7 posts tagged “preschool”

The wife had Intralase Lasik last Friday.
I was freaked out.  Turned out fine.

Youngest daughter winged a ball at wife's face the next day.
I freaked out.  Missed the eyes, turned out fine.  She can read the 20/20 eye chart line.

Eldest daughter fell out of bed Monday night.
Gashed the back of her head on the bottom corner of a dresser.
I freaked out and got a lot of blood all over me while I held her.
After a trip to the ER at Midnight and three staples, turned out fine.

Youngest smacked eldest in the back of the head with a (hard) toy dragon.
I freaked out.  Wound didn't open, no new blood, just a headache for eldest, so, you know, fine.

Eldest wants to go to preschool today as there are only a few sessions left for this school year.
I take her and find out today they're doing an inflatable bouncy-house all day because it's storming outside.
I freaked out.  I'll find out in an hour if anything got bumped loose, but I haven't gotten an emergency call yet.

She has a follow-up doctor appointment today anyway.

Wife has a follow-up eye appointment tomorrow.

Me, I've about exhausted my freak-out for the week.

Plenty of Boulevard Brewery mixed-packs, Bacardi Solara Rum, vodka, and tequila though... so I might make it yet.

Success.

Got the Notary cornered along with two of the tellers at the bank branch to act as my witnesses for my will.

One peculiarity in the process.

To determine if I was of sound mind, the Notary asked me a few questions.

First was, "So, you just moved here last summer?"

Easy one, "Yup."

It was the follow-up to that which threw me.

"Have you found a church yet?"

Recovering, quickly, well it felt quick to me, I reply, "Sure, yeah, we've looked around and settled on (fill in name here because it's where we got my eldest daughter into affordable preschool.)

Banker/Notary: "Well, that's fine, but if you ever feel like joining a community of passionate believers, my church is up on (local road name here) and we'd love to have you join our fellowship."

Not the kind of witnessing I thought I'd get to legalize my will.

I guess church attendance qualifies as exhibiting a sound mind in these parts.

"Uh, yeah, sure, I'll talk to the wife about it."  One of the joys of marriage is being able to use the spousal-conference as a reason to not do anything immediately and be non-committal.

Then while the tellers fill out all their various info to make the will official and I'm a captive audience; he goes on about all the benefits about moving all of our funds to his bank and all the other various account add-ons he can push on me.

So, first he wants to save my soul; then he wants all my cold hard cash.

I shall keep both to my own counsel.

But I'm all legal, official, and fixed up to die.

Gimme an F...

Gimme an I...

Gimme an S...

Gimme an H...

What's that spell?

Just after Christmas, when the visiting in-law grandparents were safely stuffed back on an airplane, my 3 3/4 year old decided she wanted to learn to read.

It has been an explosion of knowledge.

I am not keeping track of a word list that she can recognize or spell yet, as I'm not sure day to day how much of it is sticking in long-term memory, but it would be impressive.

Our favored method is to use an email client to compose a message (in super huge font)
one word on one line at a time.

This past week, she expressed an interest (i.e. "NO, I want to do it!") in typing the words herself.

So, she's also learning the letter location of the QWERTY system as well.

She's been copying some of her favorite sections of Doctor Seuss books in this fashion.

Now she's hitting up educational game websites to master their spelling games.

She long ago became bored with the content on noggin.com and nickjr.com having explored every link on their sites.

She is more competent with the use of the mouse and navigating via browser bookmarks than my parents are.

Her latest expansion is math fractions games.

She was on a spelling game when I left the room to go make us nachos.

I came back and bam, she's doing math.

My wife's response, "Are you going to save anything at all for her teachers when she starts school?"

I'd write a child development book on how it all happened, but dude, I don't think it's me.

We haven't pushed either of our kids, but simply provided resources for them when they expressed an interest themselves in exploring a given topic.

Now the 21 month old, I'll just be glad when she's finished potty-training (about 90% there now.)

She's also learning her alphabet, animals and sounds they make with a ringed flipcard set.

She started potty training (felt like early) because she wanted to keep up with big sister.

Now she looks like she wants to do the same thing with playing on the PC and reading her own book words.

It's daunting, this whole parenting young kids thing, but I think I might not have screwed up too bad.

I think they'll both be ready for school on time, likely way ahead of peer grade-level.

I am anticipating feeling incredibly relieved at that hand-off of learning to the teacher and at the same time weirded out, considering that at this pace they should surpass my own knowledge of most topics somewhere around middle-school age.

On the way to pick up eldest daughter at preschool, I heard a radio spot for a jewely store (you may not be familiar with the term "radio".  It's like an MP3, but free to be picked off the airwaves with a tuner, crazy as that sounds, but the trade-off being the commercials, but that's the impetus for this story).

The ad was touting why a buyer would want to choose their pieces over the competition for their servicing of
"soon-to-be heirloom"  jewelry gifts.

That turn of phrase struck me.  I think it was a jab, but having just been struck, I could have mistaken it for a hook.

An odd tableau played out in my head as I reeled (and signaled with my left turn blinker at a light.)

Picture a middle-aged man sitting on a porch, overlooking a wooded valley and in the rocker next to him, a bored looking 20 something busy texting his peeps on his blackberry.

Old guy leans over and rips one, then dangles a watch over to the crack-berry head.

"Son, this watch has been passed down, from pocket to pocket for the better part of five minutes now, and I'd like you to have it.  Remember its history and what it represents about the family as you treasure it for the next month or so."

Instant, soon-to-be heirloom indeed.

I don't know whether the root lies in the microwave oven or the drive-through window, but our cultural lack of patience for something to become special over time seems to diminish the power of words in the vein of heirloom and antique.

These things acquire a meaning because of their age, their craft, the events they have survived that separate themselves from us in history.

Our lack of patience for them to become special robs them of meaning when we bandy about these words without their meanings, robbing us both of character.

My afternoon mood was salvaged when eldest handed me her painted hand-print snowman picture project and the 19 month-old made a successful deposit on her training potty upon the return home.

Eldest's project will be archived and will have some meaning when she shows it to her own kids later.  It will acquire a specialness even greater than it merits today.

Youngest's project, while celebrated, was flushed.

With it, the notion of the "soon-to-be heirloom".

Dropped eldest off at preschool this morning.

Headed off to the Y with youngest.

It's one exit down the freeway.

While turning from the surface street onto the on-ramp, I was met with a vehicle reversing up the on-ramp toward me.

Guy had mistaken the clearly marked freeway on-ramp with the driveway to a business park, I guess.

He backed up all the way out of the on-ramp, backed through the surface street (against flow of traffic) and then turned into his desired destination.

Seriously people... it's called, "Yeah, I screwed up, lemme get off at the next exit and circle around to come back."

After the Y, youngest and I stopped off at the insurance agent office to get our policies transfered in from out of state.

On the one side, there's having a beer for breakfast...

And either explaining it away (as it being a Saturday, ahem) or getting confrontational about the expressed, or anticipated expressed concern of others.  It betrays that the user/abuser was looking for attention all along.

Then,

Well then there's the other side...

And you say, "What?  It's Saturday?  Cool, that means I can have several more as I don't have to drive eldest child to preschool today!"  Meaning that the user/abuser wasn't anticipating any response at all and is simply pleased that the indulgence can, all responsibilities aside, be prolonged.

When dealing with depression, you don't need any filters.

That in mind, pass on the ciggies and go straight for the cigars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir

Tis far better to have a known a breeze that passed, than never to have felt the wind at all.

Yes, I stole the spirit of that from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:27, 1850

When real life picks up I find I don't mind missing PC time at all.

Days or weeks go by without checking email.

Blog entries from others stack up that seem like they should be gotten to.

Meanwhile, mine are the anti-matter of the blogosphere.

I know things happened on those days, but nobody can see it.

Just gaping holes of nothing in the record.

Joined the YMCA these past couple of weeks and picked up the old routine without a beat missing.

Summer finally turned off and with it the humidity and the air conditioning.

The girls are active all their waking hours.

Eldest is a big girl now, with a backpack, lunch box, and school projects to be brought home for the front of the fridge.

Then a breeze picks up making it absolutely perfect out of doors.

I pick up a Shiner Bock from the fridge (Spoetzl Brewery, Shiner, Texas), the bucket of sidewalk chalk for the girls and make for the patio and my soft padded chair in the shade.

Begin the countdown until the wife comes home from work.