Gifts for the Teacher
the girl
A Reading
L spent much of these last few weeks in school working on a book during class writing time. All students were required to write their first book, and K and I were pleased and proud that L’s topic had only very little to do with Frozen.
Dzień Dziecka
We were in the backyard, blowing bubbles, chasing bubbles, popping bubbles -- just a bit of outside time between our return from Mass and the Boy's nap time.
Suddenly, Mama appeared.
"I've got surprises for you two!" she said, in Polish of course. "Today is Dzień Dziecka."
It sounds so much more natural to me in Polish: Children's Day. Nah. Dzień Dziecka. In the States, we only have Father's Day and Mother's Day; Poland adds Children's Day, Grandparents' Day, Siblings' Day, Uncles' Day, Aunts' Day, Cousins' Day, Second Cousins' Day, Cousins' Twice Removed Day. Well, perhaps not to that degree, but they don't stop at just two family days.
One could argue that every day is Children's Day, especially in big families. Still, it's nice to have an excuse to give kids a little something to make them smile, like new books or a new train for a growing Thomas collection.
Upside Down Girl
Sick Sunday
Sick Saturday
The Boy always stays sick. Or is it a dairy allergy? At any rate, he’s always coming down with something, and so when we took him to the doctor ten days ago, this weekend’s plans wobbled just a little: “He might not be up to camping,” K said. I was optimistic, though: “He’ll get better.” But as he was getting better, K started feeling worse. “Perhaps you and L can go on the camping trip instead of all four of us,” she suggested. Then Wednesday, L returned home from school feeling positively awful and slept from four to seven, then went back to bed at nine and slept till seven the next morning. Three out of four, that meant only one thing: Tata has to step up his game.
Cleaning, diaper changing, cut bandaging, medicine dosing — I usually miss these things on a spring Saturday morning. This or that gardening/hardware/tool store is calling, or the lawn beckons, or the Leyland cypresses stretch out to remind me they need a trimming. It’s always something. This morning, though, it was just an ever-running laundry, new adventures with a fussy son, a cat in the laundry basket, and cold coffee.
Enough to make me appreciate again all the things that K accomplishes inside while I’m outside on a Saturday.
By the early afternoon, the kids had both rebounded almost fully. The Boy and I went on a little field trip while L was up the street at a friend’s house. By the evening, K was once again exhausted — she insisted on cooking dinner — and the kids were tired from their newly-rediscovered outside freedom.
Jazz 2014 and Puppies
Tonight was L's jazz concert. Greenville Ballet divides the two forms into separate lessons (unlike our former school, which had half an hour of ballet followed by half an hour of jazz), and this year they had two separate shows. If last night's performance was any sort of standard, it was certainly magnificent.
Meanwhile, at the house, the Boy and I had our own adventure: a walk to the drug store, some swinging time, some up-the-stairs, down-the-stairs time -- everything a boy and his father needed to make a perfect evening of it.
Bedtime presented its own challenges. As I was dressing the Boy for a hopefully-long, hopefully-restful evening, I slipped his puppy pajama bottoms on without thinking about the fact that the matching shirt was nowhere to be found. He was fine with it, but started asking a little later about the top: I'd laid him on the bed to slide him into his sleeping sack when he began asking, "Sapappies?"
"We don't have the top, E," I reassured him. "I don't know where it is."
Despite this reasoned explanation, the protests grew more frantic: "Sapappies! Sapappies!"
I tried explaining again, but it was not no avail: he slid off the bed, marched to his chest of drawers, and began opening them one by one. Look in, he'd exclaim, "No!" before slamming the draw closed (I could just hear the screams if he caught his finger in one) and opening the next. The third attempted was successful. "Tu! Tu!" he shouted ("Here! Here!" in English). He pulled out a pair of socks and cried, "Sapappies!"
(Note to non-Slavophiles: "socks" in Polish is "skarpetki," so in typical dual-language fashion, he applied a bilingual double-plural to it in addition to the ineffably charming pronunciation.)
Ballet Recital 2014
We changed ballet schools at the beginning of this season: the last recital, rescheduled at the last minute to an old auditorium with no sound system and, worse, no air conditioning, all due to the costumes being ordered too late yet again -- it was just a nightmare. Everyone sweaty; no one able to hear; everyone miserable. We'd been having our doubts, but it was the last straw, so to speak.
So we began taking L to one of the two largest schools in the area. A school that stages a full Nutcracker every year. A school that divides the instruction up into ballet lessons (learning the basics, the positions, the movements) and performance lessons (learning a choreographed dance incorporating all the skills from ballet lessons). This is a school that has students from ages four to eighteen. It has a beginner pointe group, an intermediate pointe group, and advanced pointe instruction.
The difference was striking this evening.
The program was arranged so that we began with the pre-ballet kids (four- and five-year-olds) showing their basic moves to the cliche clunky piano music one always associates with basic lessons and ended with the advanced ballet group put on quite a show to a piece by Ravel.
After the show, all smiles as usual.
Independence and Responsibility
The Delicacy of Sharing
Teaching our daughter to share has been a constant challenge, as I'm sure it has with most parents. L likes and even expects others to share with her, but getting her to return the favor -- that's always been a trick. A few events of the last few days, though, makes me think we've made real progress.
Friday, we were to meet a friend of hers from her first grade class at the end-of-the-year school party, a carnival with a few rides and some games scattered about the school ground.
"We're supposed to meet at six at the silly string!" she told us, countless times.
We arrived at the silly string area -- a roped off portion of the field where kids ran about spraying aerosol string on each other -- at the appointed time, but no friend. We got a ice treat, went on a few rides, and then suddenly discovered L's friend, also Lilly.
With her mother's blessing, Lilly went off with L and me, but before long, she'd run out of tickets.
"Daddy," L said with a grave expression. "Give me the rest of the tickets. I want to slip them with Lilly."
The second episode: today, during L's preparation time before ballet portraits, I sat with E at the table to do his albuterol breathing treatment, but he was having none of that.
"No! No! No!"
No amount of cajoling, explaining, or begging could help.
L came to the rescue, offering the Boy use of our family Nexus so he could play his favorite game, a vehicle-based shape-matching game.
He sat patiently for the treatment, playing his game and clapping furiously whenever he finished a round.
"Bravo!" he cried, as did I, though for both L and E.
Finally, in the evening, mowing the yard after almost two weeks' neglect, I came upon a patch of matted grass, so I headed in for the dethatching rake. As I returned, I noticed a curious patch of dry grass with bits of gray about it. I walked over, pulled the grass aside, and found a burrow of baby rabbits.
L came over to get a peek, and Papa brought the Boy over.
"What an odd place to burrow," I said. Indeed, for it will be a disaster if our cat finds it, which is not as likely as it might seem given her age and general laziness.
Still, I'm happy to share our yard -- for once, it's an animal that seems harmless.