Rodents and Andorra

It's been a social whirl the last couple of days, what with movies, playdates, brunch today at Spilly's "aunt, uncle and cousin's" house (I met her "aunt" on the first day of Frosh week in the first year of my undergrad, approximately 1079 years ago), a New Year's party and sleepover tomorrow with her good friend Simon and his parents (I taught with his mother for a number of years), etc.

But the true "piece de resistence" was a birthday party yesterday at a restaurant/casino for minors that featured an enormous animatronic rodent that danced around and bellowed out birthday greetings. When we first arrived, we were handed our cup of tokens for the games and sent off to play them. So we played them--roulette wheels, hoops you had to get balls through, helicopters about to crash that needed to be righted, space aliens coming to invade, etc. etc. Then it was time for the party. We were the tenth table. All of the tables represented a different birthday party and were lined up at a perpendicular angle to the stage, where the animatronic rodent and several equally gargantuan buddies gesticulated and boomed. The birthday kids had to go up onstage, parade around the room, and blow out their candles simultaneously on cue. Then the sound system went out. The rodent kept gesticulating, and its jaws kept flapping, but no sound emerged.

"What's wrong with him?" Spilly asked.

"He's having a fit," my hubby said, with pleasure.

To compensate, the restaurant/casino for minors put on the massive TVs around the place, and they began blaring out an interview with Mrs. Santa, who apparently still had a lot to do to get ready for Christmas Eve. This was December 29th, mind you. The four-year-old crowd at Spilly's party was puzzled.

At the end, when pizza and cake had been handed out--but the gifts not opened, because the personnel were cleaning our table off to indicate it was time to go--we headed outside into the quiet afternoon.

"So did you enjoy that?" I asked Spilly.

"Yes," she said. "But I really want to know how many countries there are in Spain."

"What makes you ask that?"

"It was just inside my head for awhile."

I was about to say that Spain was a country itself. But my hubby, being who he is, said, "Well, Spain is a country. But technically, it has a number of nations within it. Take Andorra, for example...."

And the two of them strolled on, while I straggled behind, trying to get the rodent's voice out of my head.

Pudding and Milkshakes

It's been like a mini-Christmas around here today, only the Big Event has been a playdate rather than a while-you-were-sleeping visit (it would have been impossible for Rip Van Winkle to sleep through this). Spilly's bus-buddy Sarah came to play--her first visit--and it was as though Santa himself had condescended to come by, or the Queen, as far as Spilly was concerned.

Spills began the day at 6:00 a.m. or so, planted in our doorway saying, "Mommy, did you remember something important about today?"

"Wha--?" I said. The migraine pills were only just beginning to work.

"Did you remember that Sarah was coming to play today and she was going to have a milkshake?"

"Oh, yes, yes, I did."

"Well, we'd better get up then."

"She's not coming till after lunch."

At this point, the Spills sat herself dejectedly down in the hall and said, "But I told her she could come ALL DAY."

"That's okay," I said. "By the end, it's going to feel like it was all day."

The morning was spent doing variations on, "Is it time yet?" This despite such exciting activities as cleaning the family room and joining Mommy in a vigorously delightful exercise routine. When it got to the part in the video where we were to do weights, Spills ran and got herself some pudding containers to lift up and down (Mommy used cream of mushroom soup cans). But it was only momentarily entertaining, because it wasn't Sarah. And it wasn't milkshakes.

When the climactic moment arrived, it was as though someone had shot a starter pistol and my kid had been given instructions to yell, run and hand things to people as loudly and quickly as she could. She apparently needed to live a lifetime immediately. And poor Sarah was, I believe, in shock for about the first half hour.

But she rallied, round about the time the sugar from the milkshakes hit her system. And then there were two banshees. And puppet shows. And dress-up. And dances. And a lot of pelting around saying, "Aaaaaahhhhhhh!"

Par for the course, you'd say. Except that we're shy people and so, for all her bluster, is the Spills. She's also markedly in her own little universe a lot of the time, as far as other kids are concerned (for example, her theory about how the Christmas turkey was killed is that it was hung on a wooden cross). And Sarah's lovely family has reached out to us (they took us all to a movie yesterday), and I am feeling decidedly grateful toward them for that. They are decent, intelligent, balanced, funny people, and they want my kid to be their child's friend. It warms my heart to see two girls play as crazily as these two did today.

Makes me look toward 2008 with the hope that we will have many more days like today.

The Big Day

Well, the long-anticipated day has come and gone, the wreckage was strewn all over the living room and is now partially contained. The kid's enthusiasm for the season seems to be continuing unabated, only now it has nowhere to direct itself, kind of like a hurricane on a bender with no logical path.

Maybe other parents can relate. Today, the day after Christmas, we've had hours full of perpetual motion, a small person pretending to run into walls, rude variations on Christmas carols ("'Come,' they told me, bum bum bum bum bum," followed by hysterical giggles), and any number of characters, ranging from a mysterious guy named "Teasy the Germ," to a variety of princess/evil stepmother figures. We haven't had tears--yet. But we had the most annoying dinner ever, watching small hands try to make sushi rolls out of stuffing and green beans and then show them to people.

I guess this is our first taste of the post-Christmas burnout. Last year she was too young to anticipate it all; she knew it was coming because we kept telling her, but she didn't particularly have anything to compare it to and didn't miss it much when it was gone. She liked the gifts though. This year, she has been on a slow build since around Remembrance Day, and she's all dressed up today (literally, in a whole slew of fine creations) but with nowhere to go.

On Christmas Eve, I got the first big sign that it was going to be different this year. At bedtime, I think she began to consider the spookiness of the idea that a kind of elemental wood-fairy was going to come down the chimney and invade her home. She got quite quiet about it all, and a little nervous, and went to bed with very little argument. I think, honestly, she didn't want to come face-to-face with the Claus, didn't quite want to know what was out there in the dark. The flipside of Santa is the Boogieman. And that was the sign that she was weighing it all, taking it all in. (Made me love her quite a lot, my sensitive and thoughtful girl.)

Christmas morning continued the trend. She was quite tentative, taking it all in, clearly awed that He Had Come and had even brought her a rescue pet. But she rallied, oh yes indeed she did. By the end of the first hour, she was a pro. And knew she liked it. And wanted it to Go On and On and On and On and On.

Only, today is the day after Christmas. I wonder when the hurricane will blow itself out??

Brand New Experience

Well, we took the mighty Spills to her very first movie today! After reading a gazillion reviews, and weighing the pros and cons, we took her to see Enchanted. And we all loved it! I prepped her for it by telling her virtually the entire plot in detail (leaving out the ending, but asking her to predict what she thought it would be...). She probably annoyed everyone around us by whispering, "Is this the man she's going to go and live with?" or, "When is the mean queen going to come to New York City? When is she going to turn into a dragon?"

She was impressed by everything, starting with the model of the aliens in their flying saucer, hanging from the ceiling of the theatre's lobby. She enjoyed the coming attractions, although she kept whispering dismissively to me, "ADS--they're trying to sell us stuff" (that's what we do at home whenever there is an advertisement on TV). She thought it was a brilliant idea to actually share pop and popcorn during the movie. She's only had pop about three times in her life. And she adored the songs, the New York City setting (she has an obsessive thing about New York City, although she's never actually been there), the chipmunk, and everything. At one point, when it got a bit scary, I leaned over to her and whispered, "Ooh, I think I'm getting a little scared."

"Oh, Mommy," she said, "I'm not scared at all. Only my foot is scared. See? It's shaking." And it was.

Since we've been home, she's treated us to the entire plot several times over again, dressed in a princess outfit with a tiara. Periodically she hurls herself down on the floor and shouts, "Oh, I've been poisoned! I need true love's kiss!" Then her father or I give her a kiss, and she springs back to life.

It's mandatory for the audience to pay attention during these living room performances; when I fell asleep at one point, I awoke to an audio tape being partially inserted into my mouth, and the stern words, "Mommy, I love you. Stay awake."

Liberation!!

At last this long day is over, and our family can get down to the serious business of the holidays! Spilly and hubby arrived at the portable around 4:30, and we hightailed it out of there, lugging the classroom tree and a whole pile of chocolate, mugs, jewelry, ornaments, mystery clay objects, gift certificates, etc. etc. (Next year I think I am going to suggest that people donate to a worthy cause instead.) Spilly wrote her name on the board, held the door for us to leave, climbed several snowhills/capered around on top of them (totally against the school rules I'd been enforcing only an hour or so before), and finally agreed to get in the car.

We went to Swiss Chalet for dinner, where Spilly had a joyful reunion with the best waitress in the world, Mai. They had the kind of big, rotating hug best reserved for sappy romantic films. Then they went and investigated the cool computer screen Mai uses, and raided the restaurant's stash of chocolates together. If you want the insider's view of Swiss Chalet, you want to have a Spilly. She is like a VIP pass.

Then we headed home so she could distribute Mommy's class gifts to every corner of the house, and hang the empty gift bags from every conceivable place (including Spilly's head). Under the tree went the Spills' mysterious gift from Mommy's good teacher friend, who teaches Grade One at Mommy's school and has quite an understanding with the Spillster. They share a love of Grover and Olivia, among other things.

And now the Spilly One is in her bath, talking to Sanjaya again. Apparently he, unlike she, has to stay in school throughout the next two weeks. The upside is that he will be having a party each day he's there. His poor, poor teacher.

The Big Picture

I think today had a definite theme to it, and it's only starting to reveal itself to me now.

First, there was my student who pulled off an A+ on his math retest, after having failed the first test. As I handed it back to him, I said to him privately, "Well, I think we've learned that there are some battles worth fighting and some battles you ignore. For example, I am not even noticing all of the scribbles on the front of your notebook there, and I have totally missed the fact that that pile of stuff just fell out of your desk." I tactfully stopped short of also pointing out how he had knocked over our Christmas tree earlier in the day. "Because YOU JUST GOT AN A+, MISTER. That's the battle worth fighting. Now - do you think we won or lost that battle?"

"We won it," he said. And the look on his face was priceless.

Then there was the student who got a D- on this same test. He too failed the first test. He tried his hardest. His D- was at least worth the other guy's A+. He sobbed his eyes out, heartbroken. I sat beside him and fed him chocolate kisses and told him how wonderful he was (because he is). I said to him, "I know something about what you will be like when you're eighty."

"What?" he said.

"You won't be thinking about this test."

He was somewhat interested in this argument, I could tell. So I pressed on. "I also know something about what you will be like when you're twelve."

"What?" he said.

"You won't be thinking about this test. Because do you know why?"

"Why?"

"Don't tell anyone," I said, "but THIS TEST DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL. It definitely doesn't affect the way I think about you. I thought you were great before and I still do. What matters is who you are, what kind of person you're growing up to be. That's the big picture. And you need to know I'm very proud of the person you're growing up to be." I said other stuff, but I'm not sure what. Mainly I wanted to obliterate that momentary horrible blip in his life and restore a little of the optimism that an eleven-year-old, goodhearted kid should have.

Two totally different big pictures. Both growing out of the very same situation, and both utterly valid.

And now for the "freaky" big picture moment of the day. It really happened, really, really, really.

I was driving home in the car thinking about my students and of course worrying about my young guy having an existential crisis about his self worth...and feeling rotten that I was indirectly the cause of it by giving him a crummy, horrible test. And I was wondering about my value on the planet and stuff like that.

And an ad came on the radio for Atlantic lobster--the first I think I've ever heard on the radio. And I said out loud, "Oooh, I'd LOVE to have lobster for supper!" And then I started laughing darkly at the thought of trying to convince my hubby to take us out for lobster (maybe after a ride on the space shuttle).

And I got home, and my husband said, "Look in the fridge."

And in the fridge was a bag. And in the bag were four lobsters, along with smoked salmon and
some sort of potato dish.

And I was staring at it, feeling awash in The Big Picture.

"It came to the door," he said. "Fed Ex brought it. I'm not sure who sent it to us. I think it might be my sister though."

True. It's TRUE. A freaky-deaky bona fide gift from the universe. Kind of like a little nudge along the road, to encourage forward movement, a message that it's the right direction even if it doesn't always feel like it. More big picture stuff.

....And Spilly's big picture moment? It came at supper. She was watching us eat the lobster (she did not care to partake), and asked, "Are lobsters dead?"

"These ones are," said my hubby.

"Were they alive before?"

"Well, they were. But you wouldn't want them alive now, because they'd be running around the table."

Spilly stared at the lobsters for awhile. Then she said, "I've never seen dead animals before."

My hubby and I looked at each other. The big picture. Should we tell her or not?

Finally my hubby said slowly, "What's that on your plate?"

She looked at it for awhile. Then she said in a grisly, Halloweeny kind of voice, "A...dead....chicken."

I waited for what I thought would be an outcry of disbelief and horror at the unfairness of the way things are.

But after a moment she said, "Let's all pretend to be dead chickens, Mommy." Which suggested to me that the big picture had not quite infiltrated her tiny, happy world. Either that or it had, and she had managed to put it into perspective quite happily.

...Which is a gift, it seems to me. Because I grapple with the big picture daily. And I can guarantee that I know something about what I'll be like when I'm eighty. I'll still be up to my shoulders in it, still grappling.

"Ta-Daaa" List

If a "To Do" list is a list of things you have to do, a "Ta-Daaa" list must be a list of what you have done. So here is my "Ta DAAA" list from today:

At School:
1. Endured countless "Riverdance" performances on the portable steps
2. Helped some kids to figure out exactly how you find the volume of a triangular prism
3. Taught remedial memorization techniques in preparation for our Measurement retest tomorrow (for example, to remember the provinces and territories in the Central time zone, you can think of this useful sentence: Santa May Want One Enormous New Working Toy).
4. Blasted a bully
5. Performed a whole pile of Christmas carols on the piano for our caroling assembly
6. Gave out mini-candy canes for correct answers
7. Played the schmaltziest Christmas music on the CD player ever while the kids worked on Social Studies assignments
9. Wrapped twenty-one gifts
10. Helped a kid find his lunch bag
11. Rescued a math text book from the recycling bin (nice try)
12. Made about a hundred kids go back and get their coats
13. Organized our potluck Christmas party for Friday
14. Gave out some hugs (strictly against Board policy)
15. Dried some tears
16. Covered for the French teacher first period this morning while she was stuck in traffic
17. Collated twenty-one eight-page scripts for the class musical we have written (the kids are fondly calling it Middle School Musical)
18. Marked a gazillion spelling books
19. Marked a pile of social studies comprehension questions
20. Looked at a whole lot of baby photos and remarked on how cute they all were
21. Other stuff I don't remember

At Home:
1. Admired the handy new clay candle holder complete with dinosaur that came home from school
2. Made cool new roll-up Christmas cookies
3. Tried to explain how Santa is going to get through the glass front of our fireplace
4. Fixed a sock that wouldn't stay properly on Someone's foot
5. Made the world's best gravy to go with our roast chicken
6. Got a kid to try zucchini and actually swallow it
7. Mopped up spilled milk at supper (and the tears that went with it)
8. Explained that spilled milk does not equal "having a bad day" and asked if anyone had been killed or had gotten an "owie" from the spilled milk? Was told that Spilly's foot was hurt because of the milk.
9. Said that yes, I still liked Spilly
10. Washed the tablecloth and the felt thing underneath
11. Demonstrated how to "Riverdance"
12. Read several Christmas books aloud, using pleasing voices for the different characters
13. Explained exactly how Rudolph helped Santa get through the blizzard
14. Fell asleep in front of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
15. Other stuff that hasn't happened yet

Fraying at the Seams

Everywhere I go, kids are starting to lose it.

At school, my students are barely coherent. I gave them a math test today that they'd had two weeks to study for; almost all of them failed it, except for the tiny handful who all got A+. I was forced to play the ogre with them and threaten to withhold all Friday Christmas festivities unless they all did brilliantly on the rewrite on Thursday. Even with this hanging over their heads, they were only briefly downcast. The "Riverdance" performance on my portable steps told a far cheerier tale. (I asked the kids to kick off all excess snow before entering the portable, and several of my boys shouted, "Riverdance!" and began doing a hideous parody of Irish stepdancing.)

At home, Spilly is as close to buggy as it's possible for a four-year-old to be. As I write this, she's dancing around her dad and shouting that he was once a nutcracker who wore orange pants, but that she broke the spell. She wants to know if we can get him some more orange pants. I've just said I'm sure we could find him a pair (Daddy is giving me a dark look). Oh, and now she is getting a banana to put on his head and is saying it's his crown. Earlier, she and I watched the beginning of "The Polar Express," which led to her leaping around pretending to be a pack of ecstatic children (or wolves or dingoes or whatever--it was hard to tell). My job was to pretend to be Tom Hanks giving everyone hot chocolate, shouting, "We got it!"

Repeat all together in a shaky voice: "How many more sleeps till the Big Day???"

Not the Usual Routine

Several things did not go as planned today.

To start with, I was up at the crack of dawn to get the news that Spilly's buses were canceled but my school was business as usual. That meant more than a little crowing from my usually-loving kid: "Mommy, I have sad news for you, but it's happy news for me. My bus is canceled, and I don't have to go to school. But YOU DO have to go to school." Variations on this theme tend to wear a person down. It was bad news for my long-suffering hubby too, as it meant that he had Spilly on his hands all day. And it wasn't just any old day--it was the final deadline of the major, three-months-in-the-making project that he has been managing.

The next thing that was different was that I didn't drive myself to school today, as I was a little leery at the thought of driving in the aftermath of our big snowstorm of yesterday. That meant that my hubby and Spilly took me in to school. It meant a commentary from Spilly all the way there: "Mommy, I see a caterpillar and a pyramid in the sky, and there's the castle in China, and I love you." (The castle in China is actually a Croatian church.) It also, thankfully, meant assistance in carrying the Christmas tree I'd bought my class, across the frozen tundra that is our school's back tarmac, to my portable.

Then, the next unusual thing was that only 8 of my students arrived. Turns out, some of the buses that caused Spilly's school cancellation also service our school. Turns out as well, some of my students treated themselves to a day off. I was faced with the dilemma of what to do with one-third of my class. Teaching was pretty much out, as I'd have had to teach it all again tomorrow to the majority of the class. So we did the logical thing, and put together the Christmas tree (as things turned out, it was practically brain surgery, because all the branches were separate from the trunk and needed to be inserted individually). Then we spent the rest of the morning making elaborate decorations. The tree now has various paper snowflakes, the world's longest garland, paper lanterns, and--its crowning glory--two impossibly tall, bizarre, tufty-looking things that remind me of pineapple fronds and jut out the top of the tree, crafted by a boy who says he learned the technique in India.

The afternoon was equally taxing--a movie, shared with another class. At the end of the day, one of my kids said, "Mrs. C., this was the shortest day!"

"That's funny," I said. "I thought it was the longest day."

When Spilly and her daddy picked me up after school, she announced, "Daddy finished his work, and so we're going out for dinner!"

It was news to either her Daddy or me (except for the finished-the-work part, which was apparently true, hallelujah, after the months he has put in), but we decided not to question it.
We're leaving shortly.

What to Do During a Snowstorm

We are getting snow today like our region has not seen in a long time. The forecast I read this morning suggested this may end up being the most we've seen in a decade (my "school closure" Spidey-sense is tingling). Not an outdoor day. As you can imagine, the Spills is deeply stir-crazy. Here is a smattering of the last 5 hours or so.

The Most Recent 10 Questions:
1. Is Sanjaya's nickname "Sanj"?
2. Why do we have holes in our ears?
3. Are Sanjaya's parents dead?
4. Why did Buddha put a Christmas present under our tree?
5. Why do they call it "Silent Night?"
6. Will you put these elastics in my hair?
7. Why do we have to dust the house?
8. Why does Daddy have to shovel the driveway?
9. Will my bus be canceled tomorrow?
10. Can we eat the snow?

The most recent activity:
Going online to find a recipe for ice cream snow. Found one. It goes like this:

Ingredients:
Large bowl of snow
1/2 to 1 cup of milk (we used lactose-free so Daddy could have some)
1/2 to 1 cup of sugar (you could probably use Splenda)
some vanilla

Method:
Send Daddy outside in the blizzard to get a bowl full of snow. Pour in the milk and mix till the snow gets an ice-cream consistency (it actually will!!). Add sugar and vanilla. Stir it like crazy (try not to get it all over the floor). Put it in some bowls. Eat it.

The most boring activity:
"Helping" Mommy with the dusting. Mostly this consisted of wandering around with a Swiffer cloth, saying, "Ohhhh, are we done yet? Mommy, are you finished?" In the process of dusting, she discovered:
-her chapstick, which needed to be opened and smeared
-ten dollars, which she tried to use to "buy" things from Mommy (mostly standing in Mommy's way, waving the ten dollars around)
-the flag of Macedonia (no, we are not from Macedonia)
-a bag of Christmas bows, which is now spread throughout the house
-sticky notes (they are stuck everywhere now)
-a whole pile of cool office gizmos on Daddy's computer desk
-Smurfs, lots of them

The best part: she is already starting the anti-nap campaigning.

Flapjacks and Bon Jovi

Well, we are getting some weather coming our way today. Big storm forecast, with up to 38 centimetres for our area--the largest snowfall, they're saying, that we've had in years. So naturally we needed to get out for breakfast before it hit.

We headed to "Flapjacks," our favorite country local. It's not much to look at from the outside--more like a shack than anything else. But when you get inside, you realize what a treasure it is. The owner is also the principal waitress, and she knows everyone after they've been in once. So we were greeted as if we were family.

Spilly enjoys being greeted. "These are my new mitts," she told the owner. "And they have names."

"What are their names?"

She held up one. "This is Sally."

"Oh yes? And who's the other one?"

"His name is Bon Jovi."

Breakfast was, as usual, lovely. Spilly always gets the banana flapjacks. Mommy likes to opt for the eggs (over easy) with bacon. Daddy has his eggs scrambled. At the end, Spilly staggered around in front of us. "Ohhhhh, my tummy is so full. Look, see how big it is!" She helpfully pulled up her shirt to show the world.

The owner told her, "That's because there's so much good food in there."

"I'm a fish," Spilly told her. "I can eat until I blow up!" (Which just shows that you have to watch the kind of information you give to the Spills, because she often brings it back up when you least expect it. I once told her that you have to be careful when you are feeding goldfish, because they don't know when to stop.)

Later, when she got home, she regaled her Grandma on the phone with a long story about the whole Flapjacks experience. It started like this: "Hi, Grandma. Once I threw up in the living room. And now I'm standing in it."

A moment passed while Grandma asked for clarification.

Very impatiently: "No, I'm standing in the LIVING ROOM. And we just went to Flapjacks."

She likes an audience, but they have to stay up to speed.

Vesuvius and Bruschetta

The rest of the country may be gearing up for Christmas, but at our house we are mainly celebrating wreckage and horror. The Mighty Spills is obsessed with volcanoes at the moment. The toy cupboard has a drawing on it of Mount Etna (with a sad face, to show that it's active) and Mount Vesuvius (with a happy face, because it's dormant and thus not hurting anyone). There is a cup with a plastic chicken leg sticking out of it, sitting on her toy stove, that represents "molten lava coming out." And she has, with Daddy's help, written the word "hospital" and stuck it up in a few places in the kitchen and living room--just in case anyone gets caught in a lava flow.

Vesuvius is her favorite. She and her Daddy have been going through National Geographic magazines finding pictures of it, along with pictures of Pompeii. Last night at the Christmas concert, she talked the school librarian's ear off about the horrible things that could happen if Vesuvius were to become active.

"It will send out MOLTEN LAVA."

"Is that so?"

Severely: "And ASH. And it is NOT GOOD for things that are alive. And it KILLED all the people in Pompeii."

Kind of killed the holiday spirit too, I must say.

This morbid fascination with Vesuvius has kind of expanded into a general interest in Italy. So we decided tonight to take her to a new Italian restaurant that had just opened a couple of blocks away from the house. The restaurant was so-so. But the bruschetta was yummo, and Spilly finished off most of the plate (leaving next to no room for her gnocchi, which resulted in various incredible contortions of boredom while Mommy and Daddy were eating; a fine parenting experience if ever there was one). She then went on to gelato for dessert--amazingly, she always leaves quite a lot of room for something sweet--and was briefly close to heaven.

Unfortunately, the slow service wore down what was left of her four-year-old enthusiasm, and even Mommy's sterling impression of what the woman in the picture on the wall might say (inventive variations on "Ooooh, I just love going to this restaurant! And I'm so happy sitting on this wall all the time! Can I have some more bruschetta, please?") did not help. The evening ended with my tiny sage saying wearily, "Mommy, I feel TIRED and OLD."

Kind of like Vesuvius must feel at this point. And definitely like I feel (especially after chaperoning a middle-school dance today).

Christmas and Chaos

Pardon me if it's difficult for me to concentrate right now....Spilly is dancing around my desk saying, "Ohhhh, ohhhh, Fernando!"

Well, my raspy voice and I were back at school today, and tonight was our Holiday Concert--a longish day, from 7:30 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. I help to lead the Primary-Junior Choir, so had to be present for their performance obviously but also to babysit them throughout the rest of the concert. It was somewhat nightmarish, as there were four grades crammed into the library with not as many teachers supervising as would have been ideal. It is amazing what being at school at nighttime with a pending performance will do to the average kid's adrenaline levels. My ears are ringing, and not just because of the bells used by the choir for "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Spilly and her Daddy came to join us in the library, as she preferred the idea of hanging out with "the big kids" to actually sitting and watching the concert. As the big kids were all watching the movie "Cars," that's what she did too. And this viewing of "Cars" went better than the one in the car on the way to Halifax this summer, when she turned to me halfway through and said mournfully, "WHEN is this movie going to start?"

Glad to home. Glad for the silence. Going to have a glass of wine now.

The Power of Positive Thinking

When Spilly got up this morning, she said to me, "I think I'm very sick today. I have a sore throat and a cough and throw-uppy in the bed."

After a hurried check of her bed turned up nothing, I said, "I think you are okay. What do you want for breakfast?"

"But my foot is very sore," she said. "But it's getting better."

It didn't take long for the truth to come out, once we were sitting together over Cheerios. "I think I should stay home from school this afternoon," she said. "I think I should stay home with you."

You see, I have been home for the past couple of days with total laryngitis (the worst thing that can befall a teacher--or the best, depending on how tired and overworked you feel--because you are utterly unable to do your job effectively; it's kind of like a carpenter losing the use of his/her hands). Spilly has been enjoying having her Mommy all to herself each morning. Daddy has also been enjoying my enforced holiday, as it has meant that he could actually get some work done, in his online job as a technical writer. Most mornings he hangs out with Spilly, then gets to work when she heads off on the afternoon bus to junior kindergarten. Then he works well into the night (I am the afternoon-and-evening parent usually).

"Is that what you think?" I said, in my endearingly raspy way. "But what about storytime, and arts and crafts, and costumes, and counting, and everything good like that at junior kindergarten?"

"Ohhhhh," she said in the airy, can-do, sing-song way of a four-year-old. "I can do these things with you."

We had a lovely morning. We coloured a great picture of Elmo with hot chocolate. We identified which snowman pictures matched, and drew lines between them. We learned what "og" sounds like, and figured out a whole pile of words after that. We traced some "e's," making the pencil come out of the driveway and around the block. We danced to the Jingle Cats. We dressed up like the Easter Bunny. We wrote "Sanj" with fridge magnets (we didn't have another two "a's", unfortunately, and the "y" was too high for the Mighty Spills to reach, otherwise we could have spelt The Best Word in the World).

Periodically, Spilly said, "I have good news, Mommy. I am not going to school this afternoon."

And I would say, "I have good news too. You are going to school this afternoon."

"What if I ask Daddy, and he says yes I can stay home?"

"Daddy will not say that."

This went back and forth until the phone rang. It was Spilly's school. This next part is "no word of a lie," as my Maritime hubby would say. Honest. It really happened this morning.

The nice lady on the other end of the phone said, "This is just a courtesy call to see if you were aware that some of the buses north of here [well, she said the exact name of the area, but I figure I'll not broadcast it here] were cancelled this morning. So there will be no afternoon kindergarten today." My daughter's school is a country school, and entirely bussed by this particular busing company.

I said, "Oh, no, I didn't know that." (I didn't think until after I'd hung up to ask why they were canceled, what with the blue sky and all. There must have been some rotten weather early this morning at the time when the school board makes this kind of decision.)

I hung up the phone, and turned to the Raving Spills, who was busy coloring candy canes bright yellow.

I said, "Well. I have some news."

"What is it?"

"It's serious. You'd better sit down."

Looking very solemn and big-eyed, she did. Then she whispered, "What is it, Mommy?"

"That was your school." I said it sadly, as if the school had just died.

"What did they want?"

"Well. It appears that you have gotten your wish." I sat down on the floor beside her. "There. Is. No. School. This. Afternoon."

It took a second for it to sink in, and the eyes got even bigger, and then the shrieking started. "We can bake COOKIES, and make SQUARES, and do PAINTING, and make a SNOWMAN, and have STORIES....."

I wish I could say that the joy lasted and lasted. But it quickly turned into campaigning:

"I definitely do not need a nap today, because I'm a big girl."

Bathtime and Sanjaya

My four year old, Spilly, is having a conversation with Sanjaya Malakar while sitting in the bath tub. He is squeaking in a high falsetto, and so is she. From what I can tell, they are discussing her plastic cow, who is wearing a stretchy squid toy around its waist. Every so often, I can hear things being thrown around.

All right, so Sanjaya is not actually in the tub. But he might as well be, because he is certainly talking up a storm in there. Spilly has quite a thing for Sanjaya, after meeting him by accident last year around this time, in our living room, well after bedtime. She'd wanted to see what we were doing. We were watching American Idol, and as the evil fates would have it, Sanjaya was performing at the time.

She stood in awe, clutching her stuffed pets Monty and Ribbon, obviously wondering why we hadn't told her that someone so marvelously talented came on television after she went to bed at night. After that, we taped an episode for her and she watched him perform over and over again (without watching the judges' commentary, of course, which might have spoiled the magic). She also started talking to him, and he began talking back. And singing, and dancing in our hallway. And having outrageous adventures, all of which Spilly requested in her reading chair at night, when the lights were out, as the last ritualized step in the long road to bed.

From the point of view of parental peace, we know we shouldn't have taped that first episode. We also know that we probably should not have driven our kid six hours into the USA in order to watch Sanjaya perform live, and should definitely not have purchased the Sanjaya poster and fridge magnet that adorn our house. The toy guitar and microphone were a big mistake as well.

And now, almost a year later, we are still paying the price, because we share our house daily with Sanjaya. He also comes with us in the car and probably hangs out in Spilly's junior kindergarten class too. Well, he and Buddha, and the Beatles, who are also favourites.