Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Random updates and thoughts

Why I haven't blogged in six weeks, short version:  pneumonia and a wisdom tooth extraction.

The bombing in Boston:  one person (possibly a couple) did harm.  Countless people ran toward potential danger to help.  My faith in humanity is intact.

Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" and their new video:  I admit fully that revealing that women see themselves more harshly than others see them was thought-provoking and touching;  other than the value of that, the video was a hypocritical money-grab.  Think on these points:  1) The same company owns Axe, whose ads are at best the exact opposite of the campaign and at worst are building rape culture.  2)  The beauty they display doesn't have a whole lot of diversity - all are between size 6 and 10 and their faces fit American standards of beauty.  Not a lot of ethnic diversity in some of the ads, including the recent video.  3)  The beauty they display isn't "real" - these women are for sure airbrushed, and may well have had other photoshopping as well.  Is the standard for "real," then, an average dress size?  4)  They are just trying to make money by telling us "All those other beauty companies think you'll never measure up, but we think you're already beautiful... you just need a tiny bit of extra help from us!"  5) The underlying message is the same as all the rest of the media:  the value of a woman is in her looks.  

Donovan:  "I want to be a hockey player when I grow up!"  Me:  "OK, first you'll need to learn to ice skate."  D:  "Can I hold onto your hand?"  Me:  "They have special things you can hold onto while you skate, or you can hold Daddy's hand, but I don't know how to ice skate yet either."  D:  "That's okay, Mommy, I will hold your hand and teach you."

Kesenia:  "Kesenia's really enjoying learning to play cricket."  Not a sentence I ever expected to hear at a parent-teacher conference, let alone kvell at.

Eliana:  Just walked in the door from a softball game with a bag each of pretzels, animal crackers, and red vines, and a Icee, which she has never had before, and said, before I could even register what she was holding, "I'm sorry." She had to explain all about how it happened.  (No healthy options, Coach bought Icees, not her fault, etc.)  I had to interrupt her to ask how the game went.  "Oh, good!  I got two runs and got the first hit of the game!"  Yet Icee guilt was the leadoff.

Softball:  Scott and I are trading off who goes and who stays home with the other kids.  (Pneumonia and post-anesthesia recovery notwithstanding.)  She has fallen in love with my least favorite sport to watch... but she so obviously enjoys it that it makes the games fun for me.  Next year D will do T-ball, so I will get to watch twice as many games, and if this cricket thing keeps up, I fear it will be three-fold.  I will lose my mind, because at some point, the joy from watching the kids will be swallowed up by the endless watching of a sport I don't like.  And then I'll have massive Mommy Guilt.  I know with the Giants doing so well lately it's sacrilege around here to say that I don't like baseball, but I don't like baseball.  Don't tell Eliana.

School, elementary edition:  My kids have been at this school for a year and a half and I am still amazed by its contribution to their lives.  The teachers really seem to understand them, and they work with them to not only help them excel academically but to help them grow as people.  The culture at the school is warm and positive without coddling.  Teachers have high expectations for each student to do his/her best and make strong progress academically and in life skills;  I have not seen any evidence that any child has been the slightest bit given up on, no matter how challenging behaviorally or "behind" academically.  (If it sounds harsh to say that teachers give up on kids in other places... I can still name children in most of my elementary through high school classes who were very obviously given up on.  The fact that it was obvious to me even as a young child - though I couldn't have verbalized in these terms at the time - makes me incredibly sad as an adult.)  The teachers really care for these kids, and they care for each other.  The children are generally kind to each other, and when problems arise between students, teachers facilitate resolutions in such a way that the kids learn conflict resolution skills and other social skills pertinent to the situation.  (Tact is a frequent flyer.)  From what I have seen and heard, the interactions in the worst relationships between kids at this school are on par with those in normal relationships at Eliana's previous school.  Parent-teacher conferences reinforced everything I see at home about how they've blossomed, and showed me that it is even more true at school.  They are engaged, responsible, and growing.  I am relieved, grateful, and awed.

School, pre-K edition:  I never would have chosen to redshirt E or K, even if their birthdays had been a few months later.  Donovan needs it.  I'm not sure whether he qualifies as technically being redshirted, since the official deadline's September 1 and his birthday is after that, but the school did offer to take him for kindergarten next year, and we declined.  We've also declined to put him in the transitional kindergarten run by the girls' school or have him continue in his current preschool.   The transitional K is meant to be academic preparation for either kindergarten or 1st grade for kids who aren't quite ready, with a teacher who is skilled at understanding and guiding behavior of kids straddling their 5 year birthday.  We decided against this program because we didn't want him to go into 1st grade the following year, and we felt he would be bored in kindergarten after transitional K.  I was also afraid that his attention span wouldn't be ready for the academic portion, even in the capable hands of the experienced teacher, and since it's not truly part of the elementary school (they adopted it when a community center shut down and it is not held on the school campus), it doesn't have the same feel, even though it seemed positive.  His current pre-K has some good things going for it - nice teachers, lots of artwork coming home, good Jewish content, and right next door to the girls' school - but has never felt like exactly the right fit for Donovan.  (Maybe I just miss the girls' preschool.) After considering all these options and then some, we decided to send him to a Reggio-Emilia school, because we feel that it will best encourage his social-emotional growth, which is what the kid needs the most.  Given the culture of the elementary school, it was especially important to us for him to develop his interpersonal skills so that he can more easily benefit from and contribute to that positive environment.  I'm sure that he will do just fine academically in the long run.  Ensuring a smooth transition into elementary school is our main goal.

School, grown-up edition:  Nutrition has turned out to be an excellent class, and I've learned a lot that I didn't learn in the nutrition module of midwifery school.  I had a little bit of semester-systemitis when we got into April, since I am used to the quarter system which would be starting new classes then.  There was about a week of desperation to start a new subject, and now I've settled back in.  So far so good grade-wise.  The fall schedule of classes just came out, and I'm hoping that this time my registration appointment will be sufficiently early so that I can take chemistry, either anatomy or physiology, and a three-unit communications prereq.

There.  Six weeks' worth of random updates and ramblings.  I hope to keep up better and actually offer some well-developed stories and musings in the next posts.

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