Cold Spaghetti

Putting on pajamas takes a couple of tries.

More official news… Will and Kate were both accepted to Ecole Bilingue de la Nouvelle-Orleans for the 2008-2009 school year! We took the news with bittersweet excitement… it’s time for Will to move on from preschool and we applied for both to have the option of keeping the kids in the same school (sibling discount!) It was a bit of a surprise to us that both kids got in, we’re misty-eyed about our kids moving on from Abeona, but we’re thrilled!

Ecole Bilingue is a French immersion school. It’s taught by French Nationals and approved by the French Government. We love the teachers and the staff. In terms of price, it’s not cheap but with everything added it will be about the same as we’re paying now. The school feels great — like a big family — the same loving environment we’ve come to know at Abeona. The school is very diverse… staff, teachers, students, and families, representing a range of nationalities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ethnicities. The music and art programs are wonderful; we adore the music teacher! We feel very very lucky to have found a good place to continue our children’s education!

Yesterday, we attended a parent meeting where Will was evaluated by two of the teachers. He did great. The “test” was a series of developmental exercises, the same that Abeona went through with us for our parent/teacher conferences a few weeks back. Things like jumping on one foot, walking in a line, crawling, writing his name, counting, etc. Will answered some questions in English and Spanish (upon request). They were surprised that he still uses both hands interchangeably. I assumed that it was normal for kids to not have a dominate hand yet, but apparently this is not so. The teachers were very surprised and said that they had never seen a child use both hands so freely at this age? He writes, eats, and draws with both hands, sometimes trading the utensil or pen back and forth in one sitting. They had him repeat some words (colors) in French… like his parents, his accent will take some work.

Here’s the issue: in the French system, children’s grade levels are determined according to the school calendar year. So, Will is eligible for Kindergarten, which is the class they accepted him into. He wouldn’t be the youngest in the class, but he wouldn’t be the oldest either. The age isn’t really an issue for us, it’s the language. About 2/3-3/4 of the students will have had a year of French in pre-K. Usually, students are recommended to have 2 years of French immersion before 1st grade (a year to listen, a year to speak). His teachers felt that he would be fine; many students start French at Kindergarten and are completely caught up by the end of the year. He wouldn’t be the only one starting with no French. He will do the summer program at EB, so he’ll have a little French before the school year starts, so that is something. I’m not sure exactly what to do (the school is willing to put him in either Kindergarten or pre-K, whatever we want). I terms of play and school day structure, the preK and Kindergarten are very similar — only the Kindergarten does not take a nap. Both have morning and afternoon outside recess and structured playtime. I’m just unsure of what is best for Will.

The other issue is that Kate must be potty trained — no pull-ups or trainers — by the start of the school year. If she’s not potty trained, we have to pay for her slot until she’s ready. Talk about incentive for success! This goes against my tendency to ‘wait until they’re ready’ and puts pressure on us finding success with potty-ing this summer.

Paul and I are going to start taking classes at the Alliance Francaise — I wish NOLA had a Spanish language center like this!! We’re also wondering if we can find someone there who could teach French from Spanish… so we can practice our Spanish at the same time.

“Mommy, you should eat some of that apple you are cutting up for Kate.”

“Oh? Why should I eat some?”

“Because there’s lots of vitamins in apples.”

“Really? How do you know?”

(Thinks. Hard.)

“Because… look,” shows me skin of the pink lady apple, “these white dots are vitamins. That means there are vitamins inside.”

“I see. What else has vitamins?”

“Dinner.”

For the insurance claim:

Paul’s progress…

Camilla Paglia and Ann Coulter, watch out — here’s another anti-feminist “feminist” set to steal your air time. via Feministing…

Charlotte Allen – a professional woman-hating hack from the Independent Women’s Forum who has also oh-so-bravely attacked transgender rights, said that the answer to women’s potential financial woes is marriage, and suggested that Hurricane Katrina might have been “the best thing” to happen to New Orleans which is full of “whiners…chisel[ing] us taxpayers” out of money – has outdone herself in an article that is all about what dumb f@&!s women are.

I’m sickened that the Washington Post is publishing this ridiculous nonsense.

Newsflash: women aren’t men. Equality doesn’t mean that we act like men. We’re different, our bodies do different things, and our needs our different. This does not make us weaker (actually, we survive childbirth and infancy in greater numbers and we live longer). Thinking that women must act like men in order to be employed, gain respect, and enjoy careers is what creates unimaginable situations like this.

What is really galling is that the sort of misogynist garbage Allen puts out is equally damaging to men: you can’t narrowly define the expression of one gender without narrowly defining the other (in her case, she’s arguing a sex difference, but she’s defining those differences according to tired, old gendered rubbish). Labeling women as emotional basket cases assumes the opposite in men. If women are emotional, men are stoic, and showing any inclination towards the other brings gender conflict: you’re open for attack from the masses. Meaning that if a man shows emotion, he is feminized… and our society has a real problem with men who show any hint of femininity. By labeling women in one extreme, you put men in the other — it is equally offensive and damaging to both. Not to mention that it ignores the fluidity of sex, gender, and their expression, which is better described on a continuum than in binary.

How I am going to raise both a boy and a girl through adolescence within all of this nonsense??

I am surprised and impressed that now, in my moment of weakness, neither of you seem willing to make the final blow and do me in. If you had done it after this week, no one would have blamed you. With your illness(es), days off from school, living back and forth from freezing house to city apartment, bags and bags of laundry dragged around searching for a washer, terrible meals on the fly, us working crazy hours, and finally, Mom coming down with a bad cold. You’ve been troopers this week, and I couldn’t be prouder.

After hair cuts first thing in the morning, I took you both to the Zoo. Will: you were a champion helper. Running after Kate, making sure she didn’t go too far from us, listening to my requests. I was sweaty, clammy, and miserable, but focused on getting through the day. I managed to take a few pictures of you and your monkey-kin…

Shutter speed: 1/15s. Kate speed: Warp Factor 5.2.

Can’t think of something to get for the boss-from-hell’s baby shower?

Boingboing says, ” think of the incredible mental scars you could leave on your child by hanging this over her crib!”

I just got home from a board meeting and apparently, I’ve missed all there was to see — the cloud cover is too thick to see anything! Paul reports he and Will were able to see a little through the clouds earlier (from Will’s bed, you can look through the transom on his back door and out the new skylight in the gutted section).

Last night it was clear and gorgeous, with full and open access to viewing the moon. We know, because we went out 4 times to watch for the eclipse (we’d miss-remembered the date).

We’ve got about 40 more minutes left… maybe we’ll keep trying and hope some clouds clear for a sec… until then, I’ve been told that this site has a link to a live webcast of it, although I’m still looking to confirm…