The River Horse Report: School is out!

Weather-wise it has been a glorious week here. After a couple weeks were it was genuinely cool during the day (requiring a light jacket and everything) and downright chilly at night it warmed back up this week and while the mornings and evenings were crisp, it was sunny and lovely during the day. We shall see what the next few weeks of "winter" bring and whether it will cool off again or hold steady until things start to warm up in earnest in late August/ early September.

K finished pre-school this week. Not pre-K, which is what she would have been enrolled in next year if we weren't moving her to the Montessori school. Between play-school, pre-school and pre-K I swear I can never keep them all straight! So, school is out and she will be at a new school for next year for several reasons. For one, her previous school more or less laughed at us when we inquired as to whether T could enroll in play-school in January. Due to a whole host of factors classes are full there, and almost everywhere else in town as well. But the larger factor is that K's teacher this year seemed, by the end of the year, to just not like her very much and I am concerned that he shared this attitude that she was a "bad" kid or "trouble-maker" with all of the other teachers in the Early Learning Center. Now, I am not claiming that K is an angel. She is not! In fact, I frequently describe her by recalling one of the early scenes in Jurassic Park. Remember the one where they talk about the velociraptors systematically testing the fences for weaknesses? Yup, thats my daughter! If there are structure and clear expectations and consequences in her universe, she is great. Take those elements away and she will run amuck and push boundaries to her heart's content. Take, for instance, the issue of wearing shoes. She doesn't like to wear them. I don't really make her wear them at home, but if we leave the house she is supposed to have them on. And she is supposed to wear them at school. But she always had her shoes off when I picked her up because no number of times of me telling her to keep her shoes on at school were going to matter when she experienced no consequences at school for taking the shoes off. She still got to play and participate and go outside, so why would she leave them on? And asking me to try to get her to keep her shoes on, when you as the teacher and assistant don't actually follow through is just not going to work.

Also, the school was a bit too guitar-playing, kumbaya-singing, touchy-feely for my liking. For example, over Christmas holiday K learned to write her name with help from our nanny. She could write the whole thing, all of the letters, without tracing or having to copy it. She went back to school and they are constantly coming home with coloring sheets or things they have painted, or stuff they have cut out and glued. I noticed that either her name was not on her stuff or that the teacher was obviously writing it. I pointed out, you know, she can write her name. The teacher agreed, said he had seen her do it. I asked, well, can you ask her to write it on her artwork so she is practicing it. Well, we don't want to make them write their names because then they might not like doing it anymore. Seriously! For real?!?! She can write her name, she should be writing it on her paper! And now she actually can't do it anymore. Has forgotten how because there was no repetition. Anyway, those are a few of my gripes with her old school. And yes, I am aware that a Montessori school will not, by its very nature, have a lot of structure. But at least I know that going in and can compensate as I see fit.

In other news, K the destroyer and eater of worlds broke a good friend's arm on a bouncy castle on Friday morning. Not on purpose, of course, but ugh, I still feel awful. I feel extra awful because the medical care here is so crappy they can't even really figure out if it is a broken arm or if it is a dislocated elbow or if it is broken whether to put a cast on it and if they do put a cast on it the cast will be an old-school plaster one. Its a kid's broken arm, not brian surgery (which I KNOW they can't do)! Very upsetting and disturbing.

What else... we FINALLY got our AFN satellite working again. The timing was good in that we manage to miss all of the interminably long NBA season but there is still plenty of good baseball left to be played. I am concerned that with school out and TV functional again we are going to need to set some serious screen time boundaries for the girls since while we were subsisting on DVDs alone the TV time was pretty limited.

Not much else to report and this whole thing really lacks a cohesive point so why don't I just wrap it up with some cute kid shots?

The girls enjoying some sort of book club/ tea party created by K

T trying to get K to "papu" her (carry her around on her back). I fear K would be more than happy to oblige which would almost certainly end in disaster.