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