A Note From the Boys

...as dictated by Will.

Will and Jack made this car track. The pink is a park. The brown is Jack's house. The white is a parking lot, airport and sidewalk. The brown triangles are a mountain for hiking. And the blue is Will's house.

He made it with paper, scissors, cars and pens. And he could do it all by his brain and because he is very creative.

And Jack helped turn it over.

And So It Begins...

Will started school last week.

He was pretty excited about the lunch box, less enthusiastic about the fancy Montessori curriculum.

We are sending him to a charter school that offers a Montessori preschool/VPK program.  We decided to send him full day so that he would not have change schools mid-day once I go back to work.  I worry it will mean a long day for him, though he would spend the same amount of time at a full day daycare, anyway.

I also worry that he will get bored considering he will be the oldest--or close to--in his class.  Will was born in September, so he is older than most of his classmates, some by close to a year.  The Montessori curriculum should allow him to move forward at his own pace, and thus reduce boredom, but after 3 days he is telling me he doesn't want to go to school because it is "bow-wing."

And lastly, I worry I made the most impractical choice for his school.  It is 10 minutes in the opposite direction from work.  Jack will need to go to a preschool nearby until next year, instead of the daycare he attended previously.  And the expense!  After looking forward to VPK as a break from expensive daycare costs, the half day tuition for the charter school is a killer!

Still next year Jack can attend the preschool program at the same school and Will will matriculate to the Kindergarten program at the school and bypass the lottery.  And the uniforms next year are adorable. And each class has a garden bed they tend throughout the year and harvest their own vegetables, and there is a strict healthy food policy so he is getting good stuff put into his little body, and the whole school is green, and his teacher makes me calm just talking to her, and, and....

I'm pretty sure we made the right choice, and if we didn't there is time to make a change.  But I hope everything works out.  I hope Will learns a lot about patience and kindness, I hope he learns more about self discipline and responsibility.  I hope his unquenchable curiosity is fed and encouraged. And most of all, I hope he has fun.  He has years ahead of him to cram facts and figures and methods and scores. I hope this year he develops a love of learning that we can build on over the next 17 years.

A Story in Three Parts

Act 1
I made my first french macrons!!  They have feet!! For those of you unfamiliar, this is a big deal!  Pictures are taken, self congratulations are given.

Act 2
While nerding it up and taking food pictures of my accomplishment, I sense something is amiss.  Little pink fingers start appearing around the edges of the frame.  Suddenly there are toddler hands EVERYWHERE. Pleading for mercy does no good and macrons begin disappearing into his gaping maw.

Act 3
Momma gives in and lets him have 2 of her precious confections.  Lacking appreciation for the finer things in life, Jack licks the cherry frosting out of each and then lectures me about how the cookie part is lame and could I please refill his sam'iches.

Tall Ships - Long Lines

Me and the kids went to Port Canaveral today to see tall ships with my Aunt and Uncle. 

First, we looked at the Galeón Andalucía, which is a a replica of a 17th Century Spanish Tall Ship. We didn't go aboard, but it was fun to look at, to see a "pirate ship" in real life. When they get a little older I look forward to doing a little research with the boys before this kind of trip to get some historical context. I like knowing about what I'm seeing, know some back story, it makes it more interesting.

The ship was crawling with school field trippers. It made me wonder if they did any research on the ship before their visit, will the boys' educators give them context to appreciate the significance of experiences like that? Or will they just be squeezing the trip in between FCAT practice and multiplication drills? Not that public school isn't awesome, I know our teachers do amazing work in our community, I just wonder if it will be up to us at home to really drill down into the history of places and events to really make stuff like touring the Galeón Andalucía exciting.

After checking out the Andalucía we went down the port a few hundred yards and found the Juan Sebastian de Elcano was docked and allowing visitor tours. We got in line, not knowing how long it would be. That sentence is really scary when you realize I had a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old in toe with no stroller, no sling, no diaper bag, no snacks, drinks, toys, tranquilizers, nothing an hour and a half before lunch/nap time. It was just us and them and 200 strangers waiting in line for an indeterminate amount of time. (shudder) The boys surprised me though, and held it together until we made it to the front of the line, about 45 minutes? 

Then Will listened carefully and held hands during the more perilous moments (boarding, walking near the rails, scrabbling over rigging), and Jack was content to stay in my arms for the entire tour, though, man did I miss my sling, that thing is perfect for carrying a toddler without your arms falling off. 

My Uncle is an enthusiastic sailor and was on hand to help us use lots of boaty words, like aft and yardarm. We went around the stern of the ship and around the far side, we saw kayakers in the water and waved. We went up and down plenty of ladders, with Will carefully going down backward while holding on to the rail, and Jack clinging to me like a baby spider monkey as I climbed down myself. We saw lines, and sails, and the bridge, which was very fancy. All very exciting to see up close. Once we were off I realized I may have rushed us through a bit, having the babies out there dangling over all that water was a little hard on my nerves, but maybe with practice I will be a little less spastic. 

Once we were off the ship it was back to the car and headed home. Jack was asleep before we made it out of the parking lot, Will stayed awake long enough to get some McDonald's before passing out as well.

It was great fun and gives me hope that in a few months we will have a fun time at one of the theme parks, with all their lines. The trip also reinforced that if I am going to do these little adventure trips I need to be more diligent about packing a bag. Sunscreen, and diapers, and juice boxes for goodness sake. And maybe a flask, that waiting in line thing could have gone either way.

I have no idea where the beavers came from.

Nap time is hard.  How do you convince a toddler to stop having fun, lie down, hold still and be gnawed to death by beavers? Or whatever it is they think will happen if they stop moving for more than 13 consecutive seconds.  Seriously, I would pay actual money to take a nap, but it turns out that if I take a nap shit will go down.  There will be honest to god  beavers, and those assholes will dirty all your dishes and unfold your laundry.  Or at least that's the level of anxiety I feel when I try to indulge in an afternoon siesta.

I think I have figured out half the trick to getting the kids to take a nap.  You have to make sure they're tired before you try to get them to go to sleep.  That sounds obvious, but these kids are like Labrador puppies, who need, like, two hours of fetch to wear them out.  Really, we have a new game at the park, I pick something far away and tell Will to run to it and then run back.  And he will do this for half an hour, easy.  What is that?  If someone asked me to run 30 yards and then run back and there wasn't an ice cream sandwich waiting for me when I got back there is no chance I would turn around and do it again.  None.  (Spoiler alert: there will be a post discussing my struggle with exercise.)

So the first step is to start early inducing exhaustion, check.  It's the part right after lunch that boggles me.  Cajoling doesn't work.  You can coo in your best princess voice for three hours straight about the merits of getting in bed and going night-night and you will have zero sleeping people.  And brute force was kind of a failure.  "So help me God, if you get out of that nap bed again I will E
ND YOU."  First of all , no one believes me; and second, that's not the parenting theme we're aiming for.  Though, truthfully, I find myself there much more often then I would like.

Tomorrow we're going on a field trip, so there will be a car nap; but maybe Friday we will try a new pre-nap ritual.  Same idea as bedtime routine, but shortened for nap.  I'm thinking lullabies on Pandora during lunch, a book together, and then tuck-in cuddles.  It's worth a try.

If this doesn't work I'm just going to build a baby kennel with a lid and toss them in everyday between the hours of 12:15 and 3:00 p.m.  It will be like a toddler cage match.  Maybe I can rig it up in the living room next to the couch and take my own nap nearby.  The sound of siblings "sharing" for three hours would scare away any unwanted semi-aquatic rodent.