Half Changed World

D is on a big three-toed sloth kick lately.  Whenever we go to the playground, he has to hang upside down on one of the curved ladders, just like a three-toed sloth.  For a while he was saying he wanted to be a three-toed sloth for Halloween, but I think we’ve talked him out of it.  (T is officially in charge of costuming in this household, so it’s not my problem in any case.)  And we’ve consumed the full extent of the library’s juvenile sloth section (Carle’s Slowly Slowly Slowly Said the Sloth and Robinson’s The Upside Down Sloth).

Those of you who don’t have preschoolers (or whose preschoolers don’t watch TV) are probably scratching your heads wondering where on earth D got a thing for three-toed sloths.   Those of you with munchkins probably know that Dora’s cousin Diego is responsible.  D thinks Diego is "awesome."

The ability to pursue enthusiasms like this, rather than staying doggedly on a fixed curriculum, racing against time to cover all the material that will be on a standardized test, is the strongest argument I’ve heard for homeschooling.  But, for a variety of reasons, we’re not really considering going that route any time soon.  I’m hopeful that there will be enough non-school time to provide the boys with the opportunities to follow their interests.

Last month, the Center for American Progress and the Institute for America’s Future issued a report on how to improve public schools.  Their first recommendation is to increase the length of both the school day and the school year, as well as to make better use of in-school time.  I have extremely mixed reactions to such a proposal.  I’m afraid my basic response is that it’s a good idea — for other people’s kids.  In particular, it’s clear that one of the reasons that KIPP and similar schools have had such success with disadvantaged populations is that the students spend so much more time in school than their counterparts.

But for my own kids, I think I’d be reluctant to give over even more of their lives to formal schooling.  I think they need time to run around the playground like lunatics, time to read books with no literary merit, time to bake cookies, and yes, time to learn about three-toed sloths.

Blogging may be slow here for a while.  Something’s gotta give, and this is one of the few things in my life that can be cut back.

1)  First week of every-day preschool for D.  We’re all adjusting to the new routine, especially the need to take bedtimes seriously.

2)  We’re having the carpet in the two second floor rooms replaced with hardwood (bamboo actually).  The carpet is about 16 years old, and totally scuzzy, but we’d been saying that we needed to wait until the boys were both potty-trained to replace it.  But after D’s asthma attack last winter, we had him tested for allergies, and found out that dust mites were the only thing he was allergic to.  So, we started thinking that it probably didn’t make sense to put in more carpeting — and once we decided to go with wood, there wasn’t any reason to put up with the skanky carpet for another couple of years.  They’re coming tomorrow, so we had to get all the furniture and everything out of those rooms.  At least the bookshelves are built-in, so we didn’t have to empty them.

3)  I’ve started training to be a CASA volunteer.  It’s a great program, and I’m excited to be doing it (if more than a little nervous as well), but the training is 2 nights a week from now until the end of October.  I’m glad that they’re not going to send us out without preparation, but it eats up a big chunk of my time for the next couple of months.

Over at The Rabbit Lived, there’s been some interesting posts about pet owners and their attitudes towards their animals.  The blogger, who is a vet, wrote:

"I said that she was precisely the kind of pet owner that vets hate (sorry to speak for all vets there, but I was angry): the kind of person that takes care of the physical needs of an animal and expects applause for doing so.  Oh look, I do this and that and the other and I’m so good to this cat, he’s lucky to have me.  I said that the best kinds of owners are the ones that can list of ten reasons why their dog/cat/whatever is the most special dog/cat/whatever in the world."

This made me feel bad, because I’m definitely not that kind of owner, at least not about Aloysious.  I used to joke that she was my step-cat — since T got her when we were living on opposite coasts — and I was obviously a horrible step-mother who showed blatant favoritism to my cat.  (I could easily come up with a list of 10 things I loved about Becca-cat, who came to me when I was a teenager.  She died 5 years ago and I still have a photo of her in my office.)

Aloysious just isn’t a terribly lovable cat.  She will jump on your lap and want attention, but if you pet her, she’s likely to suddenly claw you without warning.  I don’t blame cats for scratching furniture, but I do object to her crapping on the couch, which she does often enough that we keep it covered with a plastic sheet when we’re not using it.  When we had to board her a couple of years ago (we were having the floors redone while we were away, so she couldn’t stay in the house), the staff nicknamed her "Aloy-vicious."

And yet we spent a significant amount of money last year to have her treated when she had a serious, but not life-threatening, medical issue.  Not really out of love, but because we could afford it, and because we take seriously the responsibility of being pet-owners.

This sounds awfully negative, so I will end with three things I love about Aloysious:

1. She’s got the loudest purr I’ve ever heard.
2. She’s the only cat I’ve ever known that fetches.  She loves it when you throw shoelaces or the plastic things from milk jugs for her.  (But she’ll also claw your hand open when you try to pick it up.)
3. In spite of being a not-very-gentle cat overall, she’s incredibly tolerant of the boys.  I’ve seen her respond to pokes by batting the offender with her paw — with the claws retracted.

Today was D’s first day of preschool for the year.  He’s going to the same school as for the past two years, with mostly the same group of kids, so it was pretty much a non-event for him.  I went in late so I could help take him to school, but 5 minutes after we got there, the teachers were lining them up to head out to the playground and he was off without a backward glance.  I was misty-eyed anyway, looking at the little kids in the two-year-old class, and being boggled at how big D is compared to them, and trying to wrap my head around the idea that he’ll be in kindergarden next year.

Suzanne at Mother in Chief wrote an post last week about the pressure she’s feeling to send her daughter to preschool, as most of her playgroup friends are going.  I’m sure her daughter will be fine either way.  We freely admit that preschool is as much about giving T a bit of a break from D’s constant desire to be entertained as it is because we think it’s useful for D.

Preschool has also helped T break into the social world of SAHMs and their children, which really wasn’t happening before.  They were happy to have their kids play with D at the playground, but no one was inviting them to playdates.  I think women are just very reluctant to invite a "strange" man into their house, or to accept an invitation from one.  And T was more focused on playing with D than with schmoozing up the moms, which made the social connections even harder.  Since D started preschool, he’s invited to many more parties and playdates.

I just loved this sentence (from the NYTimes article on Forth & Towne, the Gap’s new chain for "grown-ups")?

"Even though women of the baby boom, now age 41 to 59, accounted for 39 percent of women’s apparel purchases last year, shoppers who are much younger, 11 to 30, enjoy nearly five times the retail options, according to industry figures."

And women ages 31-40 apparently don’t exist.  Too young to be boomers, we’re children of the "baby bust" and demographically invisible.

Lord knows, I could certainly use some help finding new clothes.   Between two pregnancies, breastfeeding, and hoping to lose baby weight, I’ve hardly bought anything to wear in the past 5 years. (Ok, I bought maternity clothes, but I gave them away as fast as I could.)  I’m cheap, and I hate clothes shopping in any case — no one designs clothes for short women with large ribcages — and so have just rotated through my wardrobe endlessly.  But it’s starting to get pretty shabby.

In particular, I really need some new shorts.  But I can’t seem to find anything that isn’t cut for either teenagers who don’t mind their pupik showing or for matronly ladies who are hiding their varicose veins.  Any suggestions?

We had a nice visit with my family in NYC, but I’m happy to be home again.  Doubly happy not to have any more road trips planned for at least a couple of months.  We got stuck in ugly traffic on I-95 on the way home, and we were all pretty frazzled by the time we got home.

The boys are actually about as good travellers as you could hope for.  They both nap well in the car, and they entertained each other for hours making noises back and forth (Ahhh — beee– pthhffff).  D. has reached the stage where he can give me a reasonable amount of warning when I need to find a bathroom.  And they were even fairly gracious and didn’t whine when the portable DVD player broke down mid-trip and so they couldn’t watch Here Come the ABC’s.

When we bought the DVD player, we paid for the 4 year extended warranty, so T. took it back to Best Buy this afternoon.  They listened to his explanation, then told him to go ahead and pick out a new one.  For the same price, we now get a larger screen, and an included car-mount case.  The catch is that the warranty ends once they replace the player (rather than repair it), so we lose the 2+ years remaining on the warranty.  We went ahead and paid the extra for another 2 year warranty; the new one has a rotating screen that looks pretty flimsy, so we’re guessing we’ll get another replacement before it expires.

**

Oh, while I was off-line, I seem to have missed Grrl and Sarah’s birthstory.  And her old posts aren’t available any more, due to weird people stealing her words.  Feh.

Even though it’s been in the high 90s until this week, the trees know that fall is on the way.  Nothing is turning colors yet, but there are more dead leaves on the street, and the acorns are starting to fall. 

Labor Day is in just two weeks, and then D’s preschool starts on Wednesday.  I hate the fact that our school schedule is set by King’s Dominion, but it still feels right for me that school doesn’t start until September.  The High Holidays aren’t until October this year, which throws off my mental calendar.

T’s been a real trooper having both boys home all day for most of the summer, but even his nerves are starting to fray a bit.  They’ve been watching more TV than usual, but I really can’t complain.  Given the heat, outdoor activities just aren’t reasonable in the afternoon, and crafts only entertain D for about 10 minutes at a time.

D will have preschool 5 mornings a week this year, up from 3 last year.  It feels like a big jump, in some ways bigger than the jump to 5 "full days" (8 to 2.15) in kindergarten next year.  I think N is going to miss having him around.  N is just a little too young for the 2s class at the preschool (just as he’ll be 2 weeks too young for kindergarten in 3 years).  There are programs in the area we could have enrolled him in, but the prospect of having the kids in different preschools was more than we could face.  T will take him to story hour at the library and stuff.

I’m always tempted to buy myself school supplies at this time of year.  There’s something about the call of an unmarked notebook.

As I’m on the road, I have a guest blogger today.  (I don’t have the fancy level of Typepad, so I can’t set it to publish under her name.)  Frequent commenter Jen offers her thoughts on the lessons she learned having her teenage niece stay with her this summer:

What I learned from my niece:

Teenagers talk on cel phones.  A lot.
My 2 and 4-year-old daughters would ditch me for a totally cool 15-year-old in a heartbeat.
Life in Chicago is a lot different from life in suburban Salt Lake City.  (OK, so I knew that one already.)
“Nobody in Chicago wears a bra.”
I swear too much, and I don’t make my bed every day, which now that I think about it is kind of embarrassing.
My husband and I have a pretty good relationship.
There are more ways to let my husband reconnect with his family than just flying to Utah for Thanksgiving.

What I hope my niece learned from us:

Gay people are all around us, and they’re not any weirder than straight people.
The little Mexican fruit market is way better than then big chain grocery store.
If you don’t like a guy, just tell him.  He’ll live, and your life will be much easier.
Of course you can walk to 7-11 by yourself.
Your aunt and uncle may sometimes disagree with your parents, but they’re still your parents and they deserve your respect.
There are many different ways to live.  It’s up to you to choose which is best for you.

T just loaded the boys into the car and is headed out to Michigan to visit his parents and grandmother.  They’ll be back Wednesday.  I’m taking Monday off from work, which means that I have two and a half whole days to do whatever I darn please.  I’m practically giddy at the thought.

No, I don’t have huge exciting plans.  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do, other than sleep in tomorrow morning and read as much of the Sunday paper as I please.  I want to do some yoga and maybe go for a run.  I feel like I should take advantage and go to a movie in a theater, but I have no idea what’s playing, and I have A Very Long Engagement out from Netflix, so I might just watch that.  If the weather cooperates, I may rent a sunfish and pratice sailing on the Potomac, but right now it’s hot and sticky.  I have a huge stack of books out from the library, and I’d like to make some progress on them.  And I also have a long list of errands to run (get my ATM card turned back on, get my purse fixed) and to-dos (clean the fridge, edit down the zillion digital photos I’ve taken in the past few months).   I might even go clothes shopping.

Yes, I’ll miss them.  (I loved Yankee Transplant’s list of the times that she misses her daughters.)  But having them 5 states away gives me the freedom to do all the things that I almost never choose to do when it means giving up time with the boys.  Does that make sense?

In our endless battle against clutter, we’ve been freecycling a bunch of stuff lately.  For those who don’t know, Freecycle is a loosely linked set of email lists, divided based on geography, where people post things that they’re giving away and other people email them to say that they want them.   I’ve given away things as big as our old washer/dryer and as small as baby food jars.  It’s one of the wonders of the internet age that for almost anything you can imagine giving away, not only is there someone who is thrilled to have it, but the odds are pretty good that you can find them.

Somewhat to my amusement, I’m more willing to get rid of things that we never use when I know they’re going to someone who wants them than when I know they’re going to the landfill.  If the only choice is to toss them, I feel compelled to hold on to them in case someday we want them.  But if they’ll make someone else happy, I remind myself that I can always beg, borrow or buy new ones if I suddenly need them.

I don’t freecycle everything we’re getting rid of.  A few things have enough value that I’ve ebayed them. Other things aren’t worth the effort of listing individually. I throw outgrown kid clothes into a bag in the closet, and when it gets full I bring it to work to give to a colleague whose wife works for NoVAM.  And whenever Value Village calls to say they’re picking up donations in my neighborhood, I wind up with a bag or two for them.

I still haven’t figured out what to do with things like handmade baby blankets.  It hurts to get rid of something that was given with so much love, but it seems silly to put them all in my parents’ attic to collect dust until my kids have children of their own.  Does anyone know of a place that collects blankets for kids in foster care or something like that?