Wondering

I haven't posted lately. I can't really explain why. I do think a lot about this blog and why I'm not writing in it, or why I even have it to begin with. My own family doesn't read it, since only my husband even knows I have one. I don't think he's read it either, but then again, this is someone who finds Facebook a little stalkerish and creepy, so I'd just as soon keep my ramblings off the radar. I know a few close friends who read it...not that there's been anything to read in a few months.

So what's been going on? Where do I start?

Well, once my last post was posted, I almost immediately embarked on a cumulative 3.5 weeks of work travel. Though this was split up into three whole weeks away interspersed with time home, plus a couple other days and nights away here and there, it was a lot to happen in an 8-week stretch. Actually, it was a lot no matter how you slice it.

Then we had Thanksgiving away too. The holidays came racing toward us. They were exhausting to prepare for, since I spent the week before Christmas away too, but once Christmas arrived, all was groovy. A few years ago, we decided we'd alternate Christmases at home with Christmases away at my parents' house, but after last Christmas here at home and how much we enjoyed it, we decided that we will not travel for Christmas any more. So this was our second Christmas at home in a row, which is a first. (does this make sense?)

Our family Christmas traditions and routines are finally beginning to take form. After a few years of free-form Christmases as we learned to celebrate Christmas as parents, this is a relief. We are repeating things we did last year and enjoyed, and testing some new ideas as well. We're still working on fitting other commitments around our attendance at church for a late afternoon Christmas Eve service. We're pretty much the only ones among our local family and friends who actually go to church Christmas Eve, and seemingly everyone else we know and love wants to eat, drink, and be merry instead of going to church. So we have to balance our desire to be with those we love against our desire to experience the wonder and joy of Christmas Eve lessons and carols. We're seeing what works, and what needs more work, but I think we can find a way eventually to get to church and still get together with friends and family...without going completely insane in the process.

More soon...I hope. Gotta work on a retrospective of the decade, since seemingly every news outlet is doing that right now.

Rain and germs

So I chaperoned my first field trip today. When looking to the future and contemplating parenthood, I never imagined myself riding on a schoolbus, with 30 overexcited kindergartners, in the rain, to an apple orchard. I also never imagined that one could spend a few hours at an orchard without going outside, or anywhere near a fruit tree. Who knew you could kill over an hour demonstrating a cider press?

While the noise level on the bus was beyond intense, and that schoolbus smell brought back not-so-pleasant associations, my greater concern was just not wanting to touch anything. All those germs all over every surface from coughing, sneezing, nose-wiping kids. Swine flu has now hit both my kids' schools and a few families we know, and even though my family has all had the H1N1 mist and regular flu shots, there are other flu strains out there to avoid. And these kids were literally sticking their faces into the seats and against the windows. Gross. I just wanted to decontaminate everyone when we got back, including myself.

I'm normally not that fanatic about germs. I prefer to avoid illness, and I get annoyed at people who bring sick kids to my house, and I'm right there with the handwashing, and I hate being in really germy public places. That said, I think some exposure to bacteria is good for the immune system. I don't care if my dogs lick my kids, or vice versa. I never had one of those shopping-cart covers or portable restaurant placemats for my kids when they were smaller. I didn't sterilize bottles and binkies. When things fall on the floor, I'll still eat them as long as nothing is stuck on them. I don't believe in the 20-second rule or whatever it's called, for me or for my kids. I thought hand sanitizer was only for when you had no other alternative, and that frequent deliberate use of hand sanitizer was a little neurotic.

But this fall? Purell is everywhere. My office has it in every bathroom, and the kids' schools seem to have more dispensers than before. We have it in our cars, plus a big bottle on our kitchen counter to use when we get home. DH is like the Purell Butler if we're out somewhere. We get back in the car and he comes around door to door squirting our hands with Purell. I'm using it. I'm getting used to it. I'm even starting to really like the smell. I should have bought stock in the stuff.

And I'm curious about how this intense focus on illness is changing social behavior. A friend of mine was telling me they just don't take their child to many public places, like shopping malls and playgrounds, because of all the germs going around these days. Anecdotally, I'm hearing that such places are less crowded than usual, and that birthday parties have become smaller and fewer. It's not clear whether the low numbers are due to kids being home sick, or due to parents keeping them home pre-emptively.

Speaking as someone who loathes Chuck E. Cheese, kids' entertainment centers, and restaurant playgrounds in general (mostly because once my kids go in, they won't come out), I'm perversely happy to use germs as an excuse to avoid such establishments altogether. It's clear that I'm not the only mean mommy who feels that way. Strength in numbers, people.

Summer Holidays

Melrose and Mr. Magoo have developed this interesting, and often hilarious, habit of spontaneously and simultaneously bursting into song. This usually occurs when we're riding in the car, and I've somehow gotten them to stop chattering and listen to the radio. One time they both started singing the backup vocals of a Snow Patrol song, and another time it was the chorus of "Just Dance." We've also had some Sara Bareilles, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, and that "I Like to Move It, Move It" song.

It always entertains me when my kids know songs that I didn't teach them. They've been in daycare/school since they were very small. Oftentimes they'll learn songs as part of a holiday (both those we celebrate and those we don't), or because their teachers play a certain song every day at clean-up time, or because some lady with a guitar comes in and has music hour"with them every week. Sometimes I get a performance of these numbers, but I always suspect they know more. And you get some interesting surprises, i.e. to heck with that wussy "Clean Up, Clean Up" song! Didn't you know that Shania Twain's "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" are the best clean-up songs?

The other day, a long-concealed set of Play Doh was unearthed by our babysitter as a consolation prize for Mr. Magoo, who for reasons of blatant gender bias was left out of an all-girls pool party Melrose was attending. DH was out of town, and I was on lifeguard duty, so out came the Play Doh. Magoo was overjoyed. So was Melrose, when she got home and saw it.

I don't normally let the kids play with Play Doh much because it inevitably ends up ground into my carpet and/or tracked all over the house. Also, Astro likes to eat dropped clumps of it, which you might not notice at the time, but becomes evident the next day when you look in the back yard. People give it to us as birthday gifts, and it inevitably gets opened before I can stash it away in the recycled-gift pile to torture some other family with. I can't throw it out without guilt, so it stays and is kept hidden most of the time, and comes out only on special occasions.

Yes, I am mean. Alas, my dislike of fluorescent globs of goo embedded in the rugs usually trumps my children's desire for creative self-expression and tactile stimulation. I'm sure this will come up in therapy someday.

Despite my efforts to monitor the glob-containment situation the following afternoon, some of it did get squished into the family room carpet. I immediately banished the little darlings and their creations to the kitchen table until I could chip it all out with a metal spatula. As I chipped away, the kids chattered to each other about what they were making with their Doh. A dog. A flower. A meatball.

The next thing I know, they're both singing, in sync, with perfect pitch,

"Dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of clay...."

Not-so-silent night

So imagine this: you take your family to a church Christmas pageant somewhere in Pennsylvania.

You get seats, the lights go down, and the pageant begins. There are kids in robes and soloists and teenage holy parents and an older guy playing the Angel Gabriel. There are live sheep. There's even a live (though female) Baby Jesus kicking around up there in the manger.

As everyone admires the beautifully lit and arranged tableau, and heavenly peace fills the room, a cherubic blond 2-year-old standing on his dad's lap announces, at full volume:

"There's Baby Jesus! He's just a baby. I'm a big boy and I go poop in the potty!"

Hopefully you were one of the people who thought this was funny.

So nice to see my family's genetics hard at work.

Monkey on my back

To my immense surprise, we spotted Gracie flying over the township on our way home from school. What a happy sight!

Melrose is very busy adjusting to Pre-K at her new school. She has been a line leader, gone to the library and gym, and learned to play a game called Cookie Monster. She is also outraged by the unfairness of the fact that "the big kids" get to be grownups sooner than she does. She has gone from being one of the oldest kids at her old school to one of the youngest kids at her new school, and I imagine that's pretty disconcerting.

Magoo, meanwhile, is fascinated by the fact that we drop Melrose off in a car line in the morning. Having spent my childhood walking to school and milling around on the playground before the bell rang, or being dropped off in front of the school by my parents with nobody watching, the car line concept is pretty weird to me. It's like an invisible red carpet rolled out for each kid - a teacher or administrator is there to greet them and help the younger kids out of the car. The smaller kids are actually escorted to the door. The only thing missing is the paparazzi. Next year Melrose will be eligible to take the bus, which will make the morning routine easier.

I find it really odd that all the schools have these 15MPH zones out front when nobody walks to school anymore, there are no pedestrians, and often there are no sidewalks. So what is the point? I can understand lowering the speed limit to 20 or 25 in a school zone, but 15 seems excessive, given that everyone enters and leaves by car or bus, and there are no pedestrians to mow down.

Many kids don't even walk to the bus stop. All the smaller developments around here have stops at the entrance, and even if they have a bus shelter for the kids, nobody uses it. In the more spread-out developments, the kids get driven from their cul-de-sacs to the stop. You'll go by and all the parents and kids are parked in their running SUVs waiting for the bus; sometimes you'll see a few of the moms getting out of the cars and hanging out together with their coffee mugs once the bus has passed. They'd probably sue the school districts if their little darlings had to (gasp!) walk to the end of the (very quiet) street and wait (horrors!) all by themselves along a busy road for the bus to come.

Hey, I did it. I survived. And I am officially one of those old curmudgeons who snipes to their kids: "When I was your age, we didn't have car lines. We didn't have buses. I had to WALK to school. Almost a mile. In the heat, cold, rain, snow. With menacing dogs, rushing traffic, mutilated roadkill in the gutter, and occasional harassment from bullies. Carrying my backpack, lunch box, social-studies diorama and violin case. And when I got to school I was minimally supervised until we had to line up to go inside!"

Helicopter parenting and liability issues aside, I have one theory about the reasoning behind today's aggressively-non-pedestrian elementary school commute. It is a single word: backpacks. These things are huge! I can't believe all the stuff these little kids have to haul around. When I was a kid, it seemed like our backpacks were proportional to our sizes. Now most kids have the appearance of Santa Claus with this outsized thing on their backs. Maybe the reason nobody walks to school or more than a few houses to the bus stop is that the backpack weighs as much as the kid carrying it!

Procrastination

So Slate has published an entire edition about my all-time favorite pastime. How awesome is that? I haven't gotten around to reading all of the articles yet, for obvious reasons.

In other news, Melrose has been invited to a Hannah Montana theme party. Not Tinkerbell. Not Ariel. Not Barbie as the Island Princess or in Fairytopia or wherever else Barbie's creators choose to put her next (who knew that Barbie was a talented actress? And what does Ken think about all this?). Not Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or any Disney princess I've missed.

Nope, it's Hannah Montana, favorite show/concert/marketing phenomenon for grade-school tweener girls.

The birthday girl and her guests are 4.

I'm not entirely sure I approve of this, but I'm stuck chaperoning anyway. Also, we do not have suitable clothing, and I'm so not buying any. I seem to belong to the rare and shrinking club that thinks kids should be dressed like kids, not like mini-teenagers.

Speaking of disturbing media for children, has anyone checked out BoohBah? You cannot persuade me that those creators were not on drugs. The entire show is like some bizarre and scary hallucinatory trip. I thought the Teletubbies were creepy, but BoohBah is just a whole new level of things that give me nightmares. And my kids love it. Magoo refers to it as the Boom-Bahs. I turned it on one day just to check it out, and of course they were addicted after just one episode.

I'm still holding the line against Barney, however. I'm not even giving him the benefit of a link.

On the road again...

Spring has sprung, and after months of being in the office almost all the time, I'm suddenly on almost weekly road trips. Sometimes even multiple road trips. Last week I headed to Center City for a conference, and then to Delaware for fieldwork. This week, one planned and one emergency meeting with clients in Baltimore. Next week, more Baltimore - 3 days' worth! And I may get to go back to Delaware for a day too. Yippy skippy.

Gardening season has begun also. I'm still achy from spending pretty much all my free time this past weekend digging holes for new azaleas and forsythias. We'll see how they do, considering it hasn't yet rained on them (unless you count the warm yellow kind of rain provided by my dogs). Also, we got these lovely bushes at Home Depot, which in my experience does not have the greatest track record with shrubs, but these were too inexpensive to resist.

While digging my holes near the patio, I continued to unearth all kinds of odd fragments of our house's past inhabitants. China, redware, chunks of brick that probably came from the long-vanished old bake oven. These people had, and evidently broke, seemingly vast amounts of stuff. Pretty much all of our backyard soil is dotted with broken bits of china, glass, pottery, and occasional larger pieces of flotsam which are sometimes brought in by one of the dogs from several old trash piles half-buried in the woods. Gretz gifted us with a dented, rusty tin can the other day. I've also found a spark plug, a 1931 penny, and a piece of Eastlake-style carved wood that I suspect was part of a mantel or piece of furniture. I managed to wrestle this last item away from the dogs before they chewed it up too much, although I can't for the life of me tell what it came from, not to mention where in the yard it came from.

This old house has so many mysteries, and given the scarcity of good paper documentation on it, it's critical that we preserve what remains of the physical evidence of its past. This makes me reluctant to do too much intense digging around the back of the house for fear of corrupting key evidence that might tell us how long people have lived on this property. If I ever win the lottery, I am commissioning an archaeology dig on this place before I buy the Mercedes or take the family to Disney World.

Yes, Mommy cares more about finding out when the house was built than about meeting The Mouse, The Pooh, or The Princesses. The kids are just going to have to suck it up!

Here we are now! Entertain us!

Today was one of those days where everything just teeters out of control. We woke up to rain pounding on the sleet and snow we got last night. School was open (we called to check) so I got everyone ready, husband and kids set off and I soon jumped in the shower for what would be pretty much my only relaxing moment of the day. Just as I was finishing up, Melrose ran into the bathroom yelling something about school being canceled. Seems the teachers arrived to find a pipe had broken and flooded a couple of the classrooms, so a decision was made to close for repairs. I took on kid duty all morning so Chip could work, then headed to the office at lunchtime. In the meantime, all sorts of random old projects were popping up left and right (my inbox was like a Whack-A-Mole game) and it seems I am now needed to meet with clients offsite all day tomorrow, even though I really need to be here at my desk writing a report or proofreading several others. And a church prayer series I was planning to attend tonight got canceled due to the weather, so it'll be a long evening here trying to get stuff done. All of which feels like too little, too late. I've promised my time to too many people this week.

I've been reasonably good about Lent so far--I made it to church on Ash Wednesday and this past Sunday, and have been (mostly) doing my readings at night, staying caught up, and not falling asleep during them. But I'm also feeling broken, low, and tired this time of year, and wondering what kind of miracle it will take to get myself back together. I feel like I spend so much time and energy on things that ultimately don't matter much, and not enough time on things that do. How do I change my life to match my priorities? Where do I even begin?

Well, enought thought about that for now. I need to try and actually accomplish something of value to my superiors tonight, then go home and write up, like, 50 valentines for the kids' classmates and teachers tomorrow. I'm sure some of the moms will go all out again and have an entire goody bag to go with each valentine. There's always at least a few who do that. Not me!

We have a winner!

And it's School #1! We're in, and the deposit check is in the mail. We think this is the absolute best place for Melrose right now, and logistically, it will make things way saner for her parents. We're not going to tell her until late in the summer, but we are so excited that it's hard to keep it quiet.

I'm already wondering which parents' committee to sign up for and wishing the new school year wasn't 8 months away. I am such a nerd, I've even read the parents' handbook online! My mom was always very involved in my school when I was growing up, and working FT or not, it's always been my dream to be a parent volunteer too. Though I don't think I'll be cramming eight kids into the back of the Chevy station wagon for a field trip to the nature center across town. Those were the days. Maybe I'll help run the book fair instead.

School #2 is still there, and at some point down the road, we'll probably revisit it. There are too many unknowns with it right now, the distance is a problem, and we'd just as soon wait until they're more settled in at the new location. For now, I'm just relieved that this whole process is over and we can move on.

Crosseyed and painless

It's been very interesting for me to read about Anna Nicole Smith's daughter Dannielynn being diagnosed with strabismus. I'd actually been wondering about that, because in literally every photo I saw of her, her eyes didn't look right. I was really hoping that despite all the turmoil over her mother's troubled life and death and her paternity testing and so on, that someone would take a good look at this little girl and make sure she didn't have one more thing in her life to be self-conscious about. I commend her father for getting her the professional medical attention she needs, and for making clear that this in all likelihood is genetic and has nothing to do with her mom's drug use, etc. Strabismus is a fairly common condition, but it gets zero media attention. While I'm sorry Dannielynn has to go through this, I'm glad her family has taken the opportunity to educate the masses about her condition.

I was born with strabismus. My daughter developed it around 14 months. My mom recently discovered old photos of her great-grandfather and it looks like he had it too, although in the 1870s, there wasn't anything you could do about it. I've had 3 surgeries to realign my eyes, and Melrose just had her second. The technology for operating on eyes has improved vastly since my last surgery in 1992--while it used to mean a few nights in the hospital, nowadays it's an outpatient procedure. Even in the old days, the most traumatic thing about it was the anesthesia. People cringe when they hear about eye surgery, but I can assure Larry Birkhead and anyone else wondering that it's not painful. There's some discomfort the first couple of days, and you don't look too appetizing, but eyes heal quickly. Getting over the anesthesia is way worse than the trauma to your eye.

My hope for Melrose and Dannielynn is that they can gain some binocularity, or that at the very least their eyes can be aligned well enough to look straight and "pass" for normal. While there are much worse medical conditions out there than being crosseyed or walleyed, socially it can be very stigmatizing. You never look good in photos and you worry endlessly that people will notice your eyes are going two different ways. And athletically, you can pretty much forget being good at any sport involving flying objects. You can probably hit the baseball, but catching one is tricky. I didn't realize my depth perception was off until I was 16 and taking my driver's test, but you do learn to compensate in situations like driving. Melrose's doctor reiterated that she may never become a surgeon, a pro soccer player, or a military pilot, but it won't stop her from anything else. As a kid, I was always sort of annoyed that I couldn't see 3-D images or play tennis, but being called "Crosseyed Katie" caused way more grief than the few things I couldn't do.

When Melrose was diagnosed and we had to get her glasses due to overall farsightedness, I felt guilty and angry, even though I'd been a very conscientious pregnant mom. I didn't want my child to look funny or different from everyone else, or have to go through all the extra aggravation of patching and doctors' visits and surgery. Getting a 16-month-old to wear glasses full-time was a long and expensive battle. At the same time, there are so many worse things she could have. I'll take a couple of surgeries and distorted depth perception over daily insulin shots, or life-threatening allergies, or a progressive and fatal disease. I just want people to understand that strabismus doesn't make you blind or stupid; you just see the world a little differently than most people. And there are a few odd advantages...I will say that needing to buy contacts for only one eye is a huge bonus!

On a lighter note, we watched The Amazing Race finale last night. It wasn't very exciting, mostly because, like this person, I would have been happy with pretty much any of the winners. The grandpa-grandson team was my favorite from the beginning; the Type A dad-daughter team really grew on me; and the winning team didn't annoy me too much other than their persistent nutty-crunchy aura. There wasn't anyone I was really worried would win, since whiny Nate and Jen got eliminated last week. All in all, a decent season.

My old school

Sorry for no posts again lately. Home, kids, holidays, guests, and various other things have been taking over my free time entirely of late. And work has been, well, interesting. It appears that a promotion/position change that I've been pushing for over the last 5 months may finally be in the works, meaning perhaps that I've finally triumphed over a lot of interdepartmental BS. But it hasn't happened yet, so I will say no more, lest I jinx things.

Also, I've been alluding to some major life decisions of late. Chief among them is where to send our kids to school in the future, and if we choose to go the independent school route (I recognize fully that we are fortunate to be in a position to choose, and am humbly grateful for that), whether I'm willing to make certain sacrifices in my parental, personal and career aspirations to pay for that, or to accommodate the additional logistics that may be involved. Even though Melrose just turned 4 and we'd be happy to her to continue at her current school thru pre-K, the two independent schools we are considering are competitive. We decided she will probably have the best odds if we apply now, rather than waiting until kindergarten or later, when there are far fewer slots up for grabs and the admission requirements get more challenging.

Independent school feels a little weird to me. I worry about the ivory tower and the homogeneity (and the BILLS ) and so on, but going to public school is not an automatic reality check. I was a public-school kid, all the way through, but I can be the first to tell you it was nearly all white, nearly all wealthy, and that upper-middle-class teenagers at any school are inherently solipsistic and need some extra effort to see that not everyone in our world looks like them or has what they do.

I was fortunate to grow up in a small town with neighborhood schools and a superior education system. Still, in a town of wealthy, athletic, overachieving superstars, quieter kids like me tended to fly under the radar. I did great by most people's standards--lots of minor roles in various extracurriculars, a couple of honors classes each year, got into my first choice college. But I certainly could have been pushed harder, and I definitely could have achieved so much more, had there been a little more individual attention, and had I not endured a four-year period of general exclusion, bullying and sexual harassment with little support or intervention from the school administration. Back in the late 80s, nobody ever dreamed that a kid treated like I was would come to school with a rifle and open fire, or that parents would sue the school and other students for sexual harassment. My parents' complaints often had few positive results, or only awkward attempts to correct matters (like my guidance counselor facilitating a meeting with me and one of my worst tormentors, so this trashy blue-eyeshadowed little 7th grade b---h could explain to me exactly what I was doing that had made me a target). I'm sure most post-Columbine schools would do a better job than mine did, but I swore to myself that if I ever had a child who was a little...different, I would do everything in my power to keep him or her from experiencing that kind of trauma. Not that private school kids don't suffer social rejection and anguish, but as a tuition-paying parent, you have a lot more recourse than a taxpaying parent to make sure wrongs are righted.

Chip went to a wonderful private school, and his parents sacrificed a lot financially for that, but have no regrets. He went in a shy, smart kid, and came out a dynamic, friendly, confident person who later became a star salesperson, manager and business director. For someone who was a shy introvert, he is now incredibly outgoing and skilled at managing other people and their issues, and, despite being just as uncoordinated and bookwormish as I am, he never experienced the kind of social alienation I went through. He blossomed at school into a kid who was well-liked and respected, and who was unfailingly kind to others. Even the odder ducks in his class were treated with respect.

I would have done great in a place like that. My parents actually wanted to pull me out of public school at one point, but I resisted strongly. For one thing, I would have needed to repeat a year. For another, I feared that being thrown in with a whole new set of elite kids would just be a repeat of what was already happening, and I didn't want any further proof of my inability to fit in. The devils I knew were better than the ones I didn't. In retrospect, I wish they had overruled my objections, but I also realize it would have been very difficult for them financially, and I do appreciate that I received a top-rate education nonetheless.

I'd like to think that I believe in public education, and I do believe one can get an outstanding public education in many places. But after a lot of soul-searching, I don't think it's the right choice for our kids, especially for Melrose. When we moved here we were told our district cluster was one of the best, but have since learned that it's actually kind of so-so, mostly because it's huge. With all the development going on out here, the schools are crowded, classes are huge, and facilities overwhelmed. The middle and high school are 20 minutes away, and currently there is no elementary school to check out, because it's still being built. Nobody seems to have any numbers on how big classes will be, etc. Factor that in with my intense dislike for No Child Left Behind and the teaching-to-the-test mentality that seems to predominate American public schools, and the insights I've gotten from friends and relatives who are teachers or school personnel, and the fact that some friends of ours (who are very easygoing, mellow people) pulled all four of their kids out of our public system last year and sent them to parochial school because they didn't like what was going on, and it's not exactly warm fuzzies.

Choosing public school would clearly be much less financial pressure on us, and would give me the freedom to change careers, go back to school, or work a reduced schedule and so on. But I also feel that parenthood means doing what is best for your children, even if that means sacrificing, and I don't think sending a child like Melrose to a huge regional school system would be good for her in many ways. I'd rather send her and her brother to schools where I know they will be loved, nurtured, and get the best education they can, and where I have recourse to expect they will be respected and valued for who they are, even if that means we give up other things we want out of life. What would we spend that tuition money on anyway? Nice cars? They'd get trashed. Shopping at fancy boutiques? They don't have anything in my size. Eating out more? We'd get even fatter. Travel? We don't have enough vacation time to do much else. Home improvements? We already have a nicer house than I'd ever dreamed of. Join a country club? We don't swim, golf, or play tennis. I'd rather buy my kids academic rigor, nurturing, community, and social confidence than anything else on the planet. If that means I don't get a brand-new new car until they're out of college, I can live with that. I just have a harder time with the fact that I have to keep working, full time, and making at least what I'm making now for us to afford it at all. Even if my job drives me nuts. No going back to school, or starting my own business, or cutting back my hours.

So now we've applied to School #1 and School #2. Both seem like wonderful, nurturing places with rigorous academics, mandatory sports, and strong character education. Both have great reputations. Both require uniforms (yessss! no more clothing-choice battles!). Both made favorable impressions on both Melrose and ourselves. Both are places we think our kids would be happy and do well.

School #1 is just around the corner on a farm converted to a campus, and has a warm, friendly atmosphere and nice, relatively new academic buildings. We loved the people we met there, it's an excellent location in our own community, and Melrose had a stellar visit day. The one major drawback for both of us is that the school only goes through 8th grade, and is pretty insistent that it will remain as such. This would mean we'd have to go through the admissions hoopla all over again with our 13-year-olds, and even if they beat out the competition and got into their favorite high school, they would have to go through some pretty major adjustment to new schools and friends at an age when that's very difficult.

School #2 is my husband's beloved alma mater, actually, and I have gotten familiar with it after years of attending alumni events. Just around the time we moved here, School #2 decided to sell its longtime campus, which is too far away for us to even consider applying, and build a new campus from scratch on a farm about 30 minutes south of here. This means Melrose would be part of the first class of pre-Ks to start there, and the entire campus would be new. She really enjoyed visiting there too, although her day there was not as good as we would have hoped (I'll save that story for another day). It's one of the top academic programs in the area, and more of a reach for us in terms of competitiveness, logistics, and the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses factor (lots of wealthy Main Line families, luxury cars, etc.). Still, I found the staff and other parents very warm, welcoming, and friendly, and ditto for the alums and others I've met at the events over the years. It also has an Episcopalian theological focus, whereas School #1 is nondenominational. The big drawbacks are the distance (we'd have to get her to and from school ourselves next year, and it's not exactly convenient), it costs a little more, and as with the public school, the campus is a big construction site right now and there are a lot of unknowns.

We should learn in the next month whether Melrose got into either school. If she gets into one but not the other, we're going with the one she gets into. If she gets into neither, she stays put and we'll reapply for next year. If she gets into both, then we have to really consider the logistics and the atmosphere and various other details. We're trying not to be overly biased by our knowledge of School #2 and to give School #1 fair consideration. Stay tuned....

In and out

Oh, this story just captures my mom struggles so well, only I'm contending with two little ones instead of three. Getting everyone in the car to leave this morning was not too dissimilar--my older one insists tearfully she has to color a picture NOW instead of putting on her coat, and the younger one (covered in breakfast crumbs) is racing around the family room dismantling and throwing every movable object he can find, and meanwhile my dogs are desperate to go out and play and literally hurling themselves at the back door and shrieking. And people wonder why I can't get anywhere on time.

We can watch the snow fall forever and ever

Well, eight days until Christmas, and here's where we are:

Holiday shopping: Almost done--just have to pick up a couple of gifts for two people we got assigned in the annual pollyanna exchange with my in-laws and their close family friends, which I need to deal with by 5pm on Friday! I also decided to skip office cards and little trinkets...I'm just not in the mood this year.

Decorating: Outside is minimalist and was done a few weeks ago. I made a wreath at a workshop and hung it on one back door the week after Thanksgiving. Chip got another at the supermarket the following week and put it on the front door. We also put up and spotlighted our giant fake wreath with lights on the barn--this invaluable item was located at an antiques mall by the former owner of our house, who called us to tell us about it, then kindly picked it up for us 2 years ago. We cut off the shiny baubles and left the lights on it, and then attached a big bow. Large wreaths seem to be quite the thing on Chester County barns, so we were psyched. We skipped garlanding the front porch and putting lights in the bushes or candles in the windows this year because we're lazy and it's too cold outside. Also, the kids would probably destroy the candles, even if we found some we liked.

Inside is even more minimalist; we've done squat other than line the mantel with our haul of Christmas cards. Since we're going away for Christmas and will not be entertaining before then, we skipped doing a tree and indoor decorations this year. It's probably the last year we can get away with this, although Miss Melrose would probably really like one. Also, Mr. Magoo would undoubtedly destroy any decorating we do in about six seconds flat, so maybe it's a good thing?

Getting into the spirit: I'm struggling with this, just as I have the last few years. I don't seem to be able to recapture the magic and mystery I once felt surrounding the holiday, the beauty of cool blue snow falling or candles shining in the darkness, the excitement of buying and hiding gifts, the quiet contemplation of Christ's birth, the good memories that spill forth when I hear my favorite songs or smell evergreens and spiced cider. It hasn't been the same since my beloved grandmother died unexpectedly on December 22, 2002, but even before that, I was feeling spiritually disconnected to some degree during December. I don't know if this is because I'm an adult and now responsible for making the magic happen, rather than feeling it? Or is my life just too busy and so filled with the clamor of children and work and other obligations that I can't slow down, be still, and let it find me? Or is it holiday overload brought on by radio stations switching to Christmas format before Thanksgiving, stores decorating before Halloween, endless pressure to consume and compete?

I'm hoping that I can recapture it through my children and their excitement and wonder, but in general, I'm finding the holidays rather exhausting and have times when I'm downright Scrooge-like. The shopping, and the planning, and the huge outlay of money and time and energy on buying presents for people (which is exacerbated by having four family members with December birthdays), coupled with my general lack of free time to shop and browse for gifts by myself, makes it all feel kind of rushed and cold and robotic. We need to start establishing some of our own family traditions and rituals, but we haven't really done it yet, with the kids still so small. We did go to this great Christmas Stroll at Historic Yellow Springs, which was incredibly cool and I think will make the cut for future traditions to kick off the season. Hopefully as the kids grow and get more out of things like seeing "The Nutcracker" or visiting holiday displays and helping with cookie-baking and house-decorating, it will become more fun. Right now, it's all I can do to get the Christmas cards out and keep the wrapped presents locked up, away from little hands that are into EVERYTHING!

Nowadays I don't feel much of anything Christmasy in my heart until it's Christmas Eve, all the preparations are complete, and I've somehow made it to an evening Lessons and Carols service, and they dim the lights to sing "Silent Night" kneeling, and then the tears rise in my throat so that I can't even sing. And I'm not even sure why I'm crying, but something very powerful takes over. Is that the spirit of Christmas?

On a lighter note, from my sister Anne, one of those chain questionnaires:

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your friends. Okay, Here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be a SCROOGE!!! Just copy (not forward) this entire email and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you......Tis the Season to be NICE!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Depends on the gift, how many such bags I recycled from last year, and whether I remembered to ask for a gift box at the store.

2. Real tree or artificial? Real in the living room; small fake one for tabletop displays (if I remember it)

3. When do you put up the tree? About 2 weeks before Christmas.

4. When do you take the tree down? Early January.

5. Do you like eggnog? Just a small amount--it's a little too weird for me to drink a lot. Preferably sprinkled with nutmeg and spiked with something strong.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? There were many! My Muppets drum set, a cardboard store with pretend food, a dollhouse my dad and I worked on building together, my first boom box with a Hall and Oates tape, a black poodle puppy!

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No...can't find any cool, non-tacky ones.

8. Hardest person to buy for? Whomever I get stuck with in my in-laws' pollyanna exchange
9. Easiest person to buy for? My daughter

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail...otherwise, why bother?

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Fuzzy pink pig socks, clip-on earrings, and a hideous peachy-pink supposedly antique silk kimono that is sized for petite Asian women (not large Anglo-Saxons who don't wear Asian clothing for dressup)--all from the same person!

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? A Christmas Story. "Merry Christmas, kid...Ho, ho, HO!"

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Whenever I see something I think someone might like; otherwise, usually in November.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Have I ever!

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Chocolate oranges.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Either way is fine, but usually colored.

17. Favorite Christmas song? Religious: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, O Little Town of Bethlehem (most of these always make me cry); Secular: The entire Nutcracker Suite, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Band-Aid - Do They Know it's Christmas?, John and Yoko - Happy Christmas (War is Over), Bruce Springsteen - Merry Christmas Baby, Elton John - Step into Christmas, Sarah McLachlan and the Barenaked Ladies - We Three Kings/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas is You, Bing Crosby - White Christmas, Hall and Oates - Jingle Bell Rock (I also like Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song and don't get to hear it nearly enough).

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We travel and stay home in alternate years. Eventually I think we'll stay home most years to keep things more consistent--or because Santa's gifts are too big to transport!

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Yes, and I even have a dog whose puppy name was Cupid because he was born on Christmas.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Star, although for a few years we had an angel Chip bought at CVS.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Crowds, pressure to make everyone happy and get a lot done, hemorrhaging money on gifts, lack of time and energy to contemplate and feel what the holiday really means.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? No themes in my house, but I always like looking at trees with white lights and wintery decorations elsewhere.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Turkey or roast beef with mashed potatoes and Yorkshire puddings.

25. Do you have Jesus in your heart this Christmas? I'm trying to.

26. What do you want for Christmas this year? Continued good health and happiness for my loved ones; peace in the world; some positive changes in my life in terms of career and getting into shape; good mental health; more space for creativity, writing, and God in my life next year.

27. Who is most likely to respond to this? Mom?

28. Who is least likely to respond to this? Anne!

Things that make you go hmmmm: Holiday Edition

There are many things in life that I just don't get:

1. Why anyone would stand in line outside a (fill-in-the-big-box-store) in the freezing cold at 4:15AM on Black Friday so they could spend 20 minutes shopping amidst hordes of other bargain-hunters, then stand in line for over 2 hours to check out, all to save a few bucks on holiday gifts. Nothing against Kohl's, but is there truly anything there worth getting up at 3AM to buy? Why not just buy less stuff, or spend less money, get some sleep, and shop at a sane time? Same expenditure, much more sanity.

2. Why anyone would run out the day after Thanksgiving to buy a cut Christmas tree from one of the multitude of roadside stands that's popped up in many a parking lot in the past week. First of all, the tree sellers aren't going anywhere for at least another month. Secondly, They. Never. Run. Out. Of. Trees. Believe me. There will be just as many trees there on Christmas Eve as there are right now. Thirdly, what's the big rush? You have a whole month to go! You're not going to save any money or win any awards for being the first to put up your tree! Do you just like dry crumbly trees and a carpet of needles on your floor for Santa to slip on Christmas morning?

3. Parents going through insane rituals of aggravation, sleep deprivation, and even hand-to-hand combat to get their kids some must-have toy or other item for the holidays. I personally will not EVER be one of those people camping out in line overnight, ready to rush a big-box store for some new video gaming system or the latest Whatever-Me Elmo. My parents did not do these things (not even for Cabbage Patch Kids!), and yet I still felt loved and cherished. It would be one thing if the item was lifesaving sustenance or medicine for my child. But it's not. My children's lives will not be irreparably ruined because their friends got Nintendo the first day it came out and they didn't get it until (horrors!) a few weeks or a month later. I am not giving up sleep to shop as a competitive sport and give my kids instant gratification. Also, see #1 above.

4. Why our modern-day lives have gotten so hectic and overwhelming that people who can afford it feel they need one of these. And why, despite my sad and regretful head-shaking over how hectic and overwhelming life has become, I'm still completely and insanely jealous of those who can afford it.

5. How my dog can possibly be comfortable sleeping like this (see above). Yes, his head is on his butt. He conks out in this pose quite often. He also can fall asleep with his front half on someone's lap and his back legs standing on the floor. Apparently he is a German shorthaired pointing contortionist.

6. Why seemingly every '80s compilation out there has either the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" or Blondie's "Call Me" on it? Those of us who love the '80s enough to buy compilations are sick of these two songs. They are overplayed as it is.

7. Why anyone likes that creepy Frank Sinatra-David Bowie "Do You Hear What I Hear" duet. Or that lame-ass song about the Christmas shoes. I'll take the entire Chipmunks Christmas album over either of those songs, any day.

8. Will Ferrell. He's just not funny to me. Ever. I try and I try to appreciate the guy, and every movie, every skit, seems to start out with some promise of hopefully being funny and ends up just being (IMHO) stupid and annoying. I wonder whether the current generation of teens and young adults finds him and the current SNL crop as funny as we did back in the days of oh, Dana Carvey and Mike Myers and Kevin Nealon. Of course, they're probably all too busy with MySpace, YouTube, and their iPods to pay attention to network TV comedy, unless it involves Justin Timberlake singing about a dick in a box. Sigh....

9. Rabid drunken sports fans. This story just made me ill. I don't know who I'm more ashamed of, the males or the females.

So call me The Grinch. I can live with that.

Run turkey, run turkey, run far away

Well, we're now on Day 2 of Kate's Thanksgiving Misadventures. Misadventure #1 is dealing with my first turkey, which I didn't actually buy because my brother-in-law got one free as part of a supermarket promotion and donated it to our cause. I didn't realize it takes a day to refrigerator-thaw for every 6 pounds (per The Joy of Cooking), so pulling our 21-pounder out of the freezer last night was done with intense panic as to whether it would really thaw in 36 hours. Fortunately The Today Show came to the rescue this morning with a segment on thawing your turkey in cold water, which apparently works much faster than thawing it in the fridge. Thanks, Today Show! I'm sure my in-laws will be equally thankful if I get the thing completely thawed and safely and well cooked by noon tomorrow. And thanks to my sister for the giant bright blue tin washtub she gave us as part of a housewarming gift 3 years ago--it's a perfect thawing tank for the turkey, having already come in handy as a beer-and-ice container at a couple of parties. My remaining panic is whether our lovely bird will fit in 1. our roasting pan, and 2. our 1980s wall oven, which is on the small side.

Turkey panic aside, I started cooking and getting ready last night. The meat thermometer has been located, silver serving dishes are polished, the extra leaf is in the table, and the taters are all ready to go (both mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole). Tonight comes making the stuffing, and the table-setting. The goal is to have tomorrow morning free to deal solely with the mysterious turkey stuffing and roasting situation, while maybe taking a pre-emptive run and keeping the kids from completely trashing the house before everyone arrives.

My big fear is that the turkey won't cook well, or enough, or on time. I'm not a fan of the midday Thanksgiving dinner; late afternoon is more my family tradition, but we seem to be subject to local relatives' customs, and custody arrangements, the years when we're here. Also, the timing allows the kiddos to conveniently go down for a nap right afterward. But still, it makes the morning really hectic, and then after all that eating at midday, what do you do for the rest of the day after everyone goes home? It just seems kind of anticlimactic. At least when dinner is at normal dinnertime, you have all day to anticipate, prepare, inhale the yummy cooking aromas, drool, and afterward you only have a few hours of feeling disgustingly overstuffed and bloated before you can indulge the tryptophan effect and crash for the night.

On a more serious note, it's that time of the year when we freely express our thanks for what we have. So here are the things I might mention tomorrow, if I were at my parents' house and indulging in our annual tradition of going around the table and saying what we're thankful for during grace:

• for being healthy, employed, housed, clothed, literate, educated, and lucky enough to live in this beautiful part of the world;
• for being married and the parents of two healthy children;
• for our families, friends, and everyone's doggies;
• for the good choices we've made in life, and the ability to make them;
• for the church, schools, and organizations we're part of; and
• for our free country, even if we don't like what's going on right now.

Of course, if we were at my parents' house, continued annual tradition dictates that the dinner conversation would then rapidly degenerate into tasteless humor, stupid impersonations (think Tommy Boy and the "Ding! Fries are Done!" guy), and stories involving bodily functions that leave most of us either snarfing our drinks or paralyzed with laughter. And even while some of us mildly protest sullying the occasion with such crudeness, deep down we're thankful for our shared sick sense of humor.

UPDATE:

The turkey was still hard as a rock by late afternoon Wednesday despite the soaking treatment. So we stuck it back in the freezer and bought another, smaller turkey that wasn't frozen. And by some miracle it came out perfectly and right on time, even with me in charge. Luckily I remembered the sad story of my M-I-L's first attempt to cook a turkey and removed all the yicky parts stowed inside before rinsing, stuffing and roasting mine. B-I-L, despite enjoying his perfectly high-heat-roasted drumstick, seemed a tad offended that we'd not used his freebie turkey, and proceeded to take it with him when he left. Maybe we'll see it again at Christmastime.

The trouble with you is the trouble with me

I really and truly think parenthood is karma paying you back for whatever evils you committed against your own parents as a child. In my case, I seem to be atoning not only for my own committed sins, but for those I fantasized about and never actually committed. And maybe for those of some other people too. Karma always seems to rear its ugliest head when DH is on the road for major trips (i.e. out of our time zone and lasting 3 nights or more), and he's now on the most major trip level (out of country for 6 nights).

Last night was all about battling with the girl, who is almost 4 but seems to be in a phase this week of boycotting all toilets, on the grounds that "nasty potties" (i.e. those with autoflushers) exist in the rest stops and airports of the world. The mere existence of such apparatus is apparently sufficient justification to pee in your pants even though your home, school, supermarket, and general everyday surrounds have only "nice" facilities that you flush yourself. Why it matters that there are nasty potties at all the NJ and PA Turnpike rest stops when you're not on either highway and there's a perfectly harmless but unused toilet in the next room, just isn't making sense to me, but somehow makes perfect sense to my daughter. She has inherited her mom's tendency to make up her own logic and then stick to it unswervingly despite all evidence to the contrary. I did outgrow this to some extent myself, but not until I was somewhat older. But my bizarre turns of logic in no way involved bathroom habits. So we're pretty stumped at this point as to what to do with this child. Buy her a litterbox? Let her live in the barn?

Everyone keeps telling me she won't go to kindergarten in diapers. But I could easily see her being the first....

Also, if your preschooler is going to grab a forbidden indelible Sharpie marker and doodle on something in the house, you'd better hope it's your 1920s porcelain-top kitchen table. I was able to remove the artwork without much more effort than if she'd drawn on a whiteboard. Not bad for a piece of furniture we resurrected from my in-laws' basement!

Darkness falls across the land

OK, this is an awesome story! I wonder if Klaes Oldenburg ever had this issue with his exhibits....

Halloween is over. We're still feeling our way with it, since it's a pretty different holiday in 2007 than it was in the early '80s, and our rural environs are quite different from the midcentury all-American suburban neighborhoods we grew up in. For one thing, no Daylight Savings time--that was kind of weird. For another, there doesn't seem to be any predictable time to go out trick-or-treating, or to be home in case you have small costumed visitors. Some people seem to go out as early as 4:30 or 5. For clueless parents like us, it's hard to tell when exactly you're supposed to go out, or when you're supposed to be home in case of visitors.

These are probably the easy years, since kids who are 1 and almost 4 can't dictate when, where, and with whom they go out, and since they've already been partying and parading in costume at preschool, it's no biggie if we don't go out at all. Eventually, should they decide to go with friends from out here, we're going to have to drive them to one of the development neighborhoods, since ours isn't pedestrian-friendly or dense enough to be overly profitable in the candy department. I mean, even if you moved fast, it would take an hour to hit 8-10 houses. And one of us will have to chaperone, wherever they go. Seems like these days you'd probably be arrested for neglect if your kids trick-or-treated without you. Even the oldest kids (i.e. ages 10-12) we saw out last night had a dad with them (dressed as Abe Lincoln, and who turned out to be our pediatrician who lives around the corner).

Last night we walked across the road to our neighbors who have twins and trick-or-treated at their place, then went with them to the house next door where we were royally received and entertained (wine! beer! good cheese!), then we went back, got in our cars, and drove in tandem down to a third neighbor whose place is a quarter mile down the road. The upside of being eternal chaperones is that our neighbors who don't have kids (or whose kids are now adults) are way excited to get any trick-or-treaters, and ply the parents with wine, beer, appetizers, and adult-size candy bars. But it does seem very sad that we carve the pumpkins and buy the candy and leave the porch lights on, and nobody ever comes to our house.

When I was little, everybody seemed to go out around 6-8pm, and when we got to be maybe 8 or 9, we went out alone with our friends. I remember being a swaggering sixth grader hitting my friends' neighborhoods in costume, all of us spraying shaving cream and experimenting with various curse words. And before that mayhem even began, Halloween morning was always fun. I loved getting up and seeing whose tree had been TP'd or whose driveway had a shaving cream message. Do kids today even know what Mischief Night is?