Crossing the bridge

Yesterday you rode your two-wheeler
across the Golden Gate Bridge and back.
Today you started kindergarten.
I'll tell you one thing's for sure.
She's not the only one who admires your courage.

Fully Formed

I am so up to my eyeballs in paperwork these days that I can't even see straight. I have a new callous on my right middle finger where my pen rests. The kind I used to get during final exams in college. I have forms coming out of my forms.

It started last weekend when my husband and I decided to buy tickets to visit his family in Israel. In March. That's tomorrow basically. But it's actually our favorite time of year and it's been raining a TON over there so that means by mid March there will be entire fields teaming with red poppies and wild irises. Which totally makes up for the hideously long plane trip and the week of jetlag. Plus we get to see all the people that we are otherwise missing so that's good too.

Anyway, what we failed to realize was that our son's passports had expired. Both of them. And my Israeli passport had also expired. Oops. That's six forms right there. Our covert secret ops mission to the unmarked Israeli consulate in San Francsico is a story for another time. But there I had to fill out another form because apparently when we got married and registered our auspicious union at the Ministry of the Interior, someone wrote down that I took my husband's last name, which I didn't. Please fill out this form.

And before we leave on our trip I have to sign up my son for kindergarten. Twenty more forms. And though the private school application is in, the financial aid application is not.  More forms. And then there's summer camps. Yes. Most of the United States is still a frozen wasteland but over here in California we're signing up for summer camp. Because we are LUNATICS. So not only do I need to figure out when my kids are going to what camps but also what we're doing in between and how on earth will I get anything done this summer and should I just keep my son at the place where he goes to school or can we venture to some other, more interesting camps, like one that focuses entirely on ELECTRICITY for a whole week, but where he doesn't know anyone and will likely be miserable. And what does it all mean? Nothing. Except more forms. And with every over priced summer camp, comes financial aid. Surprise. More forms.

I'm just waiting for the sanitarium forms to show up so I can sign on the dotted line.

He is especially interested in electricity

Last night I finally sat down to do my son's kindergarten application. We decided to apply to the Jewish Day School in our neighborhood after we took a tour and the woman assured us there is plenty of financial aid. We never planned to send our son to private school but have you heard about California lately? How we have the lowest debt rating of any state in the country? And the worst education? I think we even beat out Mississippi for last place. Our district has a few great schools actually but ours is not one of them. So we're also applying to a great "choice program" (within our district) which has a lottery admission system. I'm a public school girl myself, straight through graduate school and we always said we'd go that route for our kids. But then it's time to sign up and it's actually your kid and not some hypothetical kid and well you kind of want him or her to have a music and arts education and opportunities to learn, I don't know, science.

But we're only applying to this one private school. I considered the Waldorf school in our area after I went there and just about died when I saw their felting studio. I was ready to repeat kindergarten myself. But then I saw their application and the question asking about my birth experience and I was like, great actually but that's none of your effing business. 

This post had a point (Aimee - you should make that a magnet). Right. So I was filling out the application and had to answer some questions about my son - specifically his academic, social and emotional strengths. Here's what I came up with for the first part:

Our son is a very curious, energetic and imaginative little boy. He loves words and was a conversationalist, even on the phone, from an early age. He has an excellent memory and understands concepts like process of elimination and patterning and he asks a lot of annoying questions that I can't answer because I apparently don't know anything is very interested to know how everything works. He is especially obsessed with interested in electricity. But not in a Unibomber kind of way. 

I like to call his latest installation "Plugged In." He found a power strip and plugged it into itself (thus preventing him from plugging it into the wall and blowing himself up). He then went around the house finding every small appliance connecting it to the power strip. And he found a splitter too so he could add more plugs. I'm freezing my ass off as we speak because my heater is part of his creation.

The last part of the questionnaire, in response to "what do you hope your child will get out of our program" or something like that ended with: We hope that our son continues to develop the kind of self-confidence he’ll need to celebrate his quirky wonderful self every day of his life.

Read the story and answer the questions below

Today I took my son for a language test given by the school district for kids who speak other languages at home. I naively marked on his application for elementary school that he speaks Hebrew so the state mandates he has to take this test. We're not even sending him to school next year but we live across the street from the school where it was scheduled so we walked over this afternoon just to see what it was all about. I figured he'd meet with some school counselor who would talk to him for ten minutes and mark that he knew plenty of English. End of story.

Not so much.

I let them know we'd arrived and then a proctor came along to bring him to a testing room. She asked me to wait outside and I was pleasantly surprised when my son did not pitch a fit. He walked right in and sat down across from her at the table. Then she whips out this , I'm not joking, sixty page booklet like he's taking the freaking SAT. Only she's got the number two pencil and is filling in the bubbles. And it's everything from story comprehension to following complex directions (circle the cat's tail and draw a line to the piece of fruit - that kind of thing) to adding punctuation at the end of a sentence. And I would say, from what I could hear hovering at the doorway, he did fine. But, for instance, the punctuation bit was a joke. They were obviously testing to see if he knew the difference between a question or a statement. The proctor read the sentence and he was supposed to point to whether it should be a period or a question mark. The first sentence was something like "Can you help me find my cat" and the proctor read it with the proper intonation. My son pointed to the question mark and she said, very good. So for the next five sentences in the series he pointed to the question mark. To be sure he understands positive reinforcement. Punctuation is another story. They also asked him to pick a scenario he liked better (I think it was between a zoo and a fire station - a place he could choose to visit) and then give two reasons why. He picked the fire station and said he wanted to see the fire engines and then something else I couldn't hear. These were not easy questions. And halfway through he started yawning. Poor kid. Then came the analogies. Training wheels are to riding bikes as floaties are to....? Just kidding. There was no analogy section.

Afterward he said he enjoyed talking to the woman. But if this is the level we can expect in kindergarten then that just further validates our decision to hold him back another year. I suddenly got a taste for the education express he would soon board and I knew another year of preschool would be a gift for him. For the first time I was glad I had the choice to make.

The letter

So he's all signed up for the Young Fives program at the JCC. We even got funding which to be honest I find completely ridiculous. Yes, my son has a scholarship to go to preschool. And the preschool families all get a year of JCC membership which is fabu because it's brand new and will have a rad kiddie pool and all kinds of classes and spaces and places and things and we can't wait. So much so that now we're kicking ourselves for not signing up our daughter so that they could be together for one more year. And that is why I spent another $100 to send in her application (it was less expensive for me to apply to business school but never mind) and I will apply for financial aid again even though they've already given out all the money and there isn't even space in the two year old class for her anyway. Whatever. Details. It will all work out. And if she ends up going to the family day care around the corner, probably all the better since it's cheap and amazing and we love it.

So all is settled (sort of) and then we get the letter on Saturday that they opened up a third kindergarten class at the magnet (public school) program that we were wait-listed for and we're in. WE'RE IN! And I'm back at the beginning where I don't know what to do and everyone has an opinion but no one really knows this kid like we do except he's really two kids; he's the kid at school and he's the kid at home. And the kid at home still falls apart completely when he doesn't have an apple every single night for snack. (this sounds crazy but some nights I just really don't want to add cutting an apple to the six hundred step good-night ritual even though I usually cave and do it anyway because it's an apple after all. Nature's tooth brush. Don't worry - I still brush his teeth).

And now I've come to understand that parents who live in other states, most of which have a September 1 cut-off, often hold their kids back too except these kids are being held back with May, June and July birthdays...so that means my kid would be going to college at 17 with kids who are already 19 and change.

But it's a lottery, this program. So if we don't grab it, we may not get in next year. Friends have told me if it really doesn't work out he can just repeat kindergarten. But don't kids remember that their whole lives and feel bad about themselves? That's probably just me projecting. Someone just make this decision for me.

Remind me to have my next baby in March.

The crying game

I've spent the last four years trying to teach my son that crying doesn't get you what you want. He remains unconvinced and rightly so because, in fact, it's not true. Crying does get you what you want. Me anyway. Not always. Like when I was 25 and I sobbed at the US Airways counter having arrived after the boarding cut-off that I absolutely had to get on the plane because I had no where to go in Denver (not true) and no money (true). No can do. US Airways sucked even pre-9/11 it turns out. But when I threw a tantrum about keeping my son's car seat on the plane just in case there was an extra seat (there ALWAYS is) because it would be better for everyone on the plane if my 15 month old had a seat for the 11 hour flight to Israel…I got my way and there was a seat and everyone was happy, even my husband who generally would rather slink into a lavatory when I start on one of my rampages. I've even gotten out of speeding tickets people! It's a money-saving tool as well as a stress-relief system. The wonders of human evolutionary mechanisms continue to amaze.

And it worked again yesterday. I took my son to have his TB test site examined and in fact he doesn't have TB. I know, SHOCKING. Because it's really going around in Silicon Valley…I had taken him on Friday to have his four-year old vaccines (two of them) which we missed for some reason because we didn't see his usual doctor for the last check-up. That part is still a mystery. But when I started his registration packet for kindergarten I realized that were missing four shots and the TB screening. I was not about to give my son what amounts to five shots in one setting. I know it's medically acceptable but I just couldn't stomach it. The three shots on Friday were traumatizing enough. And I'm not even 100% sure he's going to kindergarten next year. But the application is due February 28th and all the rumors are that if it's not complete it will be thrown out and I guess that's when you have to quit your job and home school your child. Huh? None of this makes sense to me. Especially since my son won't be five until October and shouldn't need his five year old shots until he's five. I mean, I didn't make up the schedule, doc! I'm guessing you spread them out for a reason. Maddening. So, on the advice of another parent whose child has a fall birthday, I ask my doctor if she can write him a note saying it's not advisable to give all five vaccinations at once. She says she won't do this and that's when I start to get a little flustered. So I call the district nurse whom I have called three times in the last month with no return call. The admin says she's not in and while I'm explaining the situation my voice starts to warble and it's clear that I'm about to start sobbing so then suddenly the school nurse IS in (what a miracle!) and she talks me off the cliff. And, incidentally, decides that as long as we have the remaining vaccinations in by July, then my son's place in school is safe (the program we want is a lottery which is why I care so much in the first place - if he gets a spot, I don't want them to give it away because of the damned vaccinations).

So you see, crying works. I'm wasting my time trying to convince my son otherwise. I should just tell him straight up that turning on the waterworks is definitely the way to get what you want. I'm guessing though, this is not actually the case for boys/men. I'm actually embarrassed now that's it's all over. I was embarrassed as it was happening. But it's just not something I can control. Sad but true. So you'd think I'd be more understanding about my son's tendency toward emotional outbursts. But for him I have even less patience. It's like watching my most annoying quality magnified by ten and served back concentrated into a three and a half foot, forty pound mini-me. The horror.

A Tale of Two Kiddies

I went in last week for my son's mid-year performance evaluation, I mean, parent-teacher conference. I had already basically made up my mind that we would keep him in preschool another year. Although not this preschool. We'd been looking at "Young Fives" programs in the area and I'd found two that I really liked and we are on the waiting list for both. My son has an October birthday but we'd sort of always assumed that he would go ahead to kindergarten younger than most. That's what my husband and I both did. And our older brothers. And we all turned out fine. Although my husband is now having flash backs of being a 5 foot three inch senior and not really enjoying the whole social aspect of high school...but I digress...

So we moved him to preK this year and it was a total nightmare. Or at least a massive miscalculation. He basically cried every morning before leaving for school and when I'd ask him in the afternoon who he played with he would say no one. I played by myself. Now he didn't seem overly bothered by this so I just nodded and said, hmm, great, meanwhile projecting all of my worst insecurities about being liked in school and having friends on this poor kid who's quite content to just ride a trike around the blacktop thirty times and call it a day. 

And even now, four months later, he's only kind of getting into it. We have our morning routine down and he's only rarely "creepy" in the morning. Goodbyes are never dramatic. He still clings to me during field trips. But he's started talking about a few friends which thrills me to no end. He's even been invited to some birthday parties. Kids who are turning five mind you. So that's been nice. Although he won't talk to anyone when we go. Less nice. Anyway, none of this behavior could have prepared me for the parent teacher conference. A snippet:

Your son has made a 180 degree change. He has really blossomed. Everyone adores him. He doesn't much want to play with the teachers anymore. He picks and chooses his friends and he does so wisely. He's always raising his hand and participating in the class. He has a lot of energy. He's excellent at negotiating his relationships. He demands an apology and forgives immediately. He's extremely imaginative. And he's almost reading. He's the kid that makes teachers cry when we think about how far he's come. He is COMPLETELY ready for kindergarten.

Huh? I mean I love this kid dearly. He's really the light of my life but, huh? This is the same kid that won't start eating dinner unless his blue booster seat is lined up perfectly with the chair beneath it. Or the kid who will only wear his black jeans during the week and his brown "weekend" pants on the weekend. And only blue socks or the stripy ones that his aunt gave him or his frosty the snowman socks that his other aunt gave him (these amazing women clearly know my son). I mean I have to say that I was totally flabbergasted. I admit I have seen a difference in him over the last few weeks. My husband even noticed. But I thought for sure they'd agree with me to hold him back. 

So now we're in a quandary again. I'm signing him up for kindergarten in the end, which is a lottery for the magnet program in our neighborhood, plus these two special preschool programs for fall birthday kids. I guess we'll just see where he gets in. I would love to send him ahead just to save on preschool tuition, and if he's actually ready, then all the better. But I have one friend with older boys who says she regrets sending her oldest ahead and he's an August birthday. At the time he was also ready for kindergarten. But by the time middle school rolls around it can be brutal for the youngest boys in the class. Another woman I met said she just wished she'd have her daughter around the house for one more year since she's going college at age  seventeen. One thing's for sure. I'm glad my daughter's birthday is in February. And if we have a third, I will plan accordingly.