maya is 2 now

maya is 2 now. here she is during the cupcake-decorating portion of her party. she is not turning out to be a sugar freak like some other family members, and spent a long time decorating but only took a small lick.

i'm just not in writing mode these days. sorry, and i'm sure i will lose all 2 of my loyal readers if i keep this up. i'll do another lexicon list for maya since i'm a speech and language therapist and it is fun...

cake cereal orange milk juice water agua mas cup pink green blue tall big empty open up touch get it myself down cold in there brother chair seat hot cook playdough draw picture stamp wash hands shoulder chin cheek hair eye nose mouth leg arm tummy

hurt mad sad crying happy now

tv clifford baby einstein

now soon later

jump climb walk sit touch reach tickle hug kiss listen see look love

mommy daddy brother miles natalie suling mike josy david rebecca emily david zehara jonah deb marta ella rose john willow erin manu kika steffy diego arturo poppop penny poppop mommom paige sophie che che edison calvin julia phoebe cassie nina niko cassidy sheila

train car bus eagle hawk ferret cat dog bird fly run swim fish baby beluga sing guitar rock sharp hard salt bath
eat time dinner time bath time teeth-teeth time
go
park swing slide sand beach tree house moon star music light blanket sleep flower stuff chu-chu
brush rock rocking chair

wow, this is way too long and i've just started. guess she is ready for a language sample.
buh bye

going for the unknown world of spanish immersion

well, my friend deb and i went down and handed in our school applications together today. she had a little list scribbled on a piece of paper and i had one in my head i had discussed with rich this morning, as he prepared to go split some wood with his dad in delaware. we ended up sitting at a big coffee table in the lobby of the administration building with assorted friends and neighbors who were all still devising their lists or had just handed them in. lots of talk, talk, talk, and then impulsively i changed some things and filled it in and handed it in. afterwards i had a brief period with a nice empty space in my head, where all the "what should we do?" had been living. brief. soon this space was filled up with "i should have put...". there is a possibility i will call the office tomorrow and make a last-minute switch, but they probably wouldn't do it except in person and i would have to drag 2 kids down, so it is probably over. i feel a little sick thinking about this but it is also probably lack of sleep and eating too much unhealthy stuff. in the end we went largely with spanish immersion, which i feel will be very challenging to miles in the beginning. i kept hearing it was a gift to your child and i kept imagining miles being so overwhelmed and stressed, but at the last minute i guess i had some faith that he could just handle it. hope i was not wrong, hope he won't be the one kid in the class who hates it. and cries. oh lordy. there were so many cool good schools, all very popular of course, but finally i went with doing something different, the exotic and unknown world of spanish immersion...

our final list (if i don't freak out totally and go down there again tomorrow):
buena vista spanish(next door, friendly, cool, arts, i really really want this now--almost 400 people applied last year)
rooftop (not immersion, early, just very cool, over 800 people applied last year)
alvarado spanish (arts, science, money, about 350 people applied last year)
leonard flynn (not amazing but near, "up and coming", spanish, about 160 people last year, very likely more this year)
fairmount (also not amazing, near, nice ,spanish, about 160 people last year)
miraloma (not spanish, early, very cool, good, fun, about 350 applied last year)
sf community (the cool mixed grade hippie school i worried about last minute, about 100 people applied last year)

so i think i should have put fairmount and flynn lower, but i was a little bit insane at the moment, and just went for the spanish.
also, as you can see, almost all of these schools are quite popular so there is a good chance we will get nothing at all. then what??? we will be assigned to starr king, up by the potrero hill projects where oj grew up. or move to brisbane. or homeschool maybe.

readers, tell me this choice of mainly spanish immersion will work out for my little guy...i alternate between faith in him and my motherly instinct to protect my sensitive boy.

i love him so much. that is what this is all about.

goodnight.

this freakin list is due and rich is away and i'm not ready

"it's like a morning night, mommy."
this is how my son poetically describes last night in which there were many wakings. rich left for his trip and i got miles to sleep. i looked at the many permutations of school choices and, knowing our list is due, felt quite overwhelmed. i tried to remedy this by drinking some bailey's left over from christmas and watching wife swap. i looked at our schools and felt incredibly foggy. should we be putting more immersion? was there a chance in hell we would get buena vista, which i am getting set on? should i really put this progressive poorish school near the top of our list when everyone else is putting buzzy and affluent miralomas and alvarados and clarendons? and what about the 7:50 start? will it be ok? awful? aahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i start crying and just then my friend elizabeth calls, in a similar boat. super nanny comes on tv. then maya wakes up. i get her back to sleep, obsess sadly some more, then go to bed with maya. at 2 the door opens and there is miles. he is very good and quiet and just climbs in the bed with us ut maya surprises me and ends up going on a 3 hour whining and crying spree, with a little nursing allowed her in desperation and i want to keep miles from losing it and he insists politely on staying with us, pulling the cover over his head. i alternate being kind hippie mama and annoyed and mean-voiced stress mama with maya. fianlly miles leaves and returns to his room at 5, where he is now sleeping. maya conked out for an hour or so and is now banging the salt shaker on the table and giggling, somehow wide awake and full of energy.

veggie reuben

oh, and my new favorite food which you have to try if in the neighborhood,is the veggie reuben at st francis fountain. mmmmmmmmmm

afterwards you can go to the serpent park across the street and play in the fountains and sit on the dizzy chair and check out the murals

sfusd again

so , dear readers, if you exist

had a leisurely morning with my children, doing an exercise routine with ridiculous songs (i managed to rhyme cheetah and libido), then getting miles into the car, into preschool and leaving without him getting too upset. then i dragged maya to two more school visits. the last, i'm pretty sure. there are a lot of good schools on our list of seven that we submit to the sfusd lottery, but it kind of comes down to what you put first. it's wierd, because i have been obsessively reading a blog that many bernal/noe parents comment on, and the two schools i am focusing on end up being pretty off the radar for the blog readers and commenters. are we leaning towards these schools because they seem more likely to have spots? are we different than most of the readers and commenters? part of it is where we live.

school number one on mommy and maya's mini tour. it is a sunny bright day, and things are shiny and clean from the storms. this school is out mission, near room to grow preschool, where maya may be going. on the highway it is about 10 minutes from our house. i was welcomed in but there was no one to really talk to, except the not so exuberant parent liason. maya and i just wandered around and looked through windows. this school is not brimming over with parent involvement and donations. this is a small school with a long-established program. they have project-based learning, which means they work on a challenge-driven science project (for example, in studying body mechanics, the 2nd-3rd grade classes designed and built chairs--they looked pretty comfy!), alternating every nine weeks with regular curriculum. the grades are all combos, k-1, 2-3, etc. up through 8th. it is a very small school (less than 300 total). the upper grade classes are smaller than at many schools. many of the teachers have been there a long time, although one thing i wasn't psyched about it that one of the k teachers is new and looked less experienced, especially with the projects. you can request a teacher but there is no guarantee. there is a nice outside space with a small garden, a water feature, nice play structure. there is a great p.e. teacher the kids love. the population is very racially and socioeconomically diverse. the kids seemed pretty happy and peaceful and focused, except for a little more silliness in the new teacher's room. there is some art but not a ton. a small library and garden class. some music in the upper grades. i could see miles here.

the other school is a 2 block walk away and also has a long-established program--for spanish immersion. at the office they didn't seem that excited to have a drop in prospective parent and baby, but when the secretary asked the principal if i could look around he offered to show me the school. he invited me to his office and i don't know if it was because i name-dropped a mutual friend, but he ended up talking to us and taking us in lots of classrooms for almost an hour. i got to really see the immersion program a little more. this school is more traditional than the first, but would like to move toward more project learning. they are not a star school, so have a little more flexibility with the curriculum. they have a full-time arts coordinator so in a way the arts are the projects. less science. the kids in kinder were buzzy and happy and working on various things. there were toys available for free time. music played in one room. we talked to a few spanish learners in k and 1 and they were able to reply in spanish but you could see it was a little hard. in the upper grades the kids looked pretty engaged. the principal said there are a lot of gifted and talented kids in the school, and said one way to look at immersion is as a gifted program, because of the extra challenge. i saw a little of acrosports, which looked fun. the kids get some organized activities outside at recess, partly because of the smallish yard. by next fall the park should be accessible again and the school will use it. they have a greening grant which hasn't been used yet. there is before and after care which looks pretty fun. they are trying to move toward class size reduction in the upper grades but don't have it yet. the principal said he would send his own kid here (and many teachers do), but that he knows the school has its challenges and limitations. he would like to see more people in the school--resources, as well as projects and technology and ecological education. i think i can see miles here though naturally it is a little harder to imagine him there when all the teaching is going on in spanish.

so, one more traditional, closer by, and with the gift (and stress for miles in the beginning) of spanish immersion. the other more progressive, maybe more diverse, a little less art, a little more focused on teaching kids to be good learners, and a short drive rather than a walk.

what do you think????? is anyone out there? what would you do with your little guy if you were us??

of course there is a good chance we won't get either...

if you are out there, let me know.

love,
j

picky eaters

this morning by 6:30 i was being squashed between 2 very awake kids trying to tickle and poke each other across my body, all of us crammed into miles' trundle bed. this game didn't last long. i tried to take advantage of rich's last real day here until he flies back east on wednesday by sneaking into the big bed, as rich and miles played out some military camp/rave-like exercise routine but no such luck as maya can find me anywhere as soon as i sit or lie down, so she can SHERSHIE. the shersheying around here is a bit out of control. that little girl loves her mommy's breasts. she sings songs to them,really, abcd, shershey, etc. and recently lovingly labelled them each with the names of two little girls she adores.

i am out of the blog flow. no writing class, and kindergarten lists floating like confused ghosts through my head. but to the picky eater part:

rich makes buckwheat pancakes for breakfast. miles only wants the biggest and roundest ones. he has to pour the syrup himself. he asks us to cool down the blueberries by outting the pancake in the freezer. he wants whip cream on each one. maya has to sit on the tippiest adult chair, and will tolerate no assistance getting onto it. she wants the philadelphia eagles bib. suddenly she hates panckaes with syrup and needs the elephant cup to put her squirt of whip cream into. with a fork. no, not that fork, no, wait a minute a spoon. no, she will pinch 50 little fingerfuls of whip cream to transfer them off the offending pancakes instead.

lunch is brown rice with butter, black beans with a little garlic and carrots with brown sugar, with some yummy rosemary bread. miles finds a piece of rosemary in the bread and digs it out. he doesn't want the crust, which is about 80% of the bread, so he shreds it off all over the table. he declares he loves the rice and wants to eat it all the time but changes his mind after 3 bites. he sucks the brown sugar off the carrots and eats 1. maya wants to sit on my lap but is mad about all the food presented. as soon as miles gets down she clambers into his seat, eats a little of his rice, yells at me about the one black bean i put hopefully in front of her, knocks the rice onto our floor accidentally. she wants me to carry her over to the cupboard so she can "hold touch cup myself". it has to be a cup with no lid, perfect for spilling. or pouring into the rice i have refilled. naptime.

i am feeling hopelessly bad at feeding my kids by dinnertime. they eat a huge snack of organic but not so healthy corn puffs. i got some good life sushi for the grownups that miles does bravely try (he likes the fact that it is raw and "they got the blood out") but is so terrible tasting to him that he spits it out lengthily, onto the closest place, my plate. i lose my appetite. maya is protesting "no shooshoo" repeatedly even though no one offers her any sushi. i make some alphabet soup. miles eats out the green beans, corn and a few letters and says that he must have eaten too much of this when he was a little kid because he is tired of it. maya is full from all the puffs. rich and miles have made some nutritious sugar-free jello earlier that miles can have for dessert. maya wants "my treat too brother treat" so she gets some to top off her corn puffs, and ends up splattering it all over the floor. before bed they both drink about 20 ounces of milk.

so, it isn't always so bad. but today it was. tomorrow they will be eating broccoli and neat little bowls of healthy pasta.
i'm spending weeks of my life agonizing over the perfect list of kindergartens to submit to a crazy lottery machine and i'm letting my not quite 2 year old eat jello and cornpuffs for dinner.

oh, and here is photographic evidence that miles loves the doll his aunt cassie made for him. he knows it is extra special because it was made "with love". i told him this and he bought it. thanks cassie!! and the costumes are just a random sampling of the always on the floor dress up stuff.

overdue post

whoa, it has been a long time. sorry. i have no excuse or understanding of why my writing urge just shuts off sometimes. contributing factors: holidays with accompanying highs and lows,socializing, manic purchases and more toy clutter and inches around my waist, long rainy days of kids which lead me to some very early bedtimes, and of course the approaching kindergarten deadline. no, we don't have our schools picked out and prioritized yet. yes, i am still obsessing on this topic including checking for new posts on the sfkfiles
that will somehow guide my decision. no one out there, if there is anyone out there needs to hear about this $%^$%$&^% anymore, so i will spare you.

in fact, i am so out of blog practice i think i will just post a photo or two and say happy new year and leave it at that, for now. i find this miles drawing especially cute and believe it or not the kids just surprised me in the kitchen by showing up on the bike together. they will be playing together happily a lot soon, right??

xoxo
j