Monday miscellany

1) I love Montessori. But I think it could benefit from some fusion with some Waldorf stuff — more imaginative play, more oral literature and music, in particular. I am not interested in anthroposophy at all; but I still think there’s good stuff in some aspects of Waldorf. Also, as I continue contemplating my prospective job as a Montessori early childhood assistant next year, and the possibility of it leading to teacher certification and Amy continuing past kindergarten, I get stuck on time — I don’t think kids get enough unstructured time, and I’m not sure I’m going to be okay with Amy being in any school, even a Montessori one, full time. Next year will be pretty pivotal, it seems.

2) Yesterday’s sermon was about having the attitude of Christ, in that he didn’t hold tightly to his status as God, but humbled himself to take on flesh and serve. This is really all well and good — it really is. But… in order to lay down your rights, you have to own them as rights first. If you think you have no rights, you don’t actually have any to lay down.

Jesus humbled himself and served people, but he did so from a position of strength and security and fullness, not because he thought he didn’t deserve better or was worthless or didn’t love himself or anything like that. My late therapist Joe Bauserman frequently said that “love your neighbor as yourself” posits self-love as a HIGH standard, not a low one. Jesus models excellent self-care as well as service — when John the Baptist was killed, for example, he wanted to go pray by himself. Finding a crowd, he took care of them first — and then stayed behind for his prayer time. Sacrifice must be balanced by self-care.

It seems unfair to tell people to sacrifice their needs, lay down their rights, without first making sure they have a healthy self-love. Yeah, it seems in our culture people are very selfish — but that’s NOT healthy self-love. The church gets too reactionary with this sort of thing. The guest speaker, for example, was telling a story of a person who, frustrated with a Bible study or biblical counseling (I don’t remember which), threw down the Bible and said “I’m done.” The preacher told him to go serve himself for six months and report back, saying he’d be miserable and so would everyone around him. But there’s more than one way to serve oneself. More of us should serve ourselves — should take time to rest, reflect, know ourselves, feed our dreams, bask in relationships, understand our limits, practice grace and compassion toward ourselves, etc.

I’ve said before and will keep saying — no one wants to be in relationship with a serve-bot. People want to be in relationship with people — and you can’t be a person if you take the doormat approach to service, without a good foundation of healthy self-love and good self-care.

3) Amy had a play date today. At dinner, she said she had such a great time. At the time, though, I felt I noticed more of the disagreements, shouts, conflicts, and sadnesses.

When you’re looking forward to something soooooo much — when you’re so excited — when your ideals come up against reality, like the reality that your friend might not automatically fall in with your already visualized plans — it’s not surprising that you might get upset a few times along the way.

I’m still learning how best to help with such things. We should probably have left earlier — but I hated to interrupt when the playing was going smoothly, and hated to stop in the midst of a conflict without giving them a chance to work through it. I took a time or two to take Amy aside and listen warmly to her while she cried out her overloaded feelings.

Good things — fun times, times of special connection and warmth, times of safety — tend to open the door to the backlog of feelings. I wish I could remember what blog post I was reading that mentioned this very thing — that times when we receive special kindness, we often feel our own backlog of feelings (especially sadness, it seems) welling up.

4) I want to be more gracious all around.

5) The Brothers Karamazov is a thousand times better than War and Peace.

6) I realllllllly miss being in a band or a good choir or both.

Rethinking next year

I had the spring parent-teacher conference this morning with Amy’s teacher at the Montessori school. It’s Amy’s second year here in the 3-6 classroom, with one more year ahead of us. The school is an hour away… a hefty commute, but worth it so far. We have been doing the three-day half-day program, which allows us to be home or doing errands or out playing on Mondays and Fridays, and allows for the occasional afternoon play date as well.

Before the conference, we were all set to do the same program next year. Technically, they can’t call it kindergarten, because there aren’t enough hours in the three-day half-day program. However, Indiana does not require children to attend kindergarten at all, so this technicality doesn’t bother us. But in the conference, Amy’s teacher urged me to reconsider our choice of program for next year.

First, we mainly talked about two aspects of Amy’s classroom experience.

For one thing, like most kids at this age, she’s not exactly an expert in social competence. She often works by herself — reading a lot, painting, and so on — doesn’t always interact with friends skillfully, sometimes seems withdrawn.

I’ve noticed in other contexts that Amy prefers to be with one other child rather than a group, and she is especially challenged by large groups. In the past, I’ve seen her sort of barge in without taking the time to observe what’s going on and to think about how she could most smoothly join in. Lately I’ve noticed that she might stand close and observe, showing enthusiasm, maybe even saying something, but it’s not obvious to the others that she wants to join in, or they don’t hear her, or they don’t think it’s necessary to invite her in.

I would dearly like her to have more opportunities to play freely with a friend or a group of friends, to develop more skill in negotiating play and friendship. It has not been easy to arrange this playtime. Her teacher agrees that this sort of thing would be very useful to her; she also says that more structured activities can help somewhat, too, like dance.

The other thing is that Amy tends to choose work that she can do easily. She fits the description of what the authors of Strong-Willed Child or Dreamer call “internal perfectionism.” External perfectionists are the ones who keep trying over and over until they get it right. Internal perfectionists are the ones who, if they can’t visualize easy and immediate success, they won’t bother even trying.

Amy is still progressing very well academically — in reading and math especially. She loves one-on-one with a teacher, and gets it more with Montessori than she would in traditional school. Sometimes a teacher will start a work with her, and once it gets going, leave to help another student with something else — only to look back a bit later and find Amy has put the work away instead of finishing it on her own. That’s acceptable — no one has to finish any particular work. But it would be nice if Amy’s attachment to her teachers didn’t hinder her from pursuing challenging work on her own.

(She has often played variations on a theme of getting all the teacher’s (or another beloved adult’s) attention — in special time, she might have all the students home sick, except herself — she is the new girl, a little nervous, and a hug from the teacher sets her all right again. It’s convenient for the play, since neither of us has to act the parts of the other children, but I think it’s also getting at her desire to not have to share her teacher’s (or other adult’s) attention and love.)

Amy’s teacher said that if she could run the world, every 3-6 student would be in a five-day full-day classroom. She says that with more days together and more time in each day, the kids have less social catching-up to do, and have time to pursue larger, longer works, even things that get set aside in the morning and continued in the afternoon. In the afternoon, while the youngest ones nap or rest, the older ones often have a more focused, more challenging, more sophisticated work cycle.

I had thought of full-day as more of a necessity for working parents than a valuable experience for children. One of the things that has most appealed to me about homeschooling is not having to be at school all day. Kids really need a lot of free, unstructured time to play and explore — it’s essential for developing executive function and self-control, learning to negotiate, and so on. It’s also good for them to have time to pursue their own interests, time and opportunity to interact with other age groups, to be out and about in the real world, and so on.

I’m still not sure if I am persuaded that the benefits of the afternoon class time are worth the various costs — in time, in gas, in money, in being away from home. But it does sound like the benefits are real and worth considering.

We could enroll in five-day full-day and, in practice, actually do two half days and three full days. That would allow us at least two weekday afternoons to be at home — for housework, for special time, for stuff like bread-baking and gardening, for play dates, errands, and so on. I don’t think we could do all five days as full days — remember that we have an extra hour added at both ends for the commute, so a full day would mean leaving our house at 7:30 am and returning by 4:30pm. That’s super long.

I could apply to be an assistant in one of the half-day classrooms. That would offset the increase in tuition, and would mean I wouldn’t have to make the commute twice each full day. I’ve often had some interest in Montessori training and just been uncertain how much I would want to work — I’ve never had a full-time job, and it’s been years since I’ve had a non-self-employed job, and quite frankly I’m not sure I am ready to give up all that autonomy. On the other hand, it may well feel good to work in a Montessori school and contribute to the lives of these children.

I suppose there’s also the possibility that I would enjoy it enough to go on and get the training, and perhaps then get a teaching job at this school, if there’s an opening — and that would mean Amy would continue at the school as well. I admit that there is some relief at the thought of not having to homeschool. But there is also some sadness and concern about not homeschooling — I feel I have a lot of strong reasons for wanting to homeschool, despite also having some concerns about how well it would work for us, particularly in terms of relationship and social opportunities. I don’t believe the myth that homeschoolers are poorly socialized in general, but in our case it has been very hard to arrange play dates and the like.

A blogging sabbatical

Dear readers,

I am going to take a break from blogging and from reading blogs — a month or two. Meanwhile, the site will remain as it is, and if you comment anywhere, I’ll see it in an email. Thank you for reading here.

Mamatography Week 7

This week’s pictures for Mamatography. I only have four this week — got off track until Saturday, and then didn’t get around to taking one today. For any of you other Mamatographers, I often have these posts password-protected when they include pictures of my little girl. Luschka emailed the password out to the group a while ago, after first including an incorrect password in a group email, but if any of you have misplaced it I’d be happy to send it to you again.

Big fat fluffy flakes — my favorite kind of snow. Not much fell, and it’s disappearing already. The mild winter has been nice in some ways, but I find myself missing deep snow.

Latest in my series of wine-bottle accessories. This is a little red dress and floral headband. It’s kind of hard to make a dress look flattering on a bottle! I think the next attempt will have a fuller skirt to add more shape.

I made some labels for them, with a little space to write the price. They didn’t come out as clear as I’d have liked — probably partly due to using GIMP instead of PhotoShop, and partly because I was printing on scrapbooking card stock. Shaina has the hat and scarf set and the red dress set on display in her fitness studio; thanks, Shaina!

Making quesadillas last night for our lunch today. They’re certainly not hot and gooey the next day, but they’re still very tasty cold, and easier to cut.

Thursday

I woke up this morning around 5, unintentionally, and again at 6, the target waking time, and again ten minutes later.

Sleep has not been smooth around here lately for any of us. I have not yet felt sufficiently rested to get back into my desired habit of doing ten to fifteen minutes of Pilates each morning, turning to the snooze button instead. Mark has some form of cold that has been making him more restless at night, which often means I wake more often as well. And Amy has been dealing with some nighttime anxieties, apparently partly related to separation / connection as well as to whatever may underlie her fear of thunder. Like me, sometimes she gets caught up in increasing anxiety around a fear — the thinking about the fear is more upsetting than the fear itself. Anyway, she’s been tired a lot, and some mornings she crawls back in bed after I go to wake her.

Today I spent most of my preschool hours knitting. I’m currently working on the carousel horse dress — almost ready to join in the round under the arms. The intarsia horse is done, but needs some blocking and some clever weaving in of ends in order to look nice. I hope I can do it well enough.

I also had to go admire my tree again.

Parent volunteers and teachers have been busy preparing for the school’s fundraising auction — each class makes a project to sell. Amy’s class painted a canvas midnight blue, and have been painting thick paper shapes with watercolors — flowers, stars, leaves, circles, and so on. The shapes will be layered to form mandalas. Yesterday I painted a black tree on the canvas, with spirally branches to hold the mandalas. It was nourishing, refreshing, to paint it — to do something seriously artistic again. I took pleasure in making the curves as smooth and clean-edged as possible, and in arranging the branches in a balanced and pleasing manner. It’s also been nice to see how others have appreciated this work. Being good at stuff often brings some admiration; it doesn’t always bring affection, and it sometimes brings envy and / or a sense of distance or disconnect. I’ve been on both sides of that, envying and being envied; I wonder if artistic types are more prone to envy and disconnection than more practical or extroverted types.

I got to see Amy’s teacher doing some important and good work.

A little guy, in his second week in the school, began to cry for his mom, and would not be consoled. Ann was able to take him out of the classroom, hold him close, listen to him, talk gently with him, offer him things to explore in the director’s teaching classroom / office, and so on, and eventually to call his mom to come fetch him. (The director spent this time in the classroom in Ann’s place.) It is hard work to stay connected, listening to a distressed little one. I hope Ann gets a little extra nurture today, or this weekend, to replenish that spent energy.

And I joined a Spanish class.

Aida comes each Thursday to do Spanish with the preschoolers, one small group at a time. She is wonderful. Energetic and enthusiastic without being overstimulating or shrill. She has mastered flow — one activity to the next, lots of songs, some motions, some opportunities for each student to do something, lots of repetition. I’ve always enjoyed listening to and observing these classes, which meet out in the hall / atrium so as not to disturb the students still working in the classrooms. I was pleased when she invited me to sit with a class and participate — plus she says it helps the students to hear another adult repeating the lessons and paying attention.

Later in the morning, tiredness really hit me, and that sense of heaviness, a certain taste, of being sick.

Just a cold, I’m sure, but still. We got home, and I set up a video for Amy — with the arrival of Mark’s flashback Atari machine, we’ve given Amy a screen allowance of an hour a week for gaming or watching — and went to bed for three hours. Amy has long been very good about occupying herself when I am sick and need long naps. After her video she turned it off and put it back in the case, listened to some CDs, played in various ways. It costs her… her upset showed up several times, several ways, in the later afternoon and evening. I will have to make special effort to replenish her connection over the weekend.

I had beans soaking for dinner — chicken chili.

But before I got up, we had two stories in bed — she read one to me first, a mini-book from an old High Five magazine. She struggled with some words, just about throwing the book at me in frustration when she didn’t get one right away, but she kept plugging away and we finished it. Then I read a Little House chapter to her. Dinner wasn’t too much work — cook the beans, chop and sauté the onion and garlic, add the chilies and chicken and seasonings and stock… do the dishes… put bread ingredients in the machine on the dough cycle (it’s baking as I write this post; should have been done Monday but we were shelf-shopping instead)… and wait for Mark to get home, which meant a chance to lie down again for a while.

The chili was good. But Amy found it too spicy, and asked if she could make herself some peanut butter and jelly crackers, which meant we opened jars and spread things for her; her struggling efforts were triggering some of that upset I mentioned earlier from not getting enough connection today.

Mark did dishes. Amy cleaned up her things and got ready for bed. I got online. I laughed and laughed revisiting the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest site, especially the Sticks and Stones category where people submit examples of horrendous published writing, including poor translations of instructions, redundancies, statements of the obvious — “If you do not see reflection, you are on wrong side of mirror” — as well as awful bits from novels, newspapers, and more.

Amy is staying in her room, probably finally asleep now. Mark is snoring. The bread will be done soon. Tomorrow, we’ll sleep in a little, have something yummy for breakfast, and then head out to Bremen Bounce. Amy has been saving her allowance money in order to go. Several friends will also be there — school’s out for them — sometimes on days when the place is full, Amy has a harder time enjoying herself. I make a note to pay attention and be there to listen or help as needed.

Good night!

What shall I call thee?

In college chorus, we sang a setting of William Blake’s poem:

Infant Joy

“I have no name:
I am but two days old.”
What shall I call thee:’
“I happy am,
Joy is my name.”
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!

This blog started when we were pregnant with Amy, as a way to update friends and family about our family. It’s hardly “becoming” three anymore — we’ve BEEN three long enough that I keep wondering about changing the blog’s name. And while I do talk a LOT about Amy and about parenting, she’s no longer the sole topic of the blog.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I would love something that is short and winsome, that evokes the wide variety of my interests and writings without listing them all, and that isn’t too cute or clever or cliche…

Protected: Mamatography Week 5

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Mamatography Week 4

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Happy New Year

Hi friends and family!

We were to have our biennial New Year’s celebration with our Virginia friends, but alas, they came down with the norovirus. Instead, we were able to celebrate with local friends with a fantastic fondue party. Perhaps the best part was that they turned their clock ahead to Rio de Janeiro time, so that at 9:00 we could taste our champagne and call it a night.

Nah, the best part was the cheese. B and A made the cheese with a recipe from some family-friendly site, so it was made with apple cider instead of beer or wine. The cheeses were brie and mozzarella, flavored with a bit of mustard, salt, and pepper. Fantastic. Extremely yummy. I don’t even usually like the cheese course. Also? They lightly steamed the broccoli. So it actually tasted good with the cheese. (Apparently, the mushrooms also benefited from their light sauté.) And good bread and the thinnest apple slices. Mmmmmm. L and J’s pastured beef and chicken and broth was fantastic as well, and I dare say our chocolate was pretty fantastic too, with brownies, pretzel rods, bananas, and cinnamon graham crackers plus L and J’s Rice Krispies treats.

We sure are bummed to have missed our VA friends, though. Littlest one is nearly two years old and we were especially looking forward to meeting her.

So, anyway, I haven’t done much reflection on the year as a whole, but I think I’m going to do a few things somewhat resolution-like.

1) Back to the desserts-in-moderation guideline: no more than two sweets in a week, and some weeks can have none or one. This way I can thoroughly enjoy whatever the sweet is, and also have a clear guide to help against overindulgence.

2) I am finally leaving disgusting GoDaddy. I am either going to transfer my domain registration to Canvas Dreams or to Gandi.net, whose prices are comparable but who have better ethics. Canvas Dreams is even committed to sustainability.

3) I signed up for a daily photography challenge at Mamatography, which should be fun.

Nothing else comes to mind right now, but I may come back and add something later.

Thanks

Dear Jesus,

Thank you that I am alive, with plenty of clothes, a strong safe house, food to eat, a secure job for my husband.

Thank you that I have a husband who loves me as best he can, and a daughter whose burning fire is a delight and a crucible for my sanctification. Thank you for extended family, including grandparents who love Amy and let us get away from her sometimes.

Thank you that I have some friends who understand, who respect, who empathize, who take interest, who pay attention, who listen, who are interesting, kind, and available.

Thank you that my drive to create finds some satisfaction in music, scrapbooking, sewing, knitting, gardening, cooking, blogging, and other pursuits.

Thank you that the earth still turns and the sun still shines and the rain still comes and goes, and that there is a growing number of people who are working to find and promote more sustainable ways of living.

Thank you that you are mine, and I am yours, despite many things.

Thank you that I am who I am, and that it’s okay.

2010 “Though the fig tree does not bud…“
2009 Thanksgiving prayer poem
2008 How I spent my Thanksgiving vacation
2007 Home again
2006 Thanksgiving, deep in PPD, days after Amy comes home

And, to all the black holes out there today, who feel the howling yowling wasteland, my heart goes out to you today, and I hope that your list of things you’re thankful for doesn’t feel paltry, a mockery, and a slap in the face. May you hold the gratitude for real, and the grief and rage and terror for real, and may peace find you.