Mandajuice

The green room is growing on me

Genoa's room might not be as bad as I had previously thought.  We could still repaint it, but I'll leave the final decision up to my mother, the only person I know with a perfect color memory (think perfect pitch, but for colors).  She comes to visit in a couple weeks and if needed, she can help me with the kids so I can fix it.  It is growing on me, though.  Bonus points if you can name the source of the art work:

(I promise to straighten those pictures up as soon as I get the chance to buy some of that thicker double-sticky tape!) (And a laser level.)

I wish I could tell you how much I love my new floors, but they have yet to deliver the wood.  We're under a serious time-crunch, too, because we're all set to move in on Saturday.  The supplier has promised it'll be delivered tomorrow at 8:30, but I'm not optimistic.  That's what they said yesterday, and on Thursday and Friday of last week.  If it does arrive tomorrow, they'll just barely have enough time to finish, so Fernando (our painter, AKA "there was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Fernando") to finish painting my pretty new baseboards on Friday night.

Alex got to meet his new teacher today and I could tell he liked her and was even more excited about starting school.  More importantly, she REALLY liked him and went on and on about how much fun she had chatting with him.  She's looking forward to having him in her class and hearing that was like music to my ears.

Blog paparazzi!

It turns out my camera problem wasn't user-error after all, well, unless you consider grit in the stock lens to be a user-error.  The camera itself is fine.  I dropped the lens off at the camera shop and the good news is that at most, it will cost me $100 to either get it fixed or have it replaced.  Until then, I'm stuck using my 50mm lens, which is great for portraits, but not so great for showing how hideously AWFUL the paint in Genoa's room turned out.  I'll try to capture it later on this morning, but suffice it to say, apple green and army green?  Not so much a good match.  How I didn't catch this on the color strips is beyond me.

On Sunday morning, we called Alex into the bedroom for a family meeting and as we all cuddled up on the bed, I told him how I had been driving around on Friday afternoon and noticed this really cool place with an awesome play structure in the back.  I told him it looked so fun that I decided to go inside and check it out and this really nice lady gave me a tour and told me it was a special school called Montessori (an ITALIAN school!).  Yada yada yada, you can sell ANYTHING to a preschooler if you market it correctly.  He was nothing but thrilled.

The icing on the cake is that he gets to wear a uniform with a RED shirt and red is his absolute favorite color.  He can't wait to go see the school on Tuesday and when we told him he would get to start attending in a week, he didn't mention even a single word about his old school.  It was almost as if he didn't remember having gone there at all.

Later on Sunday, we all drove into Portland to look at furniture in the Hollywood district.  While at Dania, attempting to keep Genoa from plummeting to her death from the top of their twenty foot wooden stairwell, I received my first-ever random stranger compliment.  I was so taken aback when a woman walked by and said, "I like your blog!"   that I had no idea how to respond!  I think I said something super-polite like, "Who are you?"  I only wish we'd stopped a little longer to chat!  The idea that a person I've never met before recognized me in Portland because of this blog is both strange and cool.  I only hope she didn't catch all the excellent bickering Dave and I were doing while we tried to shop for furniture because that was FUN.

The last white vestige of The White House is getting ripped out as we speak.  Goodbye ugly tile and white carpet, we won't miss you!  My hardwood floors go in tomorrow and I think I just wet my pants a little thinking about it.

Like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders

I didn't get the chance to talk with Alex's teacher today.  She avoided eye contact with me both when I dropped him off and again when I picked him up.  It pained me a little, too, to see her lukewarm welcoming of my son with a simple, "hi" and moments later, her excited delivery of "Good morning, Alison!" when one of Alex's classmates arrived.  Her body language speaks volumes and it's just not possible that Alex isn't eventually going to notice it himself.

My gut has never screamed at me more loudly.  (In fact, I didn't eat a bite all day until after 2PM when it occurred to me that I still hadn't even had breakfast.  And I NEVER forget to eat!)

Over the past 24 hours, Dave and I have been hitting the research hard and I've called every other possible preschool on the approved private school list.  I had many good conversations, but most of the schools were either full, way too far away or unwilling to even consider assessing Alex based on his skills instead of his birth date.  It basically came down to ONE school, which I visited this afternoon.

AND I AM IN LOVE.

From the moment I walked into the school, I felt better.  I immediately felt welcome there, something I still have yet to experience at Alex's current school.  After only thirty minutes with the administrator and the preschool teacher, I already know more about what Alex's school day will be like at the new school than I do about the school that he's already been attending for a week.  This really feels like it's the right program for Alex.  And I already ADORE the teacher.  There's an openness about the place (well, once you get past the key-padded security entrance!) that puts me at ease.  The facility is also magnificent and puts his current school to shame.

We haven't told Alex yet, but I've already called his current school to cancel his enrollment and he is being assessed* at the new school on Tuesday.  He'll take a week off and then start the new school on Monday.  It's a Montessori, which means he'll be in a multi-age class with kids both younger and older than him.  It's also his one remaining chance to enter first grade early, if that's what he's ready for when the time comes.  Unlike the first school, I feel like this school will actually be on Alex's side when it comes to determining his future placement.

The only two drawbacks are 1) MONEY - it's a much bigger chunk of change than we wanted to spend on preschool and 2) it's an every day program from 8:30 to 1:00.  Even though I know it's what's best for Alex and he's absolutely going to love it, I'm really going to miss my boy.

*Montessori assesses children before they attend just so they know better where to start them with the individual activities during the first week of school.

Reasons why this is so important to me

I'm cross-posting this from the Mom Street Journal because I just don't want it to get missed.  There are REASONS - real, tangible, good reasons why getting Alex into school early is important to me.  It's not just so I can say I have a "smart kid".  Alex is smart, sure, but he's no genius.  It's his personality, more than anything else, that makes us want to accelerate his education.

The reasons (from my other post):

1. Getting good grades was exceptionally easy for me.  In fact, I learned from an early age that if I did even just the barest minimum of [public] school work, I could easily get A's and B's in every subject.  Ergo, from an early age, I learned I never really had to try that hard.  School came too easily for me.  My parents, obviously happy with my good grades and satisfied teachers, never laid an ounce of pressure on me to do better or to give 100% of my effort.  I often wonder what would've become of me, academically, if I'd learned to work at my full potential, instead of always getting an easy A.   Even in college, I got good grades relying solely on my sparkling personality and the seat of my pants.

This is literally the only thing I can think of that my parents did wrong when I was a child.  They underestimated my academic potential and were too laid back about education.  I vowed long before having children of my own that I would never settle for anything less than 100% effort.  I want my children to work hard and be excellent, not average.

2.  I grew up in the shadow of an extremely bright and outgoing older brother.  Dan was so smart (reading the newspaper in kindergarten) that he was incredibly bored at school.  Unlike me, he lacked that goody-two-shoes nature and became a slacker and a huge behavioral problem for my parents - a problem that eventually landed him in boarding school, which he then got kicked out of.  Dan never graduated from high school.  Instead, he dropped out, got his GED and went to junior college, which was disappointing for someone as obviously intelligent as Dan is. [He has turned out to be quite successful in spite of his problems in school.  Did I mention he's super smart?]

To this day, my mother will tell you that the biggest mistake she ever made was not keeping Dan in private school after Kindergarten.  In public schools, he was too smart for his own good and was NEVER ever challenged, which led directly to his getting into mischief. 

Guess which family member Alex most accurately resembles?  Go on, guess.

There are many other reasons, ranging from a general feeling that public education doesn't have the resources to focus on exceptional children to the fact that Alex is pretty darn socially adept, but the main reasons are simple: wanting him to be challenged, not wanting his boredom to become a behavioral issue down the road.  Of course, we are VERY open to the idea that he might not be ready when the time comes for him to start first grade, but we'd like to at least be able to make an educated decision about it when the time comes instead of just relying on the date that the public schools have selected.  There's just so much more to my boy than his birth date.

Today was a doozy

Alex had a great day at school. When I picked him up, he was thrilled to see me and had nothing but good things to say about his teacher and his classmates.  He said he couldn't wait to go back on Friday.

If only the feeling were mutual.

Out of genuine curiosity, after loading the boy into the car, I stuck around for a few minutes to ask his teacher how Alex's first day of school went.  I was expecting the normal response, you know, a POSITIVE one.  It's the first freakin' day of school, so I thought the teacher would just tell me how it went: what the boy did, how well he participated, whether or not he had any trouble with the other kids.  Usual stuff.

Instead, I got, "He did okay.  I'm still not sure pre-k-4 is the right fit."

STILL?  After a whopping three hours of time with my child, her FIRST three hours with my child by the way, she's "STILL" not sure.  My heart completely sank.

We've been judged.

She went on to say that she'd give it through the end of the week (which means ONE more day) and then "maybe through the end of next week," to see if he should be sent to Pre-k 3 instead.  When I explained to her that this was literally his first day ever of a structured preschool program and that it might take him a few days to get into the routine (you know, or at least more than ONE day), she then said, cheerfully, that it took him a minute to change activities at first, but that he joined in with the other kids just fine and participated well.

She didn't have a single solitary negative thing to say about his behavior.  He did what he was supposed to be doing.  Nothing he did was wrong, she just doesn't seem to want my son in her class.  I'm trying my best to give her the benefit of the doubt and be open to really listening to what she has to say about how he's doing, but she made her intentions pretty clear to me.

At this point, I feel like no matter what he does, she has already made up her mind.  What kind of a response was that on THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL?!  I didn't ask her if it seemed like he'd do well enough to stay in the class.  I only asked how his first day was and instead of naming even ONE THING good, kind, funny, sweet, or ANYTHING POSITIVE about my child, she IMMEDIATELY headed straight for the caveat, "okay, but..."

Dave and I did our best not to talk about it in front of Alex, but we spent HOURS today agonizing over this.  I know you're going to think it's because of the class placement thing, but we're going to pull Alex from this school as soon as we can find him a new one, even before they decide whether or not to send him back to the younger class.  Here's the reason: MY GUT. 

Basically he either stays with this teacher, of whom I'm obviously not a big fan, or they send him to the younger class, thus blowing his chance of any early kindergarten acceptance (if we decide later that that's what's best for him).  It's a lose-lose.

I want to send Alex to a school that feels lucky to have him because honestly?  They are.  At this school, not only do I feel like a huge outsider, but I feel like even if they keep him in the pre-k 4 class, his teacher doesn't really want him there.  I guess it all comes down to the idea that I want my kid's teacher(s) to see the good in him before anything else - to focus on it.  I want them to like him.  If they can't see how spectacularly awesome he is, even after only one day, they're blind.

First day of school!

And something is majorly wrong with my camera!  It won't focus and when it does, it seems to think I want a photo of the background and not by beautiful children.  Off to the repair-shop it goes (although I'm sure this is going to be one of those retarded user-error issues where the guy is going to push a button, hand it back to me and say, "you had it on background mode"). 

More about school later, after I pick him up and hear how it went.  I'm SO nervous for him!

You're going to get so sick of hearing this

But I REALLY REALLY REALLY love the house.  As we were driving to IKEA this afternoon to look for book shelves for the kids' closets, I sat back and noticed for a second that I was completely and disgustingly happy.  It was such a beautiful day and driving over the Columbia River with the blue sky and the boats zipping under us and a perfect clear view of Mt. Hood on the horizon, I realized that we must now live in the most beautiful place on earth.  The fact that I love the house so much is like the cherry on top.

I realize that most of the people reading this blog have had homes for YEARS and are wondering why it's such a big deal, but we haven't ever owned a real home.  I swear it was never for lack of effort or planning - it just wasn't possible for us until now.  I had no idea this was how the other half lives.

I'm still posting about our decorating stuff over at the Naked Ledger and I'm constantly taking photos of the progress on the paint, etc, so my Flickr account is getting a lot of action.  Hot, sexy, PAINT action. 

Just wait until the floors go in - it's going to get OBSCENE.

Good things

1.  I made caramel lava cakes tonight from a box of mix I bought at Cost Plus.  Because I am awesome.

2.  Alex was exceptionally well-behaved today.  He wasn't allowed to watch TV and he ended up taking a three hour nap.  I would even go so far as to call him delightful.

3.  After nursing the baby this afternoon, my boob was itchy and I told Alex as much.  His response made me wish I could crawl inside his brain and see how it thinks.  He said, "Why?  Do you need to poop?"  When I pointed out to him that that made no sense, we both cracked up and then he said, "You should send that on your blog!"

4.  Yesterday we spent a chunk of Dave's lunch hour at the title company signing loan documents.  Alex did really well the whole time until the last five minutes when he started biting his pop tart into gun shapes and shooting his sister, who then picked up more pop tart and shot right back at him.  I wish I'd had my camera with me.

5.  Oh.  Did I forget to mention that we are officially homeowners again!!??!

Click on the photo to see the photos of our house.