Toddler Logic

Alexandra is at the point where everything she says is just freakin' hilarious. I need to write more of these things down & make some more movies, but I just never have time to write them and as soon as the camera comes out that inhabited babble changes. It's just not quite the same.

She is full of logic and cause and effect statements lately. Yesterday, I rolled off my Dansko clog. Anyone out there who wears Danskos knows what I mean. I was walking along happily to work, stepped on a twig or something, and my entire foot flopped under me. It didn't feel bad at all at first, but then after pumping in the morning I went to stand up and couldn't. I was a total gimp. I limped around the rest of the day, had to come home early and have Nicole pick up Alexandra because I couldn't walk the 12 blocks to daycare, and I sat around trying to ice and elevate the rest of the day--while watching two kids all night because Adam had to work late.

I was icing my foot with green beans, and I told Alexandra I had a boo boo. A couple hours later I was nursing Nico and he bit me. Yes, the advent of his first tooth has also brought about a desire to gnaw on my boob. He bit me and I said, "Ouch Nico! No biting!" and Alexandra said, "Cause Mommy, if you get a boo boo on your boobie you'll have to put green beans on it!"

Okay--that's totally not as funny as it was when said. Humph.

Preschool Wars

I am not sure how it works in the rest of our fine country, but preschool here in Park Slope Brooklyn is something you begin to talk about after you are safely out of your first trimester of pregnancy. Getting into a preschool in this neighborhood is akin to getting into Harvard--shoot, an Ivy might be easier (after all, I got into one...). But preschool in the Slope is full of ass-kissing, paying fees to apply, getting financially butt-raped IF you get in, and then still continuously second guessing your decision to send your kid to this or that preschool. It's discussed ad nauseam on the playground, over brunch, at the gym, in whispers between yoga mats...It's sick.

Alexandra is in daycare, and it's a wonderful. It's not the super chic daycare of the 'hood, but she loves it, is learning so much, and actually cries when I come to get her many days of the week b/c she doesn't want to leave her friends. We have never questioned our daycare's integrity, but living in this area makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's something better out there.

So we looked. We decided to go for the preschool that's literally 5 steps from our house. If we're going to pay so much more, convenience had better play a part. So I went on the tour. My response: "Meh." The classrooms looked like every elementary school I have been to, but elementary school is FREE. Then we went on the playdate interview and the woman in charge spelled Alexandra's name wrong. Seriously? Alexandra? I mean, it's not a challenging name. Oh, and btw, they misspelled a really simple word like "street" in their pamphlet. And one last thing--they used Comic Sans as the font in their pamphlet. Gag.

After all that, our $75 was already in (application fee, you know, preschool fee = same as college application fee) and we got the letter in the mail that we had been waitlisted. You know what you have to do if you're waitlisted? Call. Every. Day. And. Beg. Eff that.

So we're staying at our daycare one more year. Nico starts this summer. And I'm more than cool with that. If my kid doesn't get into Harvard b/c she didn't get into this preschool, I'm totally cool with that, too.

Hat Tip

Walking to the train today, a much older gentleman tipped his hat and smiled at me. It was the most adorable and endearing thing anyone has done towards/for me in ages. Such a simple gesture, so lost in the decades that have followed this man's first hat-tip, probably as a spry young thing a long time ago and done with some awkwardness...or maybe he was a natural from day one--a rico suave of his time--who tipped his hat at the ladies and they swooned. God knows, if I hadn't been running late and pissed that I had left my coffee on the counter I might have paused to swoon a bit myself. Who cares that he was probably in his mid-70's?

Regardless, it made my day.
Wanted to share.

Little Oscar Diva

I have been watching the Oscars annually since back in college. I have watched them with many different groups of friends, with various boys, and under the influence of several variables, but tonight was a first: I watched them with my two year old.

Alexandra goes to bed super easily, but tonight, around 9:15, she came out to the living room/kitchen and said she couldn't sleep and wanted to hang out with us. She sat on the couch, ate my very late dinner with me, and laughed at Ben Stiller's Avatar face and tail, said the girls were pretty had had pretty dresses, and commented when each guy had a beard like Grandpa. I LOVED having her there, giggling after I laughed and trying to be so grown up. But eventually I had to insist that she went back to bed, and she did so without a complaint.

But it was a precursor as to how much fun we'll have one day when she can chill with us on the couch.

Love that baby girl (and she really like the dresses with sparkles and the blue lights).

Calling Parents

Adam took today off to write a eulogy for Grandpop, therefore he picked up the kids and I was able to work late. This is the first time I have done this all year and it was awesome. I guess most folks wouldn't consider working until 5:30 on a Friday their idea of a good time, but damn, I was able to get so much work done it was like I was moving at superhuman pace. Wow.

One thing I have a hard time doing is calling parents. We have been forewarned about letting the kids have our cell phone numbers--next thing you know a kid texts you a picture of them in their panties and you're getting framed for having intimate relations with them. And shoot, daytime cell phone minutes are expensive. I have three periods off a day, but two of them I pump breastmilk and that leaves one to do work, copies, talk with the guidance counselors about kids, etc. By the time I get the kids to bed at night, eat, and clean up to work it's around 10--too late to call home. With these factors, I'm not the best at calling.

So today I called parents. I learned a lot, and it was heartbreaking. Here's a few examples why:

1. Call #1: Student's grandmother had called asking for an update. I called her back. She's taking care of said student, his twin brother, their 18 yo brother, and a 10 year old sister b/c their mother died two years ago. This is the FOURTH 9th grade student of mine who has lost a mother in the past two years. She also has three other kids from someone else. She is overwhelmed. She tells me she's giving my student's twin brother over to the city (foster care, group home) b/c she's "lost him to the streets and ain't nothing you can do once that happens." She was trying to decide what to do about my student--should she give him up too? She asks my opinion. Man.

2. Call #2: Nice student, good skills and sweet as anything, but always late to 1st period. Tell her mom and her mom says, "We just moved to a shelter in the Bronx, it's a long ride." I say, "Oh, I didn't know, I'm so sorry, I had heard student lived near 14th Street in the City." She says, "We were moved to another shelter so now she has to commute." This girl commutes two hours each way to our high school. From a shelter and goes "home" to a shelter. Ugh.

3. Call #3: Student who's mom died unexpectedly while I was on maternity leave. Call his sister to give her an update, sister with custody isn't home, talk to other sister who says they're having a hard time with student and aren't sure what to do with him. They are trying to get dad to take him/keep him, but his dad doesn't want him. Sisters are at a loss. Insert heart breaking here.

I made about 20 calls, and many were just plain fine, but those resonate in me tonight as I sit on my couch.

Goodbye Grandpop

Adam's Grandpop, Howard Jensen, passed away today. He was 89 years old and lived a long and successful life, but the loss of anyone still stings. I have been with Adam for nine years now, so I met Grandpop when he was around 80. He was a dapper old man who cruised the Hartford area in his Cadillac visiting friends and often wearing a classy hat. But the last few years were hard on his health and he gradually started slipping down that slope that many old folks do: broken hip, slight dementia, pneumonia, and so forth. But he is at peace now.

I am not sure what I believe about the afterlife. I REALLY want to believe that there is some place where we can be reunited with all those we lost across our lives. I can't explain how much I'd love to see my dad again, and seeing my friends Heidi and Eric would be just. . .I can't even put words to it. But I am not sure I believe that happens, even as much as I truly hope it is.

But tonight I was thinking about Grandpop's life and the end of it, and I thought that he could be, for the first time in over 30 years, with his wife again. Osa Jensen--from whom Alexandra received her middle name--passed away in her late 50's and Grandpop never remarried. It made me happy to think that perhaps, in some alternate plane of existence, Grandpop and Grandma Osa are happily reunited.

That lessened the sting a bit.

Rest in peace, Grandpop. You leave a legacy of wonderful people behind you.

Winter Olympics Blahs

The Winter Olympics have come and gone, and I must say I was not impressed. I was trying to evaluate why I was so uninspired by it all as I ran on the treadmill last weekend and chose to watch "The Matrix" over watching the best athletes in the world compete.

One, is that there are just too many clothes on those folks. I like to see some muscle, some sweat, some gold chains and hairstyles. I like to see the whole person, and the Winter Olympics is just too shrouded in hats, layers, etc. Meh.

But what I really think turned me off was one of the first performances I accidently caught one night: ice dancing. First, I had no idea ice dancing was an Olympic sport. I kept waiting for the couple to do some complicated turns, jumps, something that wasn't so corny and theatrical--something demonstrating strong athleticism--and it just never happened. I turned to Adam and exclaimed, "What the heck was that? They didn't go anything!" And then I was introduced to ice dancing by the announcers. Already not a fan.

But then these whack Russians get out there practically dressed in blackface "dancing" to Australian Aboriginal music, doing things like man pulling the woman's hair, their facial expressions reeking of racist sentiments of Aboriginal peoples being primitive, etc. I felt like it had to be some sort of Saturday Night Live skit: How could this be for real? Oh, but it was. I was appalled that the Olympic committee let this happen. I mean, seriously, would they let someone do a routine in blackface? And the BEST thing about this whole scenario is that they had previously done this routine at the World Championships and offended everyone, so they LIGHTENED the skin tone in their outfits to improve the situation. WTH?!

And after that I was out. I mean, really, Olympics? Really?