September 12, 2011
We made a couple friends while waiting in line to register the Beaner for first grade, and the son of two of those new friends ended up in the Beaner's class. They're super nice; can't wait to have them over for a weekend dinner or invite them to go apple picking or something similarly family-oriented (they also have a daughter)....
September 11, 2011
The first week of first grade went off with only one hitch (a mixup having to do with who would be picking the Beaner up after school) that was sorted fairly quickly by Shawna. The morning drop-offs went smoothly even though the weather sucked most days; on Friday, when I asked the Beaner if he wanted me to wait with him until he lined up with his class or leave right away, he replied, "either way. You can go...
September 6, 2011
So... Long story short (for those of you for whom the sight of a semicolon evokes TL;DR, this first sentence probably tells you all you need to know, and you can stop after it), after a year of stress and a night of braving the elements, we got the Beaner into our neighborhood public school, and he started first grade today. Weirdly, my stress level did not go down after we were told he was in—nor did it drop...
November 6, 2008
On Monday morning, Al and I went to the Beaner's school for our first classroom observation of the year. As parents of a returning student, this year we would be allowed into the classroom after 10 minutes. (Last year we spent all 20 minutes looking in through the window.) We lucked out for the outside-the-classroom part: The Beaner was in the front of the classroom, looking for a map....
January 17, 2008
One morning a couple months ago we went to a parent thing at the Beaner's Montessori school (was it a new parent orientation? I can't remember for sure, but that sounds right), and the subject of independence came up. We started talking about ways that our 3 year-olds could do things for themselves around the house. A couple parents expressed disbelief that their about-to-turn-3s or just-turned-3s could make their own beds or get their own breakfast; others shared some...
November 1, 2007
I was trying to think of a name for this post before I started writing it (sometimes a good idea, but just as often it's better to wait until I'm finished), and Fat Boy Slim's "Won't Talk About It" is playing on my iPod at the moment, so there you go. I was worried about signing up for NaBloPoMo this year, especially with my full plate and the still-trying-to-keep-myself-on-the-upward-spiral situation (I've been mostly successful in, if not exactly staying...
I was planning to write a basically cheery post about how the Beaner woke up happy this morning, as is usual after a meltdown the previous evening, but then his teacher called. We knew he'd been taken out of the classroom a few weeks ago because he was having "body control issues," but when Al asked about it, no details were given. When his teacher called to ask that we reinforce this at home, I said that I needed...
September 4, 2007
I feel compelled to tell you all that I started a post about the Beaner's first day of school on his actual first day of school—namely, last Wednesday—but I haven't had time to write about it while working, and I didn't feel like blogging at all this weekend. So I am both very virtuous and incredibly lazy....
August 28, 2007
I'm starting a new category with this post (for the moment I'm calling it "school", for lack of a better label, but I reserve the right to change it when I'm feeling more creative). The Beaner starts Montessori school tomorrow, and we've been practicing going to bed earlier and getting up earlier for a couple days now. For the most part it's worked well, but Al's been a bit confused—which makes sense, because the schedule I've been working off...