Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Doorway

The twins recently started preschool. They go three mornings a week for a couple of hours and so far they seem to really love it (although today was the first time Oscar cried during drop off). It's a wonderful little hidden treasure of a place nestled right within our neighborhood. Most mornings we ride the bike there in an attempt to soak in every last ray of fall that we possibly can. I know it's only September, but we all know that winter is coming very soon.

What's a bit strange to me about the drop off/pick up routine is that parents are not allowed in the building. I mean, surely I can't be the only one who feels this is a bit off-putting? Yet, every morning, there we all are lined up at the door waiting for a staff member to come and greet our children and take them into the classroom. One by one. Or in our case two by two. Same thing a few hours later. We all roll in and line up by the door and then each child is brought out, one family at a time and there is a brief exchange between parent and teacher, a quick "goodbye" or "great day today", before the next child is dismissed. The door closes between each and every child. As in, door opens, little Susie comes out with teacher, hugs her mom, says goodbye to teacher, door closes. Repeat.

There is no way to sugar coat the way I feel about this. I think it is just plain bizarre. However, I've been willing and able to look past it because my husband has been raving and gushing about this place for years now. He sent all his older kids here when they were little, in fact, when we first met, Ruari was still being dropped off at this very door. Plus, they have a great reputation within the community and they follow a Montessori philosophy, I mean nothing in life can ever be PERFECT, right? So if I have to drop them off at a door, well, so what?

At any rate the whole point of this post is to share with you what happened today. We dropped the twins off and then went to the gym. Saoirse is a pro at the gym by now and barely has time to kiss me goodbye before running off to play. I went to yoga for an hour and then I scooped her up and we went for a little retail therapy, stopped off at the grocery store and before you know it the time had come to go pick up the twins from school. I waited my turn in line. The door opened and it closed at least 7 times before I had made my way to the front.

The directress opened it once again and I caught sight of my two nibbles, so big now, holding their school sacs and coming out to greet me. But this time she ushered for me to come closer, she had me come half way into the doorway. You can imagine how exciting this was for me!

"I just want you to know", she said quietly, "that your children are incredible. They are just amazing. ALL of your hard work is showing through".

As a parent, you will never get tired of hearing words like these. EVER. And you know what? I know they're amazing (Oscar says to me on the way home, "sharks are fish and whales are mammals mom") and I certainly don't need anyone to tell me this in order to know it or believe it, but it sure feels good to hear it, AND to know that I'm leaving them at the door with someone who knows it too. That's a great feeling.



Friday, September 10, 2010

P.S.

Friday is bliss. We frolic. We lolligag. We swagger. And we giggle our way through the afternoon, because we know that soon everyone will be back home again with a lighter load, with an extra skip to their step, on account of it's FRIDAY and even the twins know by now that Friday is special, that Friday means all sorts of wonderful things. Wonderful weekend things.







You should have seen how the babies lit up as soon as these two girls arrived home from school today. It was like Mardi Gras for a minute right in our very own front yard.



And Saoirse even had the beads to prove it...



Ok look, obviously I am resposible for the tutu (I feel as if I've demonstrated incredible self restraint since she's only worn it one other time and that was nearly 3 months ago) but she is the one who found the beads and then insisted upon wearing them all day long. A recent thing of hers is dressing herself and she'll pretty much try to put on anything she can get her hands on. We're frequently finding her bobbling through the house with a pair of Nuala's shorts slung round her neck or a giant shirt of mine dangling off her shoulders. She's turning into a fashionista that one.


Tacos and Slow Cookers

Oh geez, someone's been neglecting her blog again. That's OK though, because it only means that I've been busy paying tons of attention to all the other stuff, the important stuff. We've been caught up in a whirlwind of back to school stuff. We all seem to be settling in rather nicely. Although, this school year has me greeting the day a bit earlier than I'm used to and I don't know that I'll be able to maintain a 6am wake up call indefinitely, let's just take it a day at at a time shall we?

The nice thing about getting up so early is that I get a lot done right away, which makes the rest of the day seem so peaceful, so easy. This week I dusted off our slow cooker and had dinner simmering away by early afternoon. I can't describe how wonderful this made our evenings. I think I've mentioned it before, but Brendan is the chef around these parts and enjoys cooking us delicious homemade meals as often as possible. We're really lucky for this, I know we are, but the problem with home cooking is that it's fairly time consuming. Meaning of course that as soon as he walks in the door from a long day at work he pretty much has to get started on dinner right away. He's tired, I'm tired, the babies want to see their dada, the older kids need help with their homework, someone has soccer practice, someone needs a ride somewhere, someone needs to be picked up from somewhere else, etc....you see where this is going. Our lives seem to be more and more hectic as time passes, and dinner time is usually the most hectic point of the day. Yeah. So slow cooker it is. At least once (maybe twice) a week. So far I've made a chicken taco soup and some meaty spaghetti sauce. Brendan isn't thrilled about it, but has been willing to compromise so long as I promise to avoid all 'cream of anything' soups in the process.

Indian Summer held their annual Education Day this morning and so I hauled out the triple stroller and met Micah's class there. Unfortunately, I was so busy wrestling three littles and keeping an eye on the stinker that I neglected my camera duties. Oh well, it's always a balancing act and if the Canon takes a back burner, so be it. I can live with that. Happy weekend all. We've got soccer games and fry bread to look forward to, oh and the fresh pan of cookie bars I just pulled from the oven.