Archive for the ‘School’ Category
A little mini one is lurking in Ava’s daycare.
One that munched on my kid while she was lying defenseless on her cot, deep in sleep. And the little beast bit hard, too. Through an undershirt and a fleece, it still left deep teeth marks that very nearly broke the skin and left a perfect, bruised outline on her left shoulder blade. It hurt her, too. She was favoring that side and had a hard time sitting or laying comfortably.
And no one knew who did it. There were two suspects, both new transplants into the 2 year old room, but no one actually saw the bite happen and Ava, as a reputable witness, is pretty unreliable (if she even knew anyway). For example, when J asked her who bit her she said, “Mama did it.” When I asked her who bit her she told me, “Emma did it.” Since I was still on lockdown and unable to drive and Emma is our dog who won’t go within 10 feet of Ava at the best of times and certainly didn’t head on out for a 16 mile round trip to sneak in and bite her I’m pretty sure that Ava’s testimony wouldn’t hold water in judicial proceedings of any type.
Since I wasn’t there, J channeled me and raised holy hell with them as to why the opportunity even happened since they were all supposed to be napping on their individual cots. And demanded to know why, if these two kids are known biters, they weren’t being supervised a little more closely during this naturally tumultuous transition stage. Ava was not the first, or even the second, child to be bitten in as many days.
Bottom line: An extra staff member was added to the room for assistance until things settle down and I’m so proud of J for pulling a me until an acceptable resolution was reached because I know, I know, that J was way nicer and more diplomatic than I would have been. My mama bear instincts were raging and all I wanted to do was hunt the little bloodsucker down with a stake at that point.
I guess we should count ourselves lucky that in nearly 2 years of daycare this is our first (and hopefully only) biting incident.
One thing Ava’s daycare does in spades are art projects. She brings home something almost daily, waving it proudly at us as we arrive to pick her up, before abandoning it in favor of the juice she knows we always have ready for the ride home.
So what’s a parent to do with all of this fine craftsmanship? Well, if you’re J then you let it pile up in your truck for a while and then toss it all into the recycle bin without a second thought once it threatens to take over the backseat. If you’re me then you obsessively hoard every single scribble, collage, or piece of glued on macaroni that Ava has (supposedly) created and justify this behavior by the fact that I was traumatized by only having one, yes only one, piece of my childhood artwork saved. My mom gave it to me when she was unloading her basement of all my crap (still haven’t brought those roller skates home yet) and injured me further by asking me why I had so many ‘m’s scribbled all over the sky. *Sigh.* Those were birds. Obviously my interpretation wasn’t clear which could explain that my mother foresaw that I would not be an ‘artiste’ and therefore didn’t bother to preserve my early efforts for posterity.
My dilemma now is what to do with all of this? I have plans. I really do – some involve scrapbooking, some involve scanning and importing into a photobook, and some involve ignoring them and continuing to pile them in the basket beside my desk…which is now overflowing. Clearly the third option is the one most likely to happen.
Ava spotted the basket, which wasn’t hard to do since it spilled over onto the floor and into her play area, and she was delighted to find a hat that she’d made a couple of months ago for Thanksgiving week. I suspect that she had a fair bit of assistance with this one since the feathers were pointing (sorta) in the right direction and they weren’t glued directly to her head.
At least this was one item that I could toss into the recycle bin with no regret since she wore it for ages and pretty much trashed it in the process.
One down, lots and lots and lots more to go…