Archive for the ‘School’ Category
We (I) had our first parent-teacher conference today.
I learned:
Ava has the attention span of a gnat. For the record, this is not news to me.
Her teacher thought she would be the quiet type. Not so much. Ava has a big personality and once she gets over a little bit of bashful she’s not afraid to show it.
She (thankfully) appears to have taken herself out of the running for winning the Ultimate Fighting Championship title she was vying for earlier this year.
She wants to do what she wants to do when she wants to do it. Also not news to me.
She is not a social butterfly. She is okay with playing with others but doesn’t necessarily seek them out all the time. Her teacher feels this is a combination of her personality and the fact that she’s an only child who doesn’t have a full time playmate at home. She doesn’t see this as a problem at all, nor do I. I think that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, personally. I’m an introvert and definitely see some of the same tendencies in Ava – not sure if this is primarily nature or nurture or the perfect storm combo of both.
She is obstinate. Case in point: when they ‘tested’ her on ABC’s, number recognition, and whether or not she knew her full name she refused to participate. We know she knows them, her teacher knows she knows them, but Ava would not cooperate so she got N’s on her ‘report card.’
She is pretty much doing just fine. Her teacher has noticed no significant areas for concern and eased my mind on some questions I had. We also had a very frank discussion about adoption and how this should be addressed when/if questions arise.
Know what else I learned?
I am more nervous about parent-teacher conferences now that I’m on the parent side of things.
And I am way too old and my tush is way too big to sit in those itty bitty chairs for more than 4.2 seconds.
The theme for this week at preschool is Harvest Time. This meant that the parents had a homework assignment to send an item that was harvested to school. They even kindly provided us with a list of examples just in case we were unable to figure it out on our own. Beans, pumpkins, corn, potatoes, etc. and so on.
Now if I were a really great mom then I would have sent one of my home-grown, organic vegetables nourished with compost from our own backyard but, ummmm, no. Since I’m not exactly the earth mother type and my MO is normally to turn every assignment in a day late then Ava and I made a big box grocery store run before I dropped her off.
I offered her a few suggestions and she opted for beans – so off we went to the produce section to find some beans. Or not. There were no beans to be found. I suggested beets, turnips, apples, oranges, pineapples and tomatoes but, ummmm, no again. She wanted beans. Inspiration struck and we headed off to the dried bean section where she happily picked out a ginormous bag of pinto beans.
I felt a little weird about this since I knew it wasn’t exactly what they were going for but, hey, Ava picked them out and they technically were harvested – besides, beans are fun to play with so I knew the kids would dig that. But still, I figured I needed to explain the process by which Ava came to her decision to the teacher so I didn’t look like a sad, pathetic mama who pulled something out of the cabinet at the last minute.
I needn’t have worried.
A small thanks to the parent who sent the can of Bush’s baked beans with their kid. You win this round.
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…