I remember when Chichi was a baby and I had just come back from my Mat Leave and one of my colleagues was commenting that soon she would be studying at our school. I thought that day would take such a long time to arrive. Well, it didn’t. She is now out of pre-school and my son is entering. We had to schedule the day for him to come and take the pre-test. (I hope he passes and is accepted!) Actually, there is no way he will not pass. I guess in the worst-case scenario he will be asked to wait a year. (That won’t happen though, at least I don’t think it will.) I was asked to fill out a form describing his habits and personality. That was pretty interesting because he is a talkative, social, sweet boy. He loves his sister to such an extent that he wants to do everything she does. He plays with her and her friends and seems to treat them as if they were his friends. He made friends at his own school and talks about Dudu a lot. I don’t know him, but this Dudu character must be quite something! So it will be interesting to see how Lu manages in the Montessori classroom since it is so different from what he is used to. I remember the day that Chichi did her test as if it were yesterday. She had on these really cute red capris and a matching light blue cross-over top with flowers on it that my mom had given her. (All her cute clothes were given by grandma!) She was also wearing the giraffe backpack that she had received from her grandpa and she just looked so ready to start school. I remember watching her leave and getting all teared up when she went off to do her test class. I was so full of pride and expectations for her as was her father. I am sure it will be the same for Lu, except for the fact that we as parents are so much more relaxed with the second child. I always thought I would be a relaxed parent, but I am not. I have no idea how to be more relaxed either, if you want to know the truth. It comes down to the idea of caring I think. There is always going to be something going on with them that I care about, be it something I want to follow because I am very interested or because I am very concerned. I think it is somewhat of a teeter-totter: sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. It reminds me of Go Dog Go. “The blue dog is up, the red dog is down”. There is no purple dog in the middle.
Insomnia April 17, 2009
I woke up the other night when my son was calling me to help him go to the bathroom. Once I had taken him to do the deed, I could not get back to sleep. I tried several fool-proof methods to get back to sleep and after an hour with no success, I gave up. So I went down to watch TV. American Beauty was on and I got sucked into watching it again. It is very weird. The first time I watched it I walked away thinking – man, those people in that film are FREAKS! When I watched it this time I could see myself in some of the characters at some points. Mid-life crisis? Mommy guilt? Whatever category it falls under, it made me go up and hug my kids. I kissed them and whispered to them how much I love them. My son that day had told me not to be mad at my daughter. He told me to be nice to her. I was pretty taken aback by that and the fact that he is so able to articulate his feelings. Like I may have said before he narrates his life and is constantly talking. But that level of communication is something I never experienced with my daughter. She just does not open up like that about her feelings. Anyway, after listening to him and talking to my daughter, we are working on caring for each other more. I am trying to convince them that listening to me and doing what I want them to do is a way of showing caring. I am a slow learner with this whole motherhood thing and I think I will be working on teaching my kids how to be caring for the rest of my life. I am not sure that I am the best example for showing caring, but I want to try. I think it is something important to be taught in the home and by the child’s parents.
Long-awaited news about Easter… April 16, 2009
I may be going out on a limb here, but I think it is time to write about Easter. The kids and I were home alone and so we went over to our friends’ house on Good Friday. The kids dyed eggs and we ate grilled fish on the barbie. As with all good gatherings in this part of the world, it started a little after noon and wound up around 9pm. The kids were waiting for the other family to go home and so was I. When one of the hosts fell asleep in his chair at the table, we all made a mass exodus!
The next day we played all morning with the 15 eggs Chichi and Lu had dyed . It was so funny because some of the eggs were a little crushed and so the dog wanted to get in on the action too! We started out with both kids hiding the eggs for me to find. After a while we all took turns hiding for the other two. The funniest thing was when Lu was hiding his eggs. He would put all 15 in a low flower pot and when we came to find them he would lead us right to them. It was hilarious. He was squealing and going on, all excited about the egg hunt. Chiara was increasingly tricky with her hiding spots and used her climbing skills to get up high enough to make it more difficult for me. That was a fun way to pass the time. I was not sure what we were going to do with all those cooked eggs. I had thought of egg salad sandwhiches or something like that, but at the end of the day, I did not have to worry about what to do with the eggs. When we got back from going out with a friend for pizza on Saturday night we found a mass of egg carnage on our varanda. The dog ate all 15 eggs in their shells. I was sure he was going to be sick as a dog the next day, but he wasn’t. I have no idea where that expression comes from.
We went back out to our friends house the next day for another Easter meal after the Easter bunny came to our house. My husband had suggested painting the floor to make a bunny trail to the kids’ Easter eggs. I talked to a couple of friends and they suggested using flour instead to make it. I did. It was nice. It worked. The kids loved it, but… our floors are very light. I had to use quite a bit of flour to get any effect. If you can manage to picture this in your mind, you can imagine the state of the place after everyone had run around in the flour with their chocolate Easter eggs. I think I may not do the bunny trail in flour again!
Young love or older “sibs” as role models… April 7, 2009
I took Lu to the final futsal (indoor soccer) game at our school last Friday. We were seated next to one of my colleagues and she was intrigued with how Lu was in what appeared to be a catatonic state. She tried to get him to talk to her and he was having none of it. In fact, he barely moved until three-quarters of the way through the second period. Well, she asked him who his girlfriend was, which is a bit of an odd question to ask a 2 year-old, but she wanted to provoke him into answering. He answered: “Yaiya” To which she said: “Yaiya? Isn’t she your sister?” He shook his head yes and then she said something like: “Oh okay.” And then to me she said: “They normally say their mom.” I thought that was cute, but I was not offended that I am not my son’s girlfriend. For the longest time Chichi said she was going to marry him, so it’s good that he feels the same way about her. In fact he loves her so much that he wants to do everything she does. When I say everything I am not exaggerating that much. For example, she takes 3 bags or backpacks to school. One for snack, one for lunch and one to hold everything. He started doing the exact same thing – taking a larger backpack with 2 smaller ones inside. However, his teacher put the kaibosh on that because it was too heavy for her to carry. He has started to put his clothes out to wear the next day like she does the night before and just as she does, he changes his mind about them in the morning. He also wants to eat, drink, slurp and chew everything she does, when she does – even if he is not hungry, thirsty or in the mood for ice cream or gum. The other night he took the copying a little too far and could not hold all that food in his little stomach, if you know what I mean. I wasn’t there but I was trying to recreate the scene because my husband has an extremely weak stomach himself. I dare not try to imagine how that one was resolved!
It really is cute to see how they interact with each other when they do it nicely. She helps him to do things and she will take him to his Sunday school class and guide him here or there. He always plays with her and her friends when we are at the club and they seem to be happy to play with him too. He is a huge fan of High School Musical too and asks for it to be played in the car when we dare put on other music. (He has not committed all the words of every song on the latest CD to memory like she has, but it may come soon.) Now if we could just get her to make him eat salad and tomatoes…
E-mail subject lines that shouldn’t be… April 6, 2009
Have you ever stopped to think about the subject lines in E-mail messages? If so, have you every thought about the ones you never want to read? If not, let me give you an example. My father sent me a message the other day with the subject line: “Head injuries”. I am the kind of person that regularly has low blood pressure, in fact throughout both of my pregnancies my blood pressure was totally normal. Well, let me tell you that all that changed when I read the subject line above. I made high blood pressure history with that subject line.
There are other more obvious subject line no-nos, such as:
and of course You won the Irish Lottery
and my all-time favourite Nice to meet you (from the lovely man in Nigeria who will send you the milllion dollars he can no longer keep if you will just send him ALL your banking details.)
Bogota, Colombia March 23, 2009
I am in Bogota at the moment to work – essentially, even though we spent the day – playing. You might be asking yourself what Bogota is like. Well, I am going to tell you. In some ways it reminds me of Brazil. There is crazy traffic everywhere and there are billboards all over the place. Most of the construction has that decadent neglected look to it that I first noticed in Uruguay. So in a way, it reminds me of there too. But on the other hand it is much cleaner than Brazil and lush in a totally different way. Everything you hear about flowers in Colombia seems to be true – I can assure you that I now know everything about the place because I have been here for more than 24 hours! Yeah – right! But that part about the flowers is true. Get this! They sell bouquets of orchids at the traffic lights. So that puts that question out there – is there any other place in the world that sells orchids on street corners? I will wait on the answer to that one.
We started our play today in a taxi and we first went up a funicular to a cathedral on a hill that overlooks the city. The city is built between two stretches of the Cordillera de los Andes and so pretty much wherever you look from up at that height you see mountains. That is something that I am definitely not used to and in a way it reminded me of La Paz. Anyway, after our trip up the mountains we took our tour to the center of town to the old colonial section. The Spanish colonial architecture there reminded me of Peru. So I did a lot of remembering today. In the old town we visited the Fernando Botero Museum and I was reminded of other trips I have taken and just how much I love an art museum. When we were done with that we continued our tour on foot. The thing that struck me most was the police presence on the streets. There were army, police and civic guards all over the place. In fact when we went down to the President’s “Palace” the street was cordoned off and they were checking people’s bags as they went in. one of the teachers in our group tried to walk near on the sidewalk closest to the palace and was told that was not allowed. From there we went on to the square on which the Supreme Court is located. On the steps of the Supreme Court building the riot – SWAT – or Elite Troops were guarding the building complete with helmets, knee pads, those “plastic- sheildy things” they use and obviously, machine guns. That was crazy. I have never seen anything like that before. In fact, that made the bullet-bomb proof Range Rover that had the sides extended all the way to the ground that I saw in Belfast look like a child’s toy. Apparently protesters gather in the square in front of the Court building and sometimes the protesters are infiltrated by the bad guys and the elite troops are there to protect the people. Okay.
After that we had a realy nice typical lunch and the soup we had reminded me of my mom’s corn chowder. Now, that is a good memory! From there we went to the Gold Museum and it was really worth the visit. It is amazing what artisans could do with gold way back when and there is no getting past the fact that it is just beautiful! After that we went to the crafts shops and bought prezzies for ourselves and our loved ones. That part was really fun and I bought a couple of really cute things from a very nice nun. Apparently all the goods in her stall were made by women who were the prime bread winners in the family. She was so warm and friendly I wished I had more time to spend with her and look at her stuff. I was at the end of my budget, so buying was not really an option! We had a cup of Juan Valdez’s best and took a cab back to the hotel.
We worked a little tonight when we registered for the conference and attended the welcome session/reception at the school. It was really dark and hard to see, but it looks like the campus is massive. It is built on a hill and so I am worried about my high heel-bunion combination for tomorrow. It is really high here, altitude-wise, compared to what I am used to and I notice I am getting winded very easily. I had a massive headache yesterday and a bit of an upset stomache. It is a lot cooler here than home and I was cold enough leaving the school tonight that my teeth were shivering. I am such a wimp!
Futher proof for that is the following: When I got to the check-in at the airport to come here there was a problem with my ticket. To make a long story short, the travel agency had changed the status of my ticket to make it say reimburse. I was totally thrown by that and when no one at the airport could make that status change. I called the school. It was too close to take-off time to get a reasonable price on the ticket, so I decided not to go on the flight. R$5000 to Bogota seemed a tad high. The travel agent called back at one point and got me on a later flight. So that was fine. (This all took the better part of 3 or 4 hours and multiple telephone calls back and forth, mind you.) When I got on the plane by myself I recognized a teacher from another school in Brazil. I chatted with him briefly and then stayed to myself on the flight. So here’s where I am wimpy. I did not want to figure out on my own how to get myself to the hotel on my own. So I followed them around. First they got their luggage and I waited for them. Then they exchanged money, so I did too. (I hadn’t thought of doing that on my own.) Then I wandered around outside the airport to see if there was anyone there to take me to my hotel – there was not. So I followed the other teachers to the taxi stand. We are not in the same hotel, so I got in a cab on my own. The cabbie was nice enough and chatted to me all the way to the hotel. I understood him and thought I was in good shape with my Spanish – I am not by the way, but I can understand a lot! Phew! I tell you though, if those other people were not there to glom onto in the airport I might have had to have waited for the next gringo installment to arrive, because I was incapable of getting my butt outta there on my own. Pretty wimpy, right? Where did my travelling bravado go? Do you lose it after age 40? Let that be my second question out there to you!
St. Patrick’s Day March 17, 2009
I forgot to wear green today, but I received this Irish Blessing from a friend and thought I’d share it with you:
May the road
Rise up to meet you
May the wind
Be at your back
May the sun
Shine warm
Upon your face
The rains
Fall soft upon your fields
And
Until we meet again,
May God hold
You in the hollow
of his hand
Proud Mama March 17, 2009
I guess there is no reason why we are not allowed to brag a little about our kids on our blogs, right? Even if the answer is no, I am going to anyway!
Chichi did a painting of a cat in art class, as did the rest of the first grade. However, hers is placed right near the door to the library in a position of honour. I was so surprised and pleased that I got all teared up when I saw it yesterday. I phoned my husband and he and Chichi went to see it after school. She and I went to look at it today and we checked out all the other kids’ paintings too. She seemed quite proud and I know I sure was! I was also really proud of her the other day when she was doing her nightly reading. She has started reading at night with her Dad in Portuguese and I am surprised at how well she is doing. She can read most of the books that we have for her in Portuguese and she seems to becoming more fluent in her reading. However, I was thrilled the other night when I read one page of “Go Dog Go” and she read the other. We did the same last night for the Curious George original story. When Lu wanted me to read and sing Itsy, Bitsy Spider to him, Chichi wanted to read “Green Eggs and Ham”. I told her no, and so she went ahead and read it on her own. She was reading it to herself, but it sounded like she was really able to read it on her own. I was so happy about that.
In other developmental milestones, Lu went through last night diaper- and accident-free!
In further developmental milestone delays, Chichi and Lu started going to sleep on their own last Friday. However, they both ended up in our bed at some point during the night. The update on that: they have been in their beds ever since. That my friends is only about 3 years late!
Wowsers… March 12, 2009
I’m not sure if I have been lazy, busy or a bit of both. One thing is for certain – my blog has been left behind. So here’s what’s been going on. I was away last week with some students and I am off again next week for a conference. (That in itself has meant that life has been busy, not to mention all the other things I do.) At the conference I am going to be presenting a case study on blogs and so I had my students create their own blogs today. It was interesting to see their enthusiasm and think about all the great things they will write in their blogs. The nice part about this blog is that it really is not about me, but my kids. They are doing well and are as funny as ever. Chichi received her first award at a school assembly the other day which really seemed to perplex her. I found out from someone else and asked her about it. She really had no idea what it was for and why she got it. As it turns out it is for helping and learning from others, which is a huge step forward for her. I was so happy for her. Chichi has also been writing notes to the family about what food is hers in the refrigerator and I am including one of those notes here: 
In case you are not fluent in 7 year old language, let me explain this to you. It is a mixture of Portuguese and English and is sort of a “Portuguized” version of an English word. It is referring to Chiara’s school snack. It is very creative spelling to say the least and closer to how you would say the English word in Portuguese. My husband was rather surprised and I must say I was pretty perplexed by the note that greeted me first thing in the morning!
On the other hand, Lu has taken to referring to himself only in the 3rd person which is a riot. He has also started to really procrastinate on eating and now wants to be spoon-fed again, which is a pain. He doesn’t eat within a reasonable amount of time and wants everything put in the refrigerator afterwards. In fact, this morning he pulled out his bread from yesterday afternoon and ate it, exclaiming: “How delicious!” He even got me to try a bite. It was not bad, but I definitely have had better. Our dog Brownie had an eating adventure the other day too. Someone accidentally left the door open and he sneaked into the house and slept on the couch. He also polished off the rest of a panetone cake and even managed to get the clip off and open the bag. What a mess that was!
So everything is pretty much the same as always except that I am trying to be more organized. I will tell you if I am successful after I get to my conference. Let’s just say that I had to do a teeny-weeny bit of scrambling to get ready for last week’s trip. That reminds me. How do you spell diddly squat?
The coolest thing ever… April 7, 2009
Tags: blogs, comments, student, writing
I was joking around in my class the other day telling my students that my blog is a model for them. It was so hilarious when I said that because one of my students immediately pooh-poohed my comment. She thought I was being conceited and taking advantage of being the teacher. You have to work really hard to pull one over on them because they constantly are checking you. For example, if you plan what may be an excellent lesson, but do not have clear instructions, they will tell you. If you don’t plan an excellent lesson and don’t have clear instructions, they will tell you. Do you see where I am going with this? What I meant to say about my blog is that I always try to have my audience in mind. I know who reads it and what I can say. I try not to rant, rave and clear up petty disagreements here. Just because I don’t write about them doesn’t mean they don’t happen, they just don’t get recorded here. So I started a blog with them in class and then they themselves started their own blogs. The most amazing things have come out of these blogs. My students are writing about all kinds of different topics and reading each other’s writing. (Right now they are on a kick where they are all posting polls – but that’s another story.) They are also reading my blog and enjoying it! I think that part is fantastic. I originally started the blog for my family and to have a record for my own kids, but I love how my students are the ones who are constantly commenting and visiting the blog. This inspires me to come up with a better blog schedule and to write more for them. Isn’t that the coolest?