when his love of music started to blossom and this week in particular we’ve revisited a number of our old musical haunts. There is still a lot of music in our day-to- day lives. Noah sings morning, noon and night and June does, too. Right now, anything by Milkshake and the soundtrack to The Jungle Book are big on their hit parade. Beth says living in our house can be like living in a musical. Here’s what it sounded like this week.

Saturday Evening: Takoma Zone

We don’t go to Savory nearly as often as we used to, but we were lured by some new menu items (real fruit smoothies instead of the artificial ones they used to have and some new desserts). As we came into the restaurant one of the musicians greeted us and exclaimed over how both kids have grown. He couldn’t believe Noah was seven. It was a beautiful evening so they set up outside. I sat with June in my lap, swaying slightly and sipping my strawberry-banana smoothie. The musicians played “Arkansas Traveler,” especially for Noah. (It used to be one of his favorites, though he doesn’t remember). All was well until about twenty minutes in when Noah wanted to know when we could leave. Beth didn’t remember what time we’d come in and said after the song was over. I was disappointed. I thought a half an hour had seemed like a reasonable, pared-down goal, but I didn’t want to push my luck by insisting on the extra ten minutes once everyone was getting set to go.

I sulked a little on the way home and wondered if we should even bother going anymore. It doesn’t seem to give Noah the pleasure it used to and he just irritates me, insisting we leave when I want to stay. But then on Sunday he surprised me by asking if we could go again soon. I guess it’s worth another try. We just have to take it in small doses.

Sunday Morning: Banjo Man

We went to the co-op and the farmers’ market to buy plants and seeds for our garden, which has turned into something more elaborate than we originally planned. We kept thinking of new plants it might be fun to grow—carrots, cucumbers, herbs, and wildflowers. We saw the first local strawberries of the season and snatched up three cartons, so I could slice them over the buttermilk pie I was planning to make for Memorial Day. After a while, June and I peeled off to go listen to Banjo Man while Beth and Noah continued shopping. We sat on the sidewalk and June scribbled with the chalk he provides. I wrote her name in pink while Banjo Man ran through his repertoire, which ranges from the ABCs to “The Wabash Cannonball.” (During this song he accompanied himself on the train whistle.) When I spied Beth and Noah approaching, I expected them to gesture for us to come along with them, but Noah ran over and plopped down on the sidewalk next to me. I glanced at Beth and she shrugged. Apparently, Noah can be a little nostalgic sometimes, too.

Monday Morning: The Be Good Tanyas

I was giving June a bath. Through the open bathroom window I could hear the clickety-clack of the mower as Beth mowed the lawn. It was the beginning of a day the four of us would spend mostly in the yard, mowing, putting in the garden, splashing in the wading pool and eating a picnic lunch and a picnic dinner. As soon as June was clean and dressed, we’d go outside. For now, though I was watching June play in the water and listening to a new CD playing in the kitchen with about half an ear. Two weeks ago I received four new CDs for my birthday. I’d only listened to two of them so far and not with what I’d call complete attention. When I was a teenager, listening to a new album or tape was a solemn ritual. I’d close the door of my room, sprawl out on my bed and read the lyrics as the music played, completely absorbed in the experience. Now I just let music, brand new or deeply familiar, play in the background of whatever chaos is currently unfolding. If a song catches my attention, I might glance at the lyrics later, if I remember. My best opportunity to really listen comes on Sunday mornings while Beth and June grocery shop and Noah disappears into the study and plays computer games. I do my housecleaning then and listen to NPR or a CD.

So, I’ve played this CD, but I wouldn’t say I’ve listened to it yet. It sounds like something I’d like, kind of old-time and bluegrassy, but I can’t remember a single lyric. I think I will give it another spin next Sunday.

Tuesday Afternoon: Water Music

Noah came off the bus, kind of subdued and complaining of a headache. He asked what we should do. I reminded him that I’d promised he could play with the sprinkler when the predicted high temperature for the day reached eighty degrees. We’ve had a run of unseasonably cold weather, but the high was eighty-four that day. He immediately perked up. I got him some Tylenol and changed June into her bathing suit while Noah changed into his. We set up the sprinkler in the garden. At first it seemed like we placed it in the perfect place to water the garage roof, but eventually most of our little plots got a good soaking. I’d water the rest with water from the wading pool later.

As the water showered down on June she sang:

It’s raining.
It’s pouring.
The old man is snoring.

Noah was running under the sprinkler and singing, too:

You woo-woo-woo-woo can do woo-woo-woo-woo a la la la la la lot in the water
You woo-woo-woo-woo can do woo-woo-woo-woo a la la la la la lot in the water…
Splash and swim through the blue green waves
move your arms and kick your feet.
play with the dolphins, chase the pretty fish
but don’t bother sharks you might meet.

(http://www.milkshakemusic.com/lyrics-wuuu.cfm)

Wednesday Morning: Kindermusik

At 8:25 I asked June, “Are you ready for a bath?”

“No,” she said decisively and waved the CD she was holding in her hand.

“Do you want to listen to music instead?”

“Yes,” she said, in a satisfied tone.

Just as well, I thought. We had to be out of the house by 8:55 to catch the bus for Kindermusik anyway. Squeezing a bath in would have made us rush and if I put on a CD it would occupy her while I did the breakfast dishes and gathered up our things. I took the CD from her (it was one of mine) and popped the Kindermusik CD in instead. We haven’t been listening to it as much as I’d resolved. I thought she’d get more out of the class if she became familiar with the songs. When Ms. Becky sings them in class they’re fine toddler-fare, but the performance on the CD is beyond cloying so I haven’t been playing it much. June ran to the couch and sat down, ready to listen. I went about my business and when I came to put on her shoes she announced, “I poopy.” Indeed, she was. I didn’t even need to check. I looked at my watch: 8:53. There was no time to change her. I’d have to take her on the bus as is and change her at music class. There would be plenty of time. We’re always early.

This was my first mistake. If I stayed to change her and walked to Kindermusik (it’s not that far—we usually walk home) we might have arrived close to on time. My second mistake was not asking to get off the bus when it stopped in front of a “Road Closed” sign where Sligo Creek runs under Maple Avenue. The bus detoured along Sligo Parkway and I had no idea when it would return to its regular route. The driver was uncommunicative on this point when another rider tried to engage him. Every few minutes, June would say “I poopy” in a plaintive voice as the bus took us further and further from music class. As it turned out we were almost to Silver Spring when we finally were allowed off. I walked as fast as I could, pushing the stroller up the long, steep hill at the end. I was sweaty and out of breath when we arrived, but we were only ten minutes late.

“Music class is fun!” June declared as I undid the stroller buckles, and hustled her into the classroom. Ms. Becky handed us some rhythm sticks, which we took into the bathroom. June lay on the floor, banging her sticks together as I performed the long-delayed change.

I signed June up for Kindermusik during the week and a half in March when we thought she would not be attending nursery school in the fall. I was looking for alternative activities for her and it looked like we’d have a little extra money to spend since we wouldn’t be paying tuition. Up to now my mantra had been “free or cheap activities only.” Kindermusik is neither free nor cheap. And in some ways it’s similar to the free “twosies” program at the library. It’s a group of twelve kids about her age (eighteen months to three years). There are songs and rhymes. There’s more dancing and moving around, though, and there are a lot of cool instruments to play.

We emerged from the bathroom ready to play. I wrapped June in a scarf and we pretended she had butterfly wings. We scurried around like squirrels. (The session theme is “Creatures in My Backyard.”) We played with jingle bells and assorted shakers, rocked to the rocking song and watched Ms. Becky blow bubbles. June always observes this ritual solemnly, never reaching out to touch the bubbles or chasing them as the other children do.

She has come out of her shell a bit at Kindermusik, though. Two weeks ago, after class on the playground adjacent to the class building, she spoke to a child other than Noah for the first time. June approached a classmate on the play structure and said, “Hey, Baby.” (In June’s world, all children under the age of five or so are babies.) The boy did not answer, but the next week she tried him again. Still nothing. She spoke to another boy, who was holding a plastic dinosaur: “Is your dinosaur looking good?” June has a tendency to turn statements into questions so she probably meant “I like your dinosaur.” It’s hard work talking to other toddlers. So far she’s zero for three in terms of getting a response. I hope she keeps trying, though. These mysterious little people are the creatures in her backyard and she’s trying to learn their ways. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Thursday Morning: Welcome to My Backyard

I was sitting under the shade of the silver maple in our backyard, watching June roam around. Every few minutes she’d come over with a small tribute for me—a leaf, a wild strawberry, or a handful of sand from the sandbox.

This time she was empty-handed and clapping rhythmically as she approached. “Are you ready for your song?” she asked.

“What’s my song?” I said.

“Welcome to My Backyard,” she prompted. So I sang the kindermusik welcome song:

Welcome to my backyard
Come along with me
Wonder what we’ll see
Come along with me
Welcome to my backyard
Listen to the sounds
Listen to the creatures all around

Clap hello to June, clap, clap, clap
Clap hello to Xander, clap, clap, clap (Here I pointed to our cat Xander, sitting on the back steps.)
Clap hello to Mommy, clap, clap, clap, clap

I paused. The names come in groups of four. I needed one more. June waited. I ventured:

Clap hello to the tree, clap, clap, clap.

June laughed with surprise and delight. You are never as good a singer, or a comedian as when you have babies and toddlers.

Thursday Afternoon: Love Song for A Jellyfish

For language arts homework on Thursday, Noah had to pick a poem he liked, copy it and be prepared to read it in class. In preparation, for the past few days we’ve been reading poems from a collection of poems about animals (http://januarymagazine.com/kidsbooks/beautybeast.html). We read the whole insect section, the fish section and part of the bird section. He decided he’d pick one from the fish section since ocean creatures are his current scientific passion.

I fully expected Noah to spend a half hour paging through the book, unable to choose a poem, or to pick one full of words he didn’t understand. (Some of the poems are a bit advanced for him). But almost right away he chose this one:

Love Song for a Jellyfish
By Sandra Hochman

How amazed I was, when I was a child,
To see your life on the sand.
To see you living in your jelly shape,
Round and slippery and dangerous.
You seemed to have fallen
Not from the rim of the sea,
But from galaxies.
Stranger, you delighted me. Weird object of
The stinging world.

It was perfect. I asked him to practice reading it aloud so I could give him some pointers, but I didn’t really need to. He read it beautifully, with only the occasional stumble. He read with expression and paused in the right places.

As part of his bedtime ritual Beth reads him four poems a night from anthologies we check out of the library. I think he must have absorbed something from this experience without any of us knowing it was happening. I taught literature long enough to know how few people can read poetry well. You have to hear the music in the words to do it. He hears it. He really does.

Friday Morning: The Master of His Feet

“There’s a pirate in the kitchen,” I told Beth. Noah had emerged from his room, wearing a t-shirt with a dog dressed as a pirate on it.

Noah skipped off toward the study, singing:

I am the master of my feet, The captain of my ship
I choose to sail the seven seas and make the most if it.
Adventure waits for all who come so climb aboard m’ mate
We’ll head due west when the winds are best Oh, I can h-argh-dly wait
Heigh ho (Heigh ho)
Hoist the anchor friends
Heigh ho (heigh ho)
Come sail the seas again.

(http://www.milkshakemusic.com/lyrics-pirates.cfm)

The real lyric is “the master of my fate,” of course, but Noah always sings it that way and we are too amused by it to correct him. Considering how often Noah trips and falls and crashes into things, being the master of his feet might seem almost as glamorous and improbable to him as being a pirate anyway.

Friday Evening: Pan Masters Steel Drums

Noah, June and I got off the bus at 6:05. The steel drum concert outside the co-op was scheduled to begin at six, but I could see the big drums still being unloaded from the trucks across the street. I told Noah they wouldn’t be starting for a while, but he urged, “Let’s go! I want to be early.” I suggested we go inside the co-op and buy some drinks first so we’d have them when Beth arrived with the pizza. We were having a Friday night picnic at Function at the Junction, a free weekly outdoor concert series in the co-op parking lot. Tonight the featured band was Pan Steel Drum Masters.

By 6:15 we were seated with our drinks and the band was set up and playing. Playing really, really loudly. Noah put his hands on his ears and complained it was “like thunder.” I thought we might get used to it after a few minutes, but when Beth arrived at 6:20, we decided to re-locate to the picnic tables in front of the co-op. From there we could still hear the music but not at quite such a deafening level and we could eat our pizza more easily.

I listened to the music, recognizing the occasional Bob Marley tune, while we ate and chatted with each other and waved to people we knew. Noah and I summarized the plot of the segment of Peter Pan we’d watched without Beth the night before so she’d be caught up when we watched the rest. It was a pleasant outing, even if as we walked home, Noah expressed some skepticism that that was really “the finest steel drum band” as the announcer had maintained. “There must be one that’s finer.”

Just before I put June to bed, I listened to her sleepily recount to Beth the events of the evening. The music was loud. We ate pizza. She was “very happy.” I’m not sure if it was the music, the pizza or both that made her happy, but I was glad to hear it.

Noah will probably never be the musical prodigy I once envisioned, but music is still a big part of the children’s lives. It helps them express their joy at running through the sprinkler on a warm day, relax enough to approach others and feel “very happy.” Every day, they sing out loud; they sing out strong. And, with any luck, that will last their whole lives long

Back to the Drawing Board – Postscript

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June got into the Purple School off the waiting list only nine days after we heard she didn’t get in. Beth came into the bathroom Friday evening while I was undressing for a shower and let me know she’d just read the news in her email.

We stood there just looking at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to speak. I’d known this was a possibility but I expected if it happened at all it would be months from now. Noah also got in off the waiting list, but in June. I’d pretty much forgotten he was even on a waiting list.

“I think we should do it,” I said cautiously. “I’m still bruised, and I’m going to be self-conscious as hell about my co-oping but I think we should do it.”

Beth agreed and said she was going to ask for an opportunity to find out exactly what the concerns about our co-oping with two-year-olds were, so we could have a chance to address them. So pending that discussion, we think we will probably enroll her.

It changes so much, knowing June will have a fun, nurturing, affordable, high-quality preschool to attend for the next three years and that we will not have to go through the stressful, crazy-making preschool admissions process that’s standard for middle and upper class parents in our area. I had started to research other schools for her 3s year and I was a bit shocked at how much non-co-operative preschools cost. All and all, I was dreading the whole admissions scramble. It still stings a bit, knowing we didn’t make the first cut at our first-choice school, especially since we know people on the admissions committee, but I can get over that.

We took the kids to the Easter egg hunt sponsored by the Takoma Park recreation department this morning. The first time we took Noah to this egg hunt I was really surprised to find the eggs were not hidden. They are just laid out on a field that’s marked off into separate areas for different age groups. When the whistle blows, the kids rush in and grab all the trinket-filled plastic eggs they can. The hunt in the two-and-under area is pretty relaxed, with toddlers ambling around and carefully picking up eggs. June ended up with five eggs to the several dozen her brother scavenged from the more rough-and-tumble five- and six-year-olds area.

It just goes to show that sometimes you have to hustle for the egg and sometimes you only need to bend down and pick it up.

Someplace Glamorous – Postscript

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“I think the second ladder is doomed, Noah,” Beth said, shortly after June crushed the recently reconstructed purple drinking straw-fire escape. I was in the bathroom with her, washing super glue off her hands. Noah was agreeable, deciding that any hotel guests fleeing from fire would have to jump off the lower platform.

Noah and Beth have been laboring for three weeks on his model hotel, which he christened Las Aguas. With each completed step, Noah decided it really needed to be fancier. So when Beth found a web site with free dollhouse wallpaper to download, they papered every wall. That was nice, but contrasting borders in each room was fancier. And tile in the bathrooms and wooden ceilings and floors were even better. A shamrock-patterned throw rug in the lobby gave the hotel a nice seasonal touch. The result is half psychedelic dollhouse, half bordello.

Noah made elevator buttons for the working elevator (you pull a tab of balsa wood up and down a slot cut in the side wall of the building) and a sign for the reception desk, indicating prices for a “cuarto peceño” and a “cuarto grande.” Be forewarned, it’s not cheap to stay at Las Aguas. You’ll be shelling out either $350 or $600 a night.

I have a feeling interior decoration would have gone on indefinitely, but it’s due tomorrow and since we didn’t want to risk a bus-ride trip with it and Beth has an early meeting tomorrow morning, she drove him over to school with it today.

Please take an online tour of Las Aguas Hotel!

Back to the Drawing Board

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June said “I love you” to me for the first time yesterday. That was the good part of the day, the part I’m holding onto. About a month ago she was loving a lot of things: Beth, her “best bear,” her hair (I’m not kidding). But shortly after the word “love” surfaced in her vocabulary, it disappeared. Then yesterday, after a diaper change, and for no apparent reason, she looked at me and said, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, June,” I said, sweeping her into a hug. I was already in a good mood. We’d just come back from the “twosies” circle time at the library. It’s a special version just for two-year-olds, with extra stories and a craft project at the end. Enrollment is limited so I asked permission from the librarian ahead of time to bring a not-quite-two-year-old. The librarian cheerfully agreed to give it a try.

June didn’t do any of the hand motions to the songs, even though they are familiar to her from the regular circle time. She never does, not at the library anyway. At home she does them all. In fact, just the day before she’d stood up on the changing table so she could watch herself do “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” naked in the bathroom mirror.

At the library, she either sat in my lap or ventured a few steps away to stand near the librarian. I don’t think she took her eyes off her the entire time, even as the group dwindled from twelve toddlers down to eight, as restless or cranky children were carted off by their parents or nannies.

I’d been somewhat skeptical of her ability to do a craft, but it was very simple. All she had to do was decorate a seal cut from poster board with crayons and stickers. She made a few tentative scribbles with the crayons, but then she lost all interest in them as soon as the stickers arrived. I don’t know why stickers are so universally beloved by little kids but apparently June is no exception. Her face lit up when I showed her what to do with them and soon her light blue seal was covered with red hearts and a couple of stickers depicting fruits.

“Noah always brings things home from school to show you and now you have something to show him,” I told her.

The librarian came by, admired her work and affixed a popsicle stick to the back for a handle. This was even better. Now she could hold the seal with the handle, and she did for much of the rest of the day.

“She did great,” the librarian said as we left. “She was very attentive.” I thought about how much she was going to like nursery school in the fall. She’s really enjoying community playtime and library activities and she loves to play at the Purple School itself while Noah is at drama class. It’s already a familiar place to her.

Outside I chatted with a nanny to a boy who is in the 2s class there this year. I mentioned we’d applied. “It’s a good school,” she said enthusiastically.

We were, in fact, supposed to hear from the membership committee that very day. Beth had missed their call at work the day before and we were waiting for the representative to call back. I was a little keyed up about it, checking my email and phone message a good deal more often than usual. As the day wore on, I grew puzzled. Why hadn’t Beth called with the good news?

She came home early, a little before six and I went to greet her at the door. She gave me a hug that went on too long. I knew before she said it. “We didn’t get in.”

Apparently the preference for siblings of alumni (though not the one for siblings of current students) was revoked this year and there were concerns about our ability to co-op with two-year-olds, though we’d never heard any complaints or criticism about our co-oping when Noah was in the 4s class. None of it made any sense.

I went back to the kitchen to finish dinner while Beth interacted with the kids. Figuring out whether to toast the hot dog buns or heat the baked beans in the microwave first seemed like an overwhelming decision. At the table, Beth asked Noah about his day while I moved food around on my plate and finally managed to eat most of it.

During the course of dinner, Noah lost a tooth. It’s been fifteen months since he lost both of his bottom front teeth and he hadn’t lost any since then so it was a noteworthy occasion. One of his top front teeth had gotten so loose it twisted around almost perpendicular to its original position and remained that way for several days. Beth and I were amazed it stayed in his head so long. It makes an impressive gap in his smile. He looks a lot older now, more like the seven-year-old he’ll be in two short months.

I felt a wave of unreality sweep over me. The “I love you,” the unexpected rejection, my son’s new smile. “This day has been too much,” I said to Beth quietly.

After Beth and Noah had left the table, I sat watching June, who was gobbling down her second veggie dog. She glanced at me. “What crying, Mommy?” she asked.

Noah, oblivious, called from the hallway, “I don’t think Mommy is crying, June,” he said in the amused tone he uses when she has misinterpreted something. But of course, she hadn’t.

More than anything, I wanted to sleep, to be done with this day, but it took until 9:45 to get June to sleep and then I just lay awake until late in the night, turning things over in my mind. What had we done wrong? What should we do now? It’s too late to apply anywhere else. Of course, two-year-olds don’t need to be in school, but I think she’s ready and she’d enjoy it. I was also looking forward to a regularly scheduled break from her and perhaps the chance to work a bit more. I’ve been updating my resume and I recently submitted it to a clearinghouse for freelance researchers, writers and editors.

The 2s class only meets for five hours a week and I would have spent a lot of that time either in the classroom or walking back and forth between home and school, but the hours increase each year and I was looking at June starting school as a turning point, the time when I might start to regain a little of myself that has been submerged in motherhood since I lost my job almost three years ago. Now I feel like I know a lot less about how the next three years will unfold. We have options, of course. We can hire a babysitter if it’s time for me we want, enroll June in kindermusik or find a playgroup if it’s enrichment or socialization for June we want, but it’s not the same, not what we planned. And even though we were encouraged to re-apply for her 3s year, we’re certainly not regarding it as a sure thing anymore so we might end up doing applications at multiple schools.

When I got June dressed this morning I noticed matching fluorescent green paint stains on her shirt and pants. She’s been painting a lot recently but we don’t have any paint of that shade. It must have been the remnant of some long-ago art project in the toddler room of Noah’s daycare another morning when Beth or I decided the gold turtleneck would look nice with the gray corduroys. Today some orange paint joined the green paint on June’s sleeve. I wish we could pick and choose which of Noah’s childhood experiences to pass down to June as easily as we do with his clothes. But of course, we can’t.

The Land of the Purple

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Noah has drama class after school on Wednesdays now, so those afternoons are tight. It was easier last year. I would take him his old nursery school where the class is held and wait there, playing with June and socializing with other parents in an unused classroom until the class was over. Then we’d walk home and he’d do whatever little bit of kindergarten homework he had while I heated up my designated quick dinner of the week.

But now he’s in first grade and his homework takes forty-five minutes on a good day. That’s how long it would take most nights if he was consistently focused, and well, not Noah. But he’s not a robo-child; he’s my daydreamer, my wool-gatherer, my highly distractible boy-child. Sometimes it takes an hour and a half. We get home from drama around 5:30. You do the math. Or better yet, do the language arts worksheet, because that would be one fewer thing that Noah has to do. On Wednesdays he has to read or be read to for fifteen minutes, to practice two lists of spelling words (the class’s common list and an individualized list created partially by the teacher and partially by himself—recent words learned: “Antarctica” and “kaleidoscope”) and he has to do a language arts worksheet. This week’s was an open-ended writing assignment about Martin Luther King. They listened to the “I Have a Dream Speech” at school and he had to summarize MLK’s dream and describe one of his own dreams. A lovely assignment, really, but my heart sank as I read it. This was going to take so long. It was exactly the kind of assignment Noah drags out. Give the boy a math worksheet and it’s done before you can say Jack Robinson, but ask him to think about his dreams and you’re in for a long ride. Well, there was no helping that now, I thought as I stood in the living room examining his homework folder. The best thing would be to get at least some of the reading done before we left for drama. It was now almost 3:25. He was using the bathroom. We needed to leave by 3:35. We could read for ten minutes, then we might be able to finish up at the school while we waited for class to start. We’d have one task complete by the time we got home. We settled in on the couch. I read him two stories from a library book of myths about the formation of the constellations from different cultures and we left.

Noah skipped and ran and chattered happily all the way to drama class, just as he had the week before. As if limbering up his imagination, he started every other sentence “Let’s pretend…” We were explorers seeking the fabled “Land of the Purple.” (The nursery school is painted bright purple with lime green trim. Students and parents call it “The Purple School” as often as by its real name.) Noah loved attending this nursery school. He loves the drama class, which he’s taking for his third straight year. He loves the teacher who teaches the 4s class and the drama class. Noah has been in daycare or school since he was sixteen months old. He’s had some wonderful teachers (as well as some not so wonderful ones), but in her respect for children and in her innate ability to enter their social, intellectual and imaginative worlds, Lesley has no equal. Last spring when Noah was having so much trouble at school, drama class nourished and replenished him. So it was no surprise when after a fall of no after-school activities he chose drama when we offered him a choice of up to two extracurricular activities for the winter and spring. (He will start after-school science, also a favorite from last year, in March.)

We arrived at the school at 3:55, just in time to finish our last five minutes of reading. We walked around to the playground behind the school. June took off running toward the slide. I motioned for Noah to sit on the steps as I dug the constellations book out of the diaper bag.

“I don’t want to hear that book,” Noah protested. I stared at him dumbly. We’d been reading it after school all week. I thought he really liked it. “I only want to read two stories from that book every day.” At once, I understood. It so happened that on Monday and Tuesday two stories came to roughly fifteen minutes. It doesn’t take long for Noah to notice a pattern and insist on its repetition. I tried to reason with him. We hadn’t read for fifteen minutes yet and this was the only book I’d brought. I tried to bribe him. If he’d listen to the next story I would buy him a treat at the convenience store on the way home. (This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. I had already committed to stopping there after drama “some day.”) He wouldn’t budge. I gave up. There wasn’t time to convince him. He played on the seesaw with June until it was time to go inside.

June and I stayed on the playground, despite the cold weather. The equipment is toddler-friendly and she was having a blast going down the slide, crawling in the tunnel and playing with the toys scattered on the ground. All the time we were playing I was irritated at Noah’s stubborn insistence on doing things his way. I know my own irrationally intense desire to get the fifteen minutes of reading done before class wasn’t much different, but knowing you should let go and actually letting go are different things. We’d had what Beth calls one of our “Taurus moments” and it wasn’t quite over.

After a while we went inside. The nursery school is full of books, puzzles and other toys (June is especially drawn to the felt board) so it’s a great place for her to play. I was hoping the mom I’d talked to last week would be there. Her five-year-old son took yoga with Noah at the Purple School two falls ago and he was excited to see Noah. She and I started talking and I learned her son also has Sensory Processing Disorder (a more serious case than Noah’s) and also had difficulty in kindergarten, so much so in fact that they switched schools and they were already planning to have him repeat kindergarten next year. This week, though, she didn’t stay. There was a nanny and a mom there, but the nanny was talking on her cell phone and the mom was engrossed in her PDA. I found myself missing Kathleen and Chris, whose daughters took drama last year and who were always good for companionable conversation. I read to June and played with her until 5:00.

On the way home Noah updated me on the ongoing story they’ve been acting out. It’s about a jewelry heist in a castle. Noah is a guard. He’d built a spider web-trap and was granted the super-power of being able to yell so loudly people thousands of miles away can hear him. (It’s not such a stretch, that last one.) When we passed the convenience store I couldn’t stop myself from sighing loudly and saying what a shame it was we couldn’t get a treat. (Did I mention how sometimes I can’t let go?)

We got home. I preheated the oven for potpies, changed June, and we got to work. I read Noah a story from a book of Cornish fairy tales. He practiced his spelling words. I sat at the dining room table and listened to him whine that he didn’t know what to write, he didn’t have any dreams, etc. I asked some gently leading questions about what might make the world a better place and finally he came up with people not littering. He wrote a paragraph and drew a picture of someone throwing trash into a trashcan. Somewhere in between assignments we ate dinner. Eventually, the homework was finished.

This morning, Beth and I were back at the Purple School to observe the 2s class. We are in the midst of preparing June’s application for next fall. Because Noah’s an alumnus, we have a reasonably good chance of getting in, but competition for the twelve slots in the class is intense. When June and I were at the rec center’s community playtime a few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation about getting into the Purple School. The mom in question conceded that she probably had little chance and outlined her second, third and fourth choices of preschools. We don’t have any backup plans. I wondered if we should.

The children in the 2s class were predictably cute. I recognized a few (including Chris’s son) who’d had older siblings in drama last year or from seeing them on the library-circle-time-community-playtime toddler circuit. I watched the teacher and the co-oping mom calmly handle routine crises (a tower of blocks knocked over, a child pushed). I noticed how rapt the children all looked when the teacher read a story about a princess who takes on the dragon who has made off with her prince. During the Q & A afterward, Beth and I had few questions (“How is the 2s class unique?” was the best I could do) while the other parents nervously peppered Lesley, the 2s teacher, and the membership committee representative with questions.

Later that day, Beth sent me this email: “I actually ended up catching a ride with the woman who was also observing this morning. She’s stressed out — about getting in, about how to handle naps if both kids get in, etc. It is so much nicer to be in our position.” I asked Beth if by “our position” she meant having widely spaced kids (the woman in question is applying for slots for two kids, one in the 2s and one in the 4s) and therefore not having to co-ordinate the two classes, which meet at different times, or to do double committee work, or if she meant feeling more relaxed about our chances of getting in. She said both. If I had to give that woman advice, I would tell her the logistics are worth it. The Land of the Purple is not an easy place. It demands a lot of your time, in the classroom and on committees, and it can be hard work. You don’t always love other people’s children on their bad days. But it’s also an enchanted place, a place children run to, a place that gives them super-powers.

The Super Readers

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Noah stepped off the bus this afternoon and with a big smile, but no comment, handed me his third consecutive all-smiley-faces weekly behavior report from Señorita M’s class.  I noticed a sticker on his shirt that depicted a bespectacled worm.  “What’s that?” I asked him, although I had a pretty good guess.

“It means I could go to the party,” he said.

“Oh right, the summer homework party was today,” I said, pretending to have forgotten.  “How was it?”

“Good,” he said, and described the sundae he’d created: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream with butterscotch sauce.  We sat down on the porch and he showed me his party booty: a certificate of achievement, a bookmark and a pencil that says, “Books are Magic.”  I asked how many kids from his class attended and he said only two or three, which surprised me.  Many of the kids of the kids in the Spanish immersion program remind me of Noah—whip smart, slightly nerdy, with academically inclined parents.  I wondered if he just wasn’t paying attention to who was there.  He can be oblivious to things like that.

We didn’t linger on the porch because his new favorite television show is on at 3:30, only ten minutes after the bus arrives.  It’s called Super Why (http://pbskids.org/superwhy/index.html) and Beth, who has only watched one episode on the computer, declared it “the most tedious show ever.”  I’ve watched several episodes, and while slightly more tolerant, I have to admit it is a bit slow.  It’s about a quartet of superheroes, the Super Readers, who solve everyday problems using “Alphabet Power,” “Word Power,” “Spelling Power,” and “The Power to Read.”  Because the characters are all operating at different levels of literacy, I imagine it was designed to be viewed by children of different ages, say preschoolers to kids in the early elementary grades.  Most of it is well below Noah’s level, but for reasons we do not fully understand, it has captured his imagination.

While Noah was watching television, I put June down for a later than usual afternoon nap.  She’s been resisting one or both naps most days now for a few weeks and I am coming to the reluctant recognition that I need to eliminate her morning nap because when she does take it, her afternoon nap starts so late that she has trouble getting to sleep at night. (One night she lay in her bed chanting “No way! No way! No way!”as I tried to get her to sleep.)  It’s not a convenient time for this transition.  I have been working about five hours a week since mid-August, doing some research for my sister, Sara, otherwise known as Word Girl (www.wordgirl.biz/), a freelance writer specializing in nutrition and natural foods.  My involvement with her current project is set to end at the end of the month, after which I will begin a few weeks of scoring the essay portion of the SAT.  So naps are precious now.  But June didn’t get that memo and we will be trying napless mornings starting Monday.  Today, though, I had to let her take that second nap because she’d been up since ten and I just didn’t see her making it until bedtime without melting down.

June fell asleep just as Noah’s show was ending. He asked if he could play a computer game, then have me read to him when he finished.  I agreed, and settled onto the couch with a big pile of printouts about the detoxification powers of various foods to read and highlight.  I was just getting to the one on Asian green leaf vegetables when he came in with a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  We read several chapters, ending with the one in which Mike Teavee gets shrunk by the television rays and the Oompa Loompas sing this song about television:

…IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK—HE ONLY SEES!

‘All right,’ you’ll cry, ‘All right,’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
‘How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY..USED…TO,,,READ! They’d READ and READ
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott!  Gadzooks!
One half their life was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read…

Well, I thought to myself, this sounds like a pretty good description of our house, even if Noah does watch an hour of PBS most days, plus the occasional dvd.  It doesn’t have to be either/or, though if it did, we’d be setting TV set out on the curb without a second thought.  [Aside: There’s an interesting pro/con set of essays about television and children in the current issue of Brain Child, my very favorite parenting magazine (www.brainchildmag.com/). Sadly, the article itself is not available on their site, but it’s worth a look anyway if you’re interested in other essays on parenting.]

I flipped through the remaining pages of the book and glanced at the clock.  “Well, we only have two chapters left, but I think we need to stop so I can make dinn—“

Noah’s wails cut me off.  “WE READ TOO MUCH!” he cried.  He was so upset he needed to express it physically, so he started to jump up and down on the bed (where we’d relocated when June woke up from her nap) yelling “WE READ TOO MUCH!” over and over and sobbing.  June regarded him with mild curiosity.

I had no idea why he was upset and it took a while to get it out of him, but it turned out to have to do with his reading log.  He’s supposed to read or be read to at least fifteen minutes a day, Mondays through Thursdays, as part of his Language Arts homework and we have to keep a record of what he reads.  I didn’t think this would pose much of a problem, since we read much more than that, albeit more irregularly (an hour or more one day, ten minutes the next) and we’d kept a similar log for his summer reading homework. If anything, I thought the discipline of daily reading might be good for Noah.  It has caused him a lot of anxiety, however.  At first, after a class discussion about how they should not read the same books over and over all year, he thought he couldn’t read chapter books because they take more than a day to finish and he would need to enter the same book more than once.  At our meeting with Ms. C last week, she assured us this was not the case, and Noah should feel free to use chapter books and enter them in the log as long as it took to finish them.  Later Noah worried that he wasn’t supposed to read more than fifteen minutes each day, but I convinced him it was fifteen minutes or more, and more was fine.  His current meltdown was a combination of both worries.  A year seems like such an interminable stretch of time to a six year old that he was afraid he would run out of books he likes before the year was out so he’d meant to make Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (“a book I like so much”) last longer.  And here it was, less than a week after we’d started it and it was almost over.  He’d gotten carried away in the pleasure of the text and forgotten to hoard it.  And to make matters worse, we’d done it on a Friday, which doesn’t even count for the reading log!  He was inconsolable.  I tried to wrap my mind around this problem, considering the irony that Noah’s reading homework was discouraging him from reading.

I jumped in with a long list of books he’s already read and likes that we could re-read for the log, as well as books he’s never read that I’ve been meaning to share with him.  I assured him he could live a long, long life and never read all the good books in the world.  I offered myself up as an example, a forty-year-old ex-academic with a PhD in literature and a long mental to-read list.  Gradually, he began to calm down and went to play on the computer.

I made salads and popped a frozen pizza in the oven.  Beth came home earlier than expected, and shortly after I heard the door open, I heard Noah sobbing again in the study.  I came in and sat on the floor.  “WE READ TOO MUCH,” he cried to Beth.  We went through the same conversation we’d just had, with some variations.  Beth’s contribution was to offer to write Ms. C an email, asking if we could have some flexibility with the log, writing down reading we actually did on the weekend on Monday for instance.  We worked out a plan of the next few books we’d read, and we promised not to read any more of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory until Monday.

As Beth and I did the dinner dishes, she noted we hadn’t seen June in a while.  “She’s in the living room,” I said.  I’d seen her go in there and I could hear papers rustling.  I figured she was turning the pages of a book.  I knew I should check and see if it was a library book or one of Noah’s favorites since she’s not really supposed to handle paper-paged books unsupervised, but she was quiet and Beth and I were having an actual conversation, so I decided to let her be.  When Beth started Noah’s bath, I went in to check on her and found the pile of hundreds of pages of printouts of articles on detoxification I’d left on the end table scattered all over the couch and the living room floor.  June had a pencil in one hand and was happily scribbling on one of the pages.

I carried a loudly protesting June to the bathroom and shut her in there with Beth and Noah while I picked up the papers and tried to get them back in order, but I quickly gave up on it and dumped the pile on top of my dresser.  Beth suggested that I take the advice I frequently give to Noah and not leave things I don’t want June getting into where she can reach them.  She took a bit too much pleasure in this suggestion, if you ask me.

After Noah’s bath, we watched an episode of Fraggle Rock, (http://www.fragglerocker.com/info/info.asp) a 1980s Jim Henson cable show we’d ordered from Netflix about some subterranean muppet-like creatures who live in another world, connected to ours by a hole in the baseboard of an old man’s house.  As soon as June saw we were going to turn on the TV, she grabbed the old remote control with the batteries removed that we’ve designated as hers, and she hopped up onto the couch.  Noah joined her, holding the actual working remote.

I watched them, both entranced as the theme song played:

Dance your cares away,
Worry’s for another day.
Let the music play,
Down at Fraggle Rock.

(www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/fragglerocklyrics.html)

I don’t think it will turn their brains to cheese.  I hope not.  I know they, especially Noah, use TV like grownups do, to relax and escape, and even to explore those fantasies and fairylands Roald Dahl extols.  When the show was over, Noah asked plaintively, “Why did we read too much?” but he was calm, his lament just a faint echo of his earlier ones.

Sure enough, I paid for June’s late afternoon nap with a wakeful baby at bedtime. Cramped and stiff, I lay with her in the toddler bed, setting her back down every time she popped up, stroking her hair and back, singing her favorite bedtime songs:

Juney, Juney, give me your answer true,
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.

After we’d both tired of singing, we listened to one of her musical crib toys and watched the revolving images of birds and bugs it projected on the ceiling of the dimly lit room.  When it finished, she sat up for the umpteenth time and suggested an alternative activity.  “Book?” she said hopefully.

When You Send Your Children to the Moon – Postscript

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Last night, as I was leaving Noah’s room after a bedtime snuggle, he said, “It’s scary to start a new grade.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed in his darkened room, I asked what was scary about it.

He said it was hard to remember where two rooms were instead of one. In first grade, the Spanish immersion program switches to a half-day format. So he has two teachers, Ms. C in the morning and Señorita M in the afternoon. I waited, but he didn’t have anything else to say about what was scary about it.

Goodness knows we’ve all been on eggshells all week. Noah’s been crying more easily and longer over small things. In the evenings, we quiz him about his day in falsely casual tones, and after he’s gone to bed, Beth and I try to read the tealeaves. On the whole, there have been more good signs than bad. He seems to be settling back into the routine. The first day of school he couldn’t figure out whom to play with at recess and played alone on the climbing equipment and with the digging machine. By Tuesday, however, he and Ruby had restarted their castle role-playing game from last year and played it the rest of the week, with some side trips to Vampire Mountain and Fairy Land. Just that afternoon, as we were talking about Back to School Night next week, Noah told me he wanted to come along (it’s unclear whether this is actually allowed) because “I like both my teachers.” And when we sent Noah’s occupational therapy report to school with our letter to Ms. C she responded the very next day, saying she’d read the thick, technically worded report and would try to implement its suggestions for Noah’s teachers. She also said she believes being active benefits adults and children and that she has the children moving around a lot during the day. Her classroom is called Tiger Town and they earn Tiger Tokens redeemable at the Tiger Store for good behavior. It’s the kind of imagination-engaging theme Noah loves. She has had the kids playing a lot of getting-to-know-you games this week and assigned them to bring home “Me in a Bag” one night for homework. Noah chose a photo of himself in his Halloween costume last year (he was the sun) to show he likes weather and imagining things, a kazoo to stand for his love of music and a print-out of a recipe for mango lassi from the Maya and Miguel (http://pbskids.org/mayaandmiguel/flash.html) website to show he loves mangos and watching PBS cartoons.

There were a few worrisome incidents, however, in Señorita M’s class. Noah reported that when another student misbehaved, everyone had to put their heads down on their desks, which does not strike Beth or me as effective discipline. Noah also mentioned getting in trouble for tangling up the Scotch tape, which seemed innocent enough to me. When I asked if he was supposed to be using the tape at the time, he admitted that he wasn’t. His paper kept sliding around on his desk, so he decided to tape it down without asking permission to use the tape and then he got tangled up in it. He thought this meant he would get bad marks for behavior that day, but when his weekly report came home, it was all smiley-faces. We have a meeting scheduled with both teachers next week.

There was almost no homework this week, so Noah used his normal homework time to work on summer reading assignments and has completed seventeen activities with only four left to do by the end of next week. Tonight we are celebrating a good first week of school by going out for Chinese and to Barnes and Noble to redeem Noah’s Reading Road Trip gift certificate. One week down. Thirty-five to go.

When You Send Your Children to the Moon

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And I had a dream it blows the autumn through my head
It felt like the first day of school
But I was going to the moon instead
And I walked down the hall
With the notebooks they got for me
My dad led me through the house
My mom drank instant coffee
And I knew that I would crash
But I didn’t want to tell them
There are just some moments when your family makes sense
They just make sense

So I raised up my arms and my mother put the sweater on
We walked out on the dark and frozen grass
The end of the summer
It’s the end of the summer
When you send your children to the moon

From “The End of the Summer” by Dar Williams
(http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/End-Of-The-Summer-lyrics-Dar-Williams/55FF799F9EBEEEC54825697B0032A9C6)

When we started seeing “Back to School” signs in store windows sometime in the middle of July, Noah was indignant. In late July, when we mentioned to him that he’d be going back to school soon, he protested that four weeks was “a long time.” Then the weeks dwindled to days. On Saturday morning, while we were still at the beach, Beth reminded him that school started in two days. He was shocked. It wasn’t until yesterday morning that he truly seemed to get it. Beth was urging him to finish his breakfast and get a move on and she asked if he knew why he needed to focus. She meant for him to say that he had a swim lesson, but he said, “Because school starts tomorrow?” I guess we had to be at home for it to sink in. It might have also helped that we drove over to his school Saturday evening to check the class lists that were supposed to be posted on the doors. They weren’t! We’d missed the Open House because we were out of town, so Beth had to find out what classes he was in by posting to the PTA listserv. Luckily, the moms of one of his nursery school classmates and one of his kindergarten classmates had noticed what classes Noah was in and responded to Beth’s post. We also learned from one of these moms, that Ms. C, Noah’s morning teacher, wants parents to write her a letter about their children’s likes and dislikes and effective strategies for working with them. It seems like a good sign that she wants input about her pupils as individuals. In the afternoon, for the Spanish portion of his day, he has Señorita M, his summer kindergarten teacher. We didn’t get to know her very well, due to the short session, but she’s at least a familiar face to Noah and he never got in trouble in her class. She’s also very young (about twelve, Beth estimated last summer) which could translate to flexibility. Here’s hoping.

When I was a kid, my mom always took my sister and me out for ice cream on the last night of summer vacation. It’s a tradition I’d kept up with Noah the night before he started nursery school and kindergarten. This year, however, he wanted an ice cream cake from the supermarket instead. He remembered that last year we threw a Back to School party for the handful of his nursery school classmates who’d be attending his elementary school. He especially remembered the sheet cake we bought for the occasion and now in his mind, the idea going back to school is cemented with cake. I would have preferred the ceremony of going out for ice cream to eating cake at home, but I didn’t really want to try to dictate his cherished childhood memories to him, so we had the cake.

We almost didn’t eat it, though, because at dinnertime, Noah was camped out in the bathroom, waiting to throw up. He’s had a lot of mysterious stomachaches in the past year or so, says he’s going to throw up and almost never does. The last one was Saturday morning as we were trying to leave Rehoboth. They don’t always come at such obvious times, but I think they might be stress-related. I had a nervous stomach as a kid and the problem peaked in sixth grade, the year after my parents split up. A little while later, he made a full recovery, ate his dinner and his cake.

On waking this morning, Noah asked how long he has to turn in his summer homework. (The answer is until the end of the second week of school.) Now, two hours before the beginning of the school year he had decided that he does want to complete enough of the assignments to attend the party. Currently he has completed eleven reading assignments, seven of them in the past week. This earns him a bookmark and a certificate. He needs to finish twenty-one to go to the party. I told him we’d see what we could do, but his regular homework came first.

At 8:25, June and I watched from the porch as Beth and Noah waited at the bus stop. At one point he was heaving his backpack, overloaded with the required pencils, tissues, hand soap, etc, over his head and it got stuck. “Help, Beth! Help!” he cried as she untangled him.

The bus pulled up. I noted he has the same bus driver, who was always friendly and kind to him last year. He got on the bus and it drove off, taking my first-born on another trip to the moon.