Safety

Miranda is doing really well at school. Today she came home with a sticker that read, "Wow! Good work!" and when I asked her what good work she had done at school, she replied, "All my work is good." We also got a note from the teacher yesterday that read, "Miranda has been WONDERFUL! She is such a sweet girl and a great student ... I'm very lucky!" This description is hard to reconcile with the little girl who throws a fit and tries to explain to me that I never listen to her when she talks about Kidfun (a theory she has come up with to explain why timeout is bad for kids and that they should be able to whatever they want), but we guess we're pretty lucky, too.

They have been talking a lot about safety at school this week, and every day Miranda comes home with an art project which illustrates some form of safety rules (most of them seeming to have to do with matches.) I guess Xavier felt left out, because he came up with his own set of safety rules, which follow.

Xavier's Rules for a Safe Life

1. Don't play with a rubber band when it is on fire.
2. Don't play with a branch with a rubber band on it because you might pull the tree down and hurt yourself.
3. Don't play with matches.
4. Don't play with your food.
5. Don't play with a cup if you drop it and it breaks and you step on the glass.
6. Don't play with a cup if it has soda in it.
7. Don't play with a tree if it is on fire.

I think you'll find that these are sound rules to live by.

Kindergarten!

Last night we went to "Meet the Teacher" and met Miranda's new teacher (it was originally scheduled for Monday night but got postponed.) We came away with a thick binder of paperwork we had to fill out. Only five years old, and already bringing home homework (well, for us, anyway.)

One of the forms we had to fill out was titled, "Introduce us to your child." One of the exercises on that sheet asked us to come up with five words to describe our child (examples included "Perfectionist" and "Cheerful".) Deciding we wanted our daughter to start off on the right foot, we decided to forgo such words as "neurotic" and "whiny", but, even so, it was not easy to come up with five words to describe her. The first word to come to mind was "Scientific" because she loves science ... but loving science does not necessarily make one scientific. Being "scientific" suggests a certain orderliness and thoroughness which Miranda may acquire over time, but hasn't quite achieved ... at this point, she is satisfied with her theory that any rock which is round and relatively smooth is a dinosaur egg, else it is a diamond in the rough. So we started with "imaginative" ... then "creative" ... "affectionate" ... and then we were stuck on the whole "loves science" thing again. We tried "curious", but weren't quite satisfied with that, then gave in and put down "Science-lover."

Scanning down, we saw there was another question: "What upsets your child?" Anything that upsets her plans ... of course! Miranda is a planner, and anything that upsets her plans really puts her nose out of joint. So we scratched out "curious" and added "planner" to that first question above.

Then, as if we needed to support our hypothesis that Miranda was first and foremost a planner, we got our proof this morning.

In an earlier posting, I mentioned that the bus schedule was wrong and we weren't sure where the closest bus stop was, so we've been practicing walking to the second closest bus stop to have the drill down on the first day of school. We knew all along that today we would run into people along the way who knew where that phantom bus stop was, but in the meantime it was all about timing.

Sure enough, as we headed down the street this morning, we came across some girls waiting with their dad for the bus. One of the girls was starting kindergarten, just like Miranda, and we tried to get Miranda to stop and say hello to the girl, but Miranda started flipping out. "But this isn't our bus stop!" she cried.

"Sure it is!" I said. "We were just going to that other bus stop for practice -- remember?"

"But this isn't our stop!" Miranda cried as she launched into a mini-meltdown because we weren't walking an additional quarter mile down the street according to plan. Luckily, we managed to distract her and order was restored to the world. In her defense, she was so excited about starting school today that she got up at 5:45, so we have to cut her some slack.

Anyway, she had a good day today, learned all about rules and manners. I think she will have a good year.

Dress Rehearsal

The school bus just drove by. I guess they are practicing their route before the big day on Wednesday.

We were doing a little practicing ourselves today. Since the Bus Route listing shows our closest bus stop as being a nonexistent address, we practiced going to the second-closest bus stop today just to get our timing down. Up until this point, it has been hard to imagine Miranda ever walking to her bus stop by herself (which is funny, when I consider that I used to walk ten blocks to school in Indianapolis -- by myself -- when I was her age), but Miranda is starting to chomp at the bit for some independence, so I let her pretend she was walking back from the bus stop by herself as Xavier and I trailed along behind her.

After we crossed the first street, we started doing some role playing. "Hey, little girl, can I give you a ride?"

"No!" Miranda shouted.

"No!" Xavier echoed.

"Hey, little girl, can you tell me how to get to --"

"No!" Miranda shouted.

"No!" Xavier echoed.

"Little girl, I have a puppy in my car," I posited. "Would you like to see it?"

"No!" Miranda shouted.

"Well, okay." Xavier conceded.

"Little girl, would you like some candy?"

"No!" Miranda shouted.

"Yes!" Xavier shouted.

I see we still need to do a little work on Xavier. Luckily, we still have a couple of years.


My brother and his daughter Chloe came to visit this weekend. My niece is a cherubic child the same age as Xavier, and, like Xavier, she will be starting preschool soon. When Adam's brother Matt was here a couple of weeks ago, the kids insisted on calling him "Uncle Ez" and my nephew Riley "Chloe," and while Ez was here, they insisted on calling Chloe "Riley."

It seems Chloe is more precocious than our kids in some ways ... Ez is very careful what songs he lets her listen to because she picks up on four-letter-words and repeats them, while we've managed to convince our kids that in the Garbage song, "Shut Your Mouth", one of the rifts includes the word "kitload." Admittedly, we are becoming more careful as well. There is something a little disturbing about hearing a five-year-old chant, "Hit me, baby, one more time!" Yes, they are that innocent.

One week and counting

School starts in one week for our intrepid kindergartener and future scientist. There is so much to do ... getting the blue sheet back to school, finding out what her school supplies are, buying said school supplies, finding out what time the bus comes, finding out where the bus comes ... the list goes on. And what is Miranda thinking about?

"Where is my dinosaur alarm clock?" she cries, fusses, moans, has conniptions over every day. Thirty minutes after she is put to bed, she is hyperventilating because that darned alarm clock we ordered online has not arrived yet. "How will I go to school if my alarm clock doesn't get here in time?"

Adam will respond, "Well, honey, I'll wake you up!"

Miranda will groan, "But that's not good enough! I need my clock!"

Well, I did a little research online this evening (in my email box) and discovered that my spam filter had sent notice of cancellation of that order -- item no longer available -- straight to the deleted folder. Groan. Well, it looks like I have one more item on that back-to-school list.


We went to see my parents this weekend, and it ended up being a weekend of a lot of firsts. My first trip with the kids but without the husband. My first (lengthy) trip in a kayak (not counting paddling around in the creek behind my dad's house.) My first thumb blister. My first ride in an ambulance (Xavier's, too!)

Xavier had a really bad attack of croup on Saturday night that we were unable to control, so we called the rescue squad and went to the hospital. He seems to be doing better now, but it sounds like something he may have periodically until he outgrows it. Our pediatrician recommended we put him on Claritan when the steroids the emergency room gave us runs out (this is the first night since the attack that Xav is eligible to win the Tour du France, so wish us luck!) Xavier, in the meantime, could not wait to tell Daddy and Miss Amanda (his teacher at school) about how brave he was in the ambulance.

One more first -- on the way home from the hospital, Xavier saw his first shooting star. I hope that is a good sign!

Cousins

We had Miranda and Xavier's cousins here this weekend. Riley is the same age as Xavier, and Piper is just a baby -- very cute, and very vocal. So vocal, in fact, that even though Xavier was excited to have them come, he pulled me aside and asked, "Mommy, are they going home tomorrow? Piper is really noisy."


One morning, while the kids were playing with play dough, Miranda looked over at the rocket ship that Riley was making and remarked, "Riley, you really like space, don't you?" Riley replied "Yes, I really like space." Miranda said, "I really like dinosaurs."

"And I really like coconuts!" Xavier chimed in, once again proving that he has not picked up the recessive family science gene.


In another exchange, Xavier came in while Riley's dad was helping him use the restroom. Now, Xavier is Korean, while Riley is blond-haired and blue-eyed (evidently another family gene thing.) Xavier has never commented on any difference between their appearances ... until now: "Mine doesn't look like that."


Still, when the end of the weekend was over, Xavier -- who had been a little on the "threatened" side all weekend (clinging to Mommy, pretending to be a baby, not liking having other little people in his domain, although he played relatively well with Riley) -- evidently felt like he had not received enough attention. When Miranda made her Monday morning phone call to Mommy and Xavier got his turn, I said, "Hi, Xavier, how are you doing?"

"I have a problem," he sighed.

"What's your problem, babe?"

Xavier sighed again. "I'm sick."

In the background I heard Adam exclaim, and when it was his turn to talk on the phone, the first thing he said was, "Xavier is not sick. He is fine, he doesn't have a fever -- he just does not want to go to school today."

Interpreter

Xavier and Miranda were eating breakfast the other day, and out of the blue Xavier asked my husband, "Dad, why do you have a hole in your cheek?"

My husband had no idea what my son was talking about. "What, do you mean my mouth?"

"No, the hole in your cheek."

My husband started feeling his cheeks. "Am I bleeding?"

"No, I just want to know about the hole in your cheek."

"What hole, honey?"

"Dad," Miranda said with mild irritation, "He's asking about your mole."


Miranda has not completely outgrown her little mispronunciations, either. A coworker and I decided the other day that all children pronounce "animal" as "aminal" (I even tried testing Miranda on this today, and unless she said it very slowly, it always came out "aminal.") Another favorite word of hers is "mazagine" (for magazine.) Since she was home sick today, we were checking out some movie trailers in case there was something good to see this weekend, and she was especially interested in "Ant Bully", which she kept pronouncing "annolly." This was especially confusing because Aunt Ann (and Uncle Matt, Cousins Riley and Piper) are coming to visit this weekend, and half the time I thought she was asking me a question about her Aunt.

Maybe we can persuade her that we want to see "Cars" instead.

Operator, I'd like to place a call

One of my coworkers has a son who is the same age as Miranda. After a few amusing incidents (like the one where I called my coworker's house and his son gave me his work number, or the time that his son decided to see what would happen if he dialed 911 while his mother was in the shower) it occurred to me that Miranda probably ought to be comfortable using the phone in case there was a real emergency.

With this thought in mind, we started having Miranda call me at work when she got up in the morning. For awhile, this seemed to be going really well, and it didn't take long before she had that number memorized. Then, one Monday morning when I got to work, I saw that I had two messages in my voicemail. I dialed up; the first message was random noise, and I thought, "Hmm, that call sounds like it was placed from my kitchen, but who would have called me from my house over the weekend?" The second message had the same background noise, but this time a little voice said, "I want my Mommy." Of course, I had gone out with friends on Saturday night, and Miranda had been home with the babysitter (which she had been really psyched about, but there must be something about bedtime ...)

Now it occurred to me what the shortcoming was of having her call me at work: if she had an emergency and tried to call me there when I wasn't at work, then she wouldn't reach me. So now the new plan was that she would start calling me on my cell phone.

The problem with this? This is my *emergency* phone, so we pay by the (prepaid) minute. Believe it or not, five-year-old girls can find a lot to talk about, so suddenly I saw my minutes plummeting. To bypass this problem, when she calls me on my cell phone in the morning, she doesn't say hello or anything else, but quickly says, "Mommy, call me back!" and hangs up.

She always sounds so happy when she calls me in the morning.