Pic by Sue Exley at graduation

Matthew and I graduated from preschool yesterday!

Matthew is moving on to kindergarten after 2.5 years at Carlmont Parents Nursery School (where Glen worked with Irene Carvajal to redesign the Website. They made the templates I populated all the content).

6 years in a row for me of working at the school at least once a week, doing a family job, attending night meetings. 6 years in a row of a strong community around us, people who share our values, family potlucks, picnics and concerts and being able to always find a playdate.

I’m really happy that we made the commitment to this school and to El Cerrito Preschool Cooperative before that. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

The PTA Board at Laurel always has at least one former CPNS parent on it. Next year it will be me and Ed Coady.

Anyway – more about MATTHEW! He wanted a pair of crocs, those rubbery, flimsy sandals which can be worn in water. I bought him a pair but said I would return them if he wasn’t good during graduation. He was SO GOOD! He sat quietly at attention the entire time. I was SO PROUD of him! I couldn’t believe it.

I guess he really is ready to move on to kindergarten. He thinks he is. He seems to think it starts any day now! Maybe today!

Smile Disaster

Ethan’s smile took a hit yesterday, but was then glued back on. About 15 minuted before the end of Little League practice, a ball took a funny hop and whacked off half of his two front teeth. Literally about 50%. It looked like the outline of the ball to me. Glen described it to the children’s dentist as an “upside down smile.” (Later the dentist said to me, that was a great description although Glen may not have realized it was. I didn’t bother to tell Dr. Lau that, no, Glen thinks all of his descriptions are great. (And they are honey.)

At first it looked like just his lip was fat, but then they realized the teeth were gone. Luckily 2 of his teammates found the 2 pieces. I was away picking up Glen, but also luckily, friend and fellow CPNS board member Eleni Hulman was there and she called me on my cell and gave me the news right away. Ethan was crying and pretty scared and upset. All of the parents who were there and our fantastic Coach Barney Fahey were so caring and concerned – I really appreciated knowing Ethan had that love and support around him when I wasn’t there.

At first Glen and I thought we would wait until the next day to go see the dentist because dental is SO expensive and emergency anything is SO expensive and it all comes out of our HSA. But we looked online and decided to call Ethan’s dentist, Dr. Terrence Lau.

He is a GREAT dentist. Pediatric dentistry has come so far from when I was a kid, but Dr. Lau is really outstanding. He also charges an arm and a leg and we haven’t seen him for a year because our insurance had changed. Luckily, it recently changed back. He really makes the children feel at ease, explaining everything he is doing and using language that is accessible and safe. When he gives a shot he doesn’t let them see the needle; he just explains that he has to hold the lip so can see and sometimes it might feel like he is pinching too hard because the lip is so slippery to hold on to, so just tell him. That kind of calming technique and the movie (last night was Surf’s Up which Ethan had never seen) on the ceiling really made Ethan feel at ease.

We called Dr. Lau at 6:45 and he told us to meet him at the office – he would drive back from SF. And over the next 2 hours, with no help, he carefully and meticulously bonded Ethan’s missing pieces back onto the stubs. The medical prognosis is good, but we’re not out of the woods. If the nerves in the teeth are damaged, they could die and then Ethan will need a root canal. He put medicine directly on the teeth and also prescribed an antibiotic. He said we could still go to Disneyland next week.

Can’t Stop Smiling

Matthew is a smiler. He smiles all day long. He is always smiling! Almost all of his expressions include smiles. He has his angry look, where his mouth and eyes are smiling but he wrinkles his nose and forehead. He has his surprised look where he opens his eyes and mouth as wide as he can, but the corners of his mouth are still hinting at happy. He has his scared look, where he shakes his head slightly and hunches his shoulders and blinks his eyes, but is still smiling.

Smile though your heart is breaking – learning to smile again

4 was a hard year for Jared. His last year of preschool was really difficult and Jared somehow came to the belief that the world was against him. For a while he could find nothing to be happy about. I would ask him to name some good things that happened to him at the end of the day and he couldn’t.

That’s when I started the behavior modification. That included chocolate in the morning if he could name good things before he went to sleep at night. (Some might call that a bribe, but I call it conditioning.) It also included smile therapy. I felt like I had to teach him how to smile all over again. Opposite of Matthew, he seemed to not allow himself to smile under any circumstances. Now he knows that his smiles are a gift he can give me every day, and he showers me with the gift of his smiles first thing every morning and throughout the day.

We’re still working on the whole world-is-against-me belief, but we’ll get there.

I’m reading The Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Happier, Healthier Children by David Elkind. I think I checked it out hoping for guidance to easily move them away from tv and computer games.

As I read it I think about Daniel and Lindy and how they endlessly play with Molly, providing her such an enriched environment. That girl will have a powerful imagination. And if she’s not spoiled beyond belief, she will be one of those happy, well-adjusted people you meet every now and again: one of those people we all wish we could be!

Of course the beginning of the book is all doom and gloom about the sad state of toys and kids’ activities today. Children aren’t exercising their bodies enough, we all hear about it. But also, their brains are atrophying, decaying instead of growing in the glare of the digital age.

In one anecdote of evidence, a class of kindergartners didn’t know what imagination was nor how to use it!

Aaaaaaaaaah! I worry, I fret. Do my children have imaginations? Do they know how to pretend? All they do is play fighting games, I swear. I think back over the last few days of play and all I recall is the whining: “I’m bored,” “Can I watch TV?,” “Can I play on the computer?” and the endless karate moves they practice on each other for hours.

So tonight I’m reading them a great book we got from the library, The Wildest Brother by Cornelia Funke (translated from German) where little brother Ben talks about protecting his big sister from scary monsters, weekly burglars, foxes, wolves and bears. (Uncle Ben, Henry and Claire, a copy of this is coming your way!

And what do they do? They jump up at every monster and demonstrate how the monster moves and what the monster sounds like. They moan, roar and growl. They limp, bend and leap. They make up their own monsters, not even mentioned in the book.

Phew! I guess they have imaginations after all.

There is no
Life I know
To compare with
Pure imagination
Living there
You’ll be free
If you truly wish to be

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanta change the world?
There’s nothing
To it