for vicki jo

have you seen her dressed in blue?

see the sky in front of you

and her face is like a sail,

speck of white so fair and pale,

have you seen a lady fairer?

vicki jo: 4 years!!!

Oh, my sweet girl.  Can it be four years ago that we went to the hospital in a terrified frenzy after falling down the stairs?  Can it be four years since I held you the first time and could only say "My baby! My baby!" over and over again?

In honor of four years, I have posted four videos, one from each of the years of her life.  I hope all these links work.  :)

Posted by Emily Reeves Grammer on Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Getting closer!
Posted by Emily Reeves Grammer on Sunday, August 5, 2012

Me McGregor & Peter Rabbit
Posted by Zan Starnes Martin on Saturday, March 8, 2014

So how cute are these two little ones? A little play time after fish fry fundraiser for our church youth
Posted by Zan Starnes Martin on Sunday, March 22, 2015

vicki jo: 3 years and 11 months

Oh man.  Is there some kind of terrible developmental phase right now?  My child is pretty much insane.  But I'll just leave this series of pictures here because she is still pretty cute.  (Thanks, God/Nature, for making children so adorable - so our hearts are softened when they try us so sorely!)

Here we are on a really great field trip with the Encore Class to Radnor Lake.  They were studying "animal architecture," and that's a beaver lodge you see in the background!  Vicki threw an enormous fit and didn't want to walk up the hill.  It was really fun for everyone.

Lol at Todd in this picture.  This was at an event at Kings Daughters just before Valentine's Day.  They made some special valentines for family.  

This might just be like the most heartwarming thing ever.  The kids have started to occasionally enjoy going into their room together, shutting the door, and reading on the bed.  I peeked in and snapped the picture right before Todd told me to shut the door and leave them alone.

Eating icicles during Nashville Icepocalypse 2015.  The Donald hat is also a favorite.

I call this one "Selfie with exhausted mother in the background."

Can't believe it's just one month until she's four!  I better get started planning that party . . . 

vicki jo: 3 years and 10 months

Not too many updates on my sweetest girl this month.  She is rocking and rolling.  She is wheeling and dealing.  Her newest thing is fast-forwarding through certain segments of her beloved "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" (the "Mouseketools," for those of you who are in the know), because she says they are "disgusting."  That cracked me up.  Maybe you had to be there.  

Showing Bubba how to get Mickey on the iPad while snuggled up on the couch.

They have been obsessed and begging to go in the carts with cars at Kroger.  Mostly so they can swipe candy from the low shelves when I'm not looking.

This is about as much snow as we ever get in Nashville!  But we enjoyed the crap out of it and even made some snowballs.

She had her second hostess day at Encore.  Grandma went with her this time since I was all tied up with my D.Min. program.  She loved it.  We also made frozen bananas dipped in chocolate for the snack!

vicki jo's rules for school

As we left earlier than usual, fought traffic in the rain, and deliverd the kids to their various schools before I headed to start this D. Min. course, I mentioned to Vicki Jo that I was nervous about whether I would do well in this school that was meant to help me do my job better.  She matter-of-factly informed me of the "Five Rules for School" that would be my sure-fire recipe for success.  

1)  Listen to your teacher's words.

2)  Always follow all the rules.

3)  Always do what your teacher tells you to do.

4)  Always help your friends when they need help.

5)  Meet all the new people.

Pretty good, huh!?  I'm gonna follow them for these two weeks and I bet they will be the secret sauce.  

vicki jo: 3 years and 9 months

Oh where, oh where has my baby girl gone!? 

It seems as if she is just getting older by the second.  She is such a bright, spirited, articulate little child.  My time with her is always challenging and always rewarding.  Here is what she has been into the last month.

She loves coming to church and "preaching" from the Bible that sits outside the Sanctuary.  This is completely unprompted by me and I think it is the most thrilling thing ever.

Enjoying an unseasonably sunny day at her favorite neighborhood ice cream shop.

She loves stopping at this tree in a neighbor's yard, where they have planted a "help yourself" herb garden.  She always samples the parsley and rosemary.

Depositing some of her Christmas money in her bank account.  She is up to $34!

She and Rocky the cat enjoy sleeping on top of one another.

Hanging with her bubba and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the iPad.  (Sidenote:  It is positively creepy how intuitive Apple products are for children.  I swear this child came out of my womb knowing how to use an iPhone.  She just picked up the iPad, swiped it, asked me for my security code, and was off the races.  Scary.)

want/need/wear/read

My kids get so much stuff for Christmas.  Like - so much stuff.  They have very doting grandparents, great-grandparents, friends, and teachers.  I really have not felt like there was much I could do to compete with that, and in fact, for their birthdays and Christmases so far, I've not really gotten them anything!  I will make whatever food they want on their special days, but I leave the material gift-giving to the professionals.

I started to feel a little guilty about this, though, and decided I would try out a strategy I'd heard about from friends:  give them four types of presents.

1)  Something they want.

2)  Something they need.

3)  Something to wear.

4)  Something to read.

So, how did Christmas 2014 stack up?

I think it went pretty well!  I decided to hand-make what I could, given my time constraints.

I knit Vicki a pair of soft socks in her favorite color (purple!) - so there is #3 for her.  And Todd needed a cross-stitched cuff for his stocking, so there is his #2.

Here are the finished products!  I'm really happy with them, and I'm glad I decided to stitch Todd's present, as I'd forgotten how enjoyable counted cross-stitch can be.

I also went to a local kids' gift store and bought a few items for them.

Here's the array:  a got them each a few Schleich animals, which are my favorite.  I got Todd a little Euro-style race car.  Vicki got some new triangular crayons.  One book for each of them.  They each got a few of their favorite beautiful satsumas.  You can see Vicki's socks and Todd's stocking topper here. Not pictured is another gift I gave to Vicki earlier in the week.  She had been begging for a pink Thermos cup and soup container every time we went to Target.  So I got them for her.

You can also see the hand-quilted and -stitched stocking my own grandmother made for me ("I Love Christmas").  I gave myself a couple of oranges too.  :)

In years to come, I intend to knit and felt a Christmas stocking for each of them, cross-stitch Vicki a stocking cuff as well, and stitch the cuffs onto the stockings.  But all that can wait until next year at least.

So, here's how it all broke out:

1)  Something they want:  Thermos cup and container for Vicki, race car for Todd.

2)  Something they need:  crayons for Vicki, stocking cuff for Todd.

3)  Something to wear:  socks for Vicki, didn't get around to this for Todd!  Fail.

4)  Something to read:  a simple Christmas-related book for each of them.

They have really loved all of this, in addition to the many others toys and treats they have received.  Funny enough, the thing they have loved playing with the most is our nativity!  They like keeping the wise men far away and then moving them a bit closer each day until Epiphany.  They also loved putting baby Jesus in the manger on Christmas Eve after church.  I love how this set is wooden and durable, and I don't mind at all if they want to play with it!  In fact, my heart just delights in hearing Todd lisp, "Baby Jesus!"

How have you approached gift-giving in your family?

vicki jo: 3 years and 8 months

Today, Vicki adds another month to her life.  Baby girl is not such a baby anymore.  As we think through our school decisions for the year(s) to come, I'm reminded that she is growing every day.  Here's what the last month held:

Getting a ridiculously bad bang trim.  Uhhh . . . sorry kid, hairstyling ain't Mom's forte!

Going on a field trip to TPAC with her Encore class to see a play, then having lunch downtown with me.  I'm so happy that she loves urban centers as much as I do . . . (hey Vicki, remember you're a legacy to Columbia!)

Dancing her face off at Julianne and Parth's wedding, until someone stepped on her foot and it was all over.  She also got to see her old friend Remy, which was amazing.  They remembered each other like it was yesterday.

Getting too grown to ride in the stroller anymore.  Until she gets tired.  

Verrrry occasionally taking a nap at the same time as her brother.  Like blue-moon frequency.

Getting some super-sweet new kicks from her cousin Sloane.

Also spending Thanksgiving with her Aunt Nelle, Uncle Matt, and cousins Sloane and Elliott.  I always wish my sister and I lived closer together so our kids could hang out all the time.  

Being my super-helper with Bubba on our 8-hour drive home from the wedding.  (Thank God for good weather and rest areas with playgrounds!)

Enjoying the climbing wall at Izzy and Jamie's house, down the road from Memaw's.

Isn't she lovely!?

my children aren't "exclusive"

Parenting these days isn't for the faint of heart.  At least for those who have the internet at their disposal from the first moment they see two lines on the stick, through the late nights up with the newborn, to the late nights up with the toddler, to the late nights up waiting on the teenager . . . wait, do I sense a theme?  :)

The kids on a pallet watching TV - oh wait, that was something else they weren't supposed to do, right?

Seriously, though - it is just way too easy to ask Google:  "Am I a bad parent?"  "How do I get the baby to sleep?"  "I yelled at my toddler is she ruined forever?"

Parents who didn't have the advantage of Google and 3780340 parenting books seemed to have a lot more peace of mind.  Perhaps they didn't know they were making such monstrous mistakes as not feeding their kids all organic home-pureed baby food.

Kids these days have to be "exclusively" everything, if they want a chance at success.  It starts with birth.  Exclusive medication-free, of course.  Wait, I failed that one.  I had a half-dose of some dope that gave me amazing hallucinations during Vicki's birth.  Then, with Todd, well - no chance for any medication although I would have traded my left brain for some at one point.  Nope, my kids weren't exclusively free of medications at birth.

After birth comes vaccinations.  We have neither followed a standard vaccination schedule, nor refused to vaccinate.  Wait - you mean there's another option than being exclusively pro or anti vaccine!?

Let's not forget cloth diapers.  Well, except for all those times I've used disposable diapers.  Then we can forget them.  But hey, every time I use a cloth diaper, it's one less disposable in the landfill, right?

Next - exclusively breast-fed, naturally.  Except that didn't quite work out for me either.  I nursed them both as much as I could (and still nurse Todd), and recognized that they wouldn't die from being fed formula the rest of the time.  No exclusivity for my combo-fed babies.

Then the sleep training debacle.  Of course, you're either spoiling your kids and defiling your marriage by letting your kids sleep in your bed, or you're abusing your kids by letting them cry in their cribs at night while you pee by yourself for once in your life.  No middle ground here either.  Exclusively attachment parenting or cry-it-out.  Well, I failed on that one too.  My babies sleep with me all the time, except for when Vicki started sleeping by herself when she was six months and she cried a bunch.  Then she slept through the night.  Looks like I failed to be consistent on this point, as well.

When your kids start eating real food, you are bombarded by more alarmist messages:  If you feed them before six months they will be obese!  If you feed them non-organic food they will get autism!  The doctor is telling you to give them gruel with no nutritive value that looks awful.  Once again - I was never able to achieve anything exclusive.  I was the weirdo who pureed coconut oil and chicken stock and homemade yogurt into squash and took it to my kids' daycare.  But I also let them eat my fries soaked in GMO canola oil.  Nope - life is too short to ever leave a French fry behind.

And now that we are through all those hurdles, the lack of exclusivity continues.  Sometimes I yell at my kids.  Mostly I try to hug them.  Very occasionally they get spanked.  I guess this disqualified me from the ranks of the attachment parenting people.  But I also don't discipline them with rods and crazy Biblical teachings, either, so I guess I can't be a part of the Train Up a Child community.

There will be more crossroads in the future.  Someday my kids will choose gender identities and sexual orientations.  I have no idea if they will be exclusively gay or straight.  And that's totally cool with me.  Someday, perhaps, they will choose partners - and I'm sure I will neither love nor hate those people, but have extremely nuanced feelings about them.

See, life isn't about exclusivity.  I hope the one message they are seeing from me, through all of this, is that life is messy and complicated.  People who have doctrinaire stances on these issues are setting themselves and their kids up for hard re-actions.  There isn't much I can be sure of.

But there is one thing.  My children are exclusively loved and protected by God.  They are exclusively inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and held by a community of faith.  God's love for them is perfect and God needs no Google or manual to show how to love children.  So I'm leaving it up to him.  Because obviously I can't get it right!  And I've really quit trying to be so perfect.

vicki jo: 3 years + 7 months

On November 2, Vicki Jo adds 7 months to her 3 years.  Here is what she is up to:

Finishing up her soccer season.  It couldn't end soon enough for her.

Being exceptionally sassy.  (Including getting in trouble for disobedience in both her schools.  Ugh.  I had similar issues and I'm afraid history is repeating itself.)

Demanding pancakes for breakfast every morning.  She and Todd also demand to eat all the batter help.

Really enjoying her Encore program.  Except when she won't listen to her teacher (see above).

Playing a game called "I have a secret," in which her secret is always "I love you."  (Heartmelt!)

Sitting all the way through church with grandma (or occasionally up front with me) until Children's Sermon and Children's Church!

Having her second-ever dental cleaning - no cavities!  Although the dentist was "concerned about how close her teeth are together."  Boo for future orthodontics.

Wanting to be "a bad witch who eats people" for Halloween.  I was somewhat disturbed by this, obviously, and told her that witches don't eat people.  She told me the witch in Hansel and Gretel tried to eat them.  I hate when she's right all the time!

Running outside to get in a few quick swings as I get Todd into his car seat.

Sleeping all piled up with her brother.  Thinking of moving them into their own bed soon, or maybe bunks?

Being my sweet girl.

the belly of the beast

This is part 3 of a 4-part series on decisions that I face in how my daughter's education will unfold.  You can find part 1 here, in which I discuss a great preschool enrichment program she's attending; part 2 is here, in which I discuss my ambivalence about homeschooling.

In this segment, I will discuss the public school options that we have.  There are a ton.  Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has a byzantine system sprawling throughout Davidson County.  It's a far cry from the neat, excellent public schools I attended as a girl.  Lawrence has a variety of factors that give rise to its great schools - a major university in the center of town, no competition from private or parochial schools (the word "charter" is still unheard of there), a real estate tax base that can be equitably carved up so that funding can be roughly the same for all schools.  A lot of it really boils down to:  it's a small enough community that it can be managed pretty easily.  MNPS, on the other hand, is gigantic.  In 2011-2012, MNPS served 77,617 students.  By comparison, my hometown school district serves ~11,000.

So, here are the viable paths that we can take for Vicki Jo (that I know of at this point - one of the issues with MNPS that I've found is that you have to really educate yourself thoroughly on your options.  No one is going to be calling you telling you about choices you have for your family):

1)  Lockeland Design Center.  This school is by far the closest to our home (literally, Google Maps tells me it is .2 miles).  We can walk there in under five minutes.  It is an amazing school.  It is ranking in the top performing elementary schools in the state of Tennessee right now.  It's also a magnet, and an exceedingly popular one at that.  Because it is designated as an optional school, we have to go through a lottery.  We are in no way guaranteed a spot at this school.  In fact, the lottery has become very selective in the last few years (because of massive increases in applications), so that only about 40% of children in our neighborhood who do not currently have a sibling attending there are getting spots in Kindergarten.  Unless something changes about the zoning, I cannot count on LDC as a sure bet.

           
 a)   I have the additional decision to make of whether I should apply for Vicki Jo to enter  Kindergarten early (fall of 2015).  I have to make this decision fairly soon, because the lottery takes place around the turn of the year.  She has gone through the necessary testing and been approved to do this, if the principal and I agree it's a good idea.  We generally have to make application for the lottery by somewhere around December 1.  I can't help but admit that the soaring popularity of the school is contributing to my thought that I might try to enroll her early.  If we don't get in through the lottery, we can always try again for Kindergarten next year.

2)  Warner Enhanced Option Elementary.  Warner is our "school of zone."  This means that we do nothing to enroll there except show up.  Warner is a school that draws from a very integrated demographic, which is attractive to me.  I love the idea of Vicki Jo experiencing education with people from different backgrounds.  This school has also been making strides in terms of performance and testing.  (Blech.)  It's a bit larger than Lockeland (350 students vs. 305), and the school day is 45 minutes longer (this is what makes it an "enhanced option" school).  There are a core of parents that are very dedicated to improving Warner, and I have to admit that it's a school that is growing on me.  I need to tour.  I like the idea of escaping the crazy stressful process that is the lottery.

           
 a)  I have the same decision to make about early admission to Kindergarten here as I do at Lockeland.  The jury is still out on that one.

3)  Hull-Jackson Montessori Magnet or Stanford Montessori Design Center.  These are optional schools that require a lottery.  We are not in the priority zone of the lottery for either of these schools, which makes acceptance a long shot (worse odds even than getting into Lockeland).  The benefit of these schools:  Montessori!  I love the Montessori method and would love my children to be experiencing it.  These schools use mixed-age classrooms and start enrolling at age 3.  So, I applied through the lottery for Vicki Jo to go to both of these schools last year.  At the end of all five of the lottery draws, we ended at numbers 31 and 7 on the wait lists, respectively.  I will apply again for these school, but I will have to decide where they fall in priority, along with Lockeland.  We can only make one application, and have to rank up to 7 choices on that application.  A downside of either of these schools is that they are not in our neighborhood.  They would entail a bit of a commute every day, which would be annoying.  They also don't support our local community in the way that I would ideally like to.

(Are you feeling overwhelmed yet??)

4)  Charters.  There are a few options in our neighborhood, but I'm not interested.  I don't think giving power to for-profit companies to increase school choice and effectiveness is the way forward.  Especially when we have so many other viable options in our neighborhood and in our family's life.

5)  Pre-K.  MNPS has made a commitment to expanding their pre-K programs (which are defined as programs offered to children in the year before they start Kindergarten) so that all students will be able to attend free of charge.  There are two pre-Ks that I'm interested in:  Ross Early Learning Center and Warner Pre-K.  Lockeland does not have a Pre-K.  We very nearly went to Ross this year - we made application and were accepted and everything.  But it ended up not being much cheaper for extended care than what we currently pay at King's Daughters.  (The catch is that it is "free" for the school day - but if you need any care for your child beyond 8-3, you pay $70/week!).  The difference between Ross and Warner Pre-Ks is that Ross is a freestanding center with multiple pre-K classrooms, while Warner is a Pre-K housed in an elementary school.  The big benefit at Warner would be that if that ends up being Vicki's elementary school, she gets an added year for continuity and stability.

I feel completely exhausted just typing all of this.  As I mentioned above, I had to pretty much dig up all this information on my own.  I can't imagine that a parent with less luxury of time (because of working multiple jobs, being in service industries, etc) would have the ability to do this kind of research.

My bigger issue with all of this has to do with what is trending in public education, regardless of how "good" or selective the school.  Longer class times, less teacher freedom, more testing (much more testing), less enrichment, less recess.  Do I want my young child to jump right into all this?  Vicki Jo will probably do fine, because she can sit still pretty well.  But do I want Todd to jump into it at 5, and be labeled ADHD because he acts like a 5-year-old?  These are the difficult questions.  When I started Kindergarten in 1990, we went for half a day, and we still had a rest time.  Those days are gone in our public schools.  So what's a mom to do?

denim skirt lady

This is part two in what I'm reckoning will be a four-part series on how on earth I plan on educating my daughter in this crazy world.  See here for part one, in which I discuss the Encore enrichment program offered by our public school system.

Once upon a time, like many others, I thought homeschooling was kind of a quaint, fringe thing.  If you had strong religious objections to what was taught in public school, or you lived waayyy out in the country and it didn't make sense to send your kids into town - that kind of thing.  Basically, I thought all the homeschooling moms were the kind who wear denim skirts and grow their hair out long and kinda look like the scared FLDS women:

As in so many things in life - I was wrong.  I first saw that homeschooling could be more mainstream when I read Ree Drummond's blog.  Homeschool was discussed as a viable, normal choice for the first time for me in the playgroup I had with fellow Bradley birth moms after Vicki Jo was born.  As I became more exposed to the Weston A. Price Foundation practices of diet and lifestyle, I heard more and more about homeschool families.  There seems to be a large crossover between natural foods and medicine and homeschool, for whatever reason.  Finally, after moving to Nashville and our church, I met several families who had successfully homeschooled their children.  And not a denim skirt in sight.  It's a choice that's growing in popularity in my neighborhood, and there seems to be a wealth of support.  Co-ops, tutorials, fellow homeschool families.  They are everywhere!

I have extremely ambivalent feelings about homeschooling my kids, and they center around three main concerns:  (1) I feel duty as a conscientious citizen to support local public schools so that the community can benefit from the investment of my family's resources.  (2) I may not be the best teacher for my kids.  (3) The public schools in our area may not be the best fit for my kids.

1)  I'm a proud product of excellent public schools.  I have to say that I really didn't even understand the elite private school system in our country until I went to Columbia.  It was so far removed from my reality.  My hometown had no competitive private schools.  There were a few parochial schools, but not even one that went through junior high at that point.  Our schools worked well for a few reasons:  there were not other drains on the system (no magnets, no private schools); the community was small enough that they could be funded by real estate taxes and have districts equitably divided to include high values in each school zone; there was a critical mass of invested families; and we did not have the historic issues that seem to plague many school systems since integration (for example, city/county school district mergers, or white flight to private "Christian" schools).  I recognize that Metro Nashville Public Schools can only be as great as the families that are committed to them.  I hear my teacher friends lamenting that there is "only so much" that can be done in the classroom.  At the end of the day, the family really is the first and greatest teacher.  If I opt out of that system, am I becoming part of the problem rather than solution?

2)  I'm pretty sure that I'm not called to be a stay at home mom.  (Although never say never!)  I received a calling into ordained ministry before I received a calling as a parent, and they are equally relevant and demanding calls in my life.  Of course, even without a ministerial appointment, I would remain an ordained pastor.  But this is really an aside in the conversation.  The point is that I am not a trained, qualified teacher.  I did not go to school to learn pedagogy.  I'm not knocking anyone who wants to teach their kids at home without these qualifications.  But great teachers are called into teaching.  I know this because some of my closest friends are amazing teachers and school administrators.  And to put up with what they put up with - friends, it has to be a calling.  I'm not sure that I have received that calling in life.

3)  But let's counterbalance numbers 1 and 2 by saying that our particular public schools here in Nashville may not be the best for my kids.  For instance, I hear a lot about recess (or the lack thereof) these days.  I will address this much more in a later post on our public school options (because there are many), but I feel that plenty of outdoor play and exercise do much to enhance education.  I'm concerned about the level of testing that is happening in all public schools.  I'm not really sure what to make of Common Core (although I refuse to be alarmist about it - most of my teacher friends find it to be totally fine).  I guess the bigger question is:  does the issue of inequality in public schools get balanced on the backs of my children?  All parents have to make that decision (although some have fewer choices).  My social justice crusader side says:  absolutely.  My protective mother bear side says:  nope.

So, clear as mud, right?  Now you know how I feel!  But when I entertain the option of homeschooling, there are several sort of "schools" that I'm attracted to.  Montessori would be amazing (and God knows I could never afford to send my kids to the private Montessori schools around here) - but once again, I am not trained.  And Montessori in particular is a pedagogy that requires precise training with the materials and philosophy involved.  Oak Meadow curriculum is beautiful, soft, warm, and Waldorf-y.  I have recently discovered Charlotte Mason and fallen in love with the talking points of her educational system.  All of these streams of educational philosophy have dedicated followings and groups in my area.

The part of me that loves planning and filling out lists just want to dive straight into designing and executing curriculum for my kids.  But being able to do that stuff doesn't necessarily make you a good teacher.

Thought this was interesting.

The good part is that I have time to decide.  For now, I lurk around several homeschool Google groups and Facebook pages.  I see what moms struggle with.  There is even a beautiful community of single moms who are homeschooling and supporting one another.  I have barely even touched here on the practical issues that homeschooling my kids would entail.  Would they just come with me to the office?  Would we all work together?  Would I have them in some kind of childcare, and then do school in the evenings and on the weekends?  There are many possibilities, but all of them present quite a bit of upstream swimming against our prevalent cultural model of the "school day."

One thing I'm not afraid of is being iconoclastic.  I have already opted out of a lot of what society expects of me.  But this is a decision that is much bigger than anyone's opinion.  A helpful piece of advice I got early on in considering homeschooling was:  "just take it one year at a time."  I'm not deciding my kids' entire educational future if I do decide to homeschool.  Food for thought.

encore!

Let me just preface this whole post by saying how annoying I know it is when parents talk about their genius kids (with or without substantiation of geniusness).  It's only slightly more acceptable in grandparents, who for some reason are culturally permitted to think their grandkids are perfect.  So, throughout, when I talk about my smart daughter, please don't hate me.  Thank you.

Vicki Jo is now 3 and a half.  She is the most charming, needy, mercurial, slight, gorgeous, frustrating being I have ever known.  She is already a complicated person, and I'm sure that will only multiply in the years to come.

Is my metaphor too thick?

We have known Vicki Jo was bright for a long time.  She spoke early, clearly, persistently.  She reasons and jokes with me and follows the arc of a conversation.  She is beginning to read by taking books that she has memorized through repeated narration and using phonics to sound out the words she already knows.  She enjoys identifying letters in everyday situations, and has developed good letter-sound correspondence.  I have done nearly nothing to encourage this, aside from LOTS of reading together, and talking with her a lot.

We lucked out when Vicki was accepted at King's Daughters.  She has experienced a warm, rich, deep educational setting with teachers who are committed to early childhood education.  They periodically hold parent-teacher conferences, and my hunches were somewhat validated at our first one:

Them:  "Do you know how gifted your daughter is?  Do you think she will be well-served by the public school system?  What plans do you have for her enrichment and further education?"

Me:  "Uhhhh . . . "

I still feel really good about what's happening with her at King's Daughters, and I think that the value of stability in a small child's world cannot be overstated.  So, she continues there for now.  But we have been urged to consider early admission to Kindergarten.  This would mean she starts Kindergarten in Fall 2015.  

Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS for short) is a monster of a system.  It's a county-wide, consolidated labyrinth of 155 schools.  There are magnets, zoned schools, special schools, pre-K sites, and more that I'm sure I don't even know about.  For someone like me, who wants to research things thoroughly, it's a years-long process of educating yourself about this school system.  And by that time, things have changed enough that you have to start over!

I wasn't sure if we wanted to follow through on early admission to Kindergarten for sure, but I wanted it to be an option.  And that meant testing.  Over the summer, we took Vicki Jo for a series of tests with a school psychologist.  I'm not sure exactly what was included in these tests, because I was not allowed to be present for them (I sat out in the hallway).  The psychologist reviewed the results, and then we were scheduled for a meeting with a panel of educators:  a zoned school teacher, an "Encore" teacher (this is what MNPS calls their gifted program), a school psychologist, a school administrator, and me as parent.  I also brought my friend Steph for good measure (she's a middle-school teacher for MNPS).  

What we heard at the meeting was basically that Vicki Jo is extremely gifted, scoring in the high 90s of percentiles in all categories.  She was not given an Individual Education Plan (IEP) yet, because a child must demonstrate that the current classroom setting is an impediment to their learning - and she doesn't have a classroom setting yet!  But she was approved for early admission to Kindergarten, and she was referred for Encore services.

For preschool children, all Encore classrooms are housed in an old school building called Robertson Academy.  If your child is tested and qualifies, you are offered one three-hour block of enrichment per week, free of charge.  We signed Vicki up for Wednesday mornings, and it's been awesome!  She looks forward to going, and I think it's fun for her to be in an environment with children who enjoy similar levels of challenge and critical thinking.

One hard spot has been the School Standard Attire (aka SSA aka uniform).  All MNPS students have to follow SSA to one degree or another, depending on the school.  My headstrong girl does not like being told what she can and can't wear.  She has been dressing herself for nearly a year.  These moments make me seriously dread the years to come . . . 

A favorite outfit I like to call the "full owl."

Her teacher, Mrs. Sturgeon, has been so helpful about communicating well with us beforehand, reaching out to each parent and informing them what the program would be like, and sending home detailed descriptions of each lesson.  We also have little bits of "homework" - essentially just discussions she wants us to have with our kids about the subject matter.  

My hope is that, after spending some time with Vicki Jo, Mrs. Sturgeon can offer me some better insight about whether early Kindergarten would really benefit her.  There would certainly be positives, but there may be more negatives.  Post forthcoming on the early Kindergarten decision!

raising arizona

My family loved the cult classic Raising Arizona.  There was a line where one of the characters tells Nicholas Cage, after he robs a convenience store with pantyhose on his head, "Son, you got a panty on your head."  Vicki Jo has been cracking me up lately with her panty antics:

temperament and development

Having two kids is naturally a breeding ground for comparison.  I can only imagine what it must be like to have twins or to be a twin, where the comparison is even more intense.  But I think that it's a natural human thing to use past experience to find your way through the present, so I've found myself comparing a lot of what Todd and Vicki do, and thinking about what circumstances may have brought about the divergences between them.

The conclusion I've pretty much come to?  Parenting doesn't make all that much difference!

Vicki Jo came into the world in a surprising, sudden way, and everything about her has been intense and sensitive ever since.  She is a natural actress and can turn on the tear faucet as fast as anyone I've ever seen (and turn it off just as quickly).  I like to joke that she still cries more than Todd, at 2 1/2 years old (it's not really a joke, because it's true).  Before she became so verbal, there were many times as her parent that I simply could not figure out what to do to make her happy.  We spent many evenings crying together.  And yes, that is as depressing as it sounds.

She was slow to develop in every way except one:  talking.  She is remarkably verbal, has a huge vocabulary, and is on a fast track to reading early.  I know, this kind of parental bragging is nauseating.  But let me counterbalance that by saying that she was painfully slow to roll, sit up, crawl, pull up, and walk.  I often wondered whether she might need some therapy.  She didn't get her first tooth until she was nearly 12 months old.

Looking back, the single biggest hurdle to her development in all of this had to have been her temperament.  She would not be put down.  If you did put her down, and ignored her screaming, she refused to do any kind of active work to further her physical development.  She wanted to be held and talked to.  Even still, she does not like working or playing by herself.  She does not "entertain herself."  She needs interpersonal stimulation.

Todd, on the other hand, took his very sweet time in being born, and I had to semi-evict him even when it was past time.  He was born much larger (8 lb 12 oz to Vicki's 7 lb 1 oz), and 16 days later than she was, in terms of the length of the pregnancy.  He has been content to wait and observe ever since.  Other than necessarily having to leave him on the floor more often, just because I have another child to tend to, I do very little differently than I did with Vicki.  And yet, he has wanted to be on his own.  He has wanted for me to stop interacting with him sometimes.

This has led to a stark difference in his development.  He began inching around in his fourth month, was easily crawling by six, and now, at seven months on Monday, has begun to pull up to a stand on my legs and the walls.  He cut his first tooth last week, with very little fanfare.  He loves nothing more than to be set free to crawl around the house and explore it by himself.

Like I said, I followed no kind of program to get Todd to meet milestones so much earlier than Vicki did.  The only difference in me is that I have had an infant before.  Perhaps my lack of anxiety about his development contributed to his easy personality.  But I think he may have just been this way, regardless.

So the moral of the story?  Don't give yourself so much credit as a parent.  These kids pretty much figure things out themselves!

family resemblance

You think they might be related?

king's daughters

When Jeff decided to enter rehab at the end of April, I was faced with an immediate dilemma.  He had been a full-time caretaker for our daughter, and she needed somewhere to spend her days while I was at work!  If only baby Todd had been more considerate of our schedule, I could have kept them both during my maternity leave (okay, that actually sounds like a nightmare, but I know that lots of moms do it!).  However, he still had a month more to cook, unbeknownst to me at the time!

She came with me to work for a week or two.  You know what is exhausting for a 38-week-pregnant lady? Trying to keep your toddler from misbehaving at work while simultaneously getting any work done.  So when Jeff's grandmother (our beloved Memaw) called and said a spot had opened up at King's Daughters and offered it to Vicki Jo, I rejoiced to the heavens.

Let me explain a little bit.  King's Daughters Day Home is a non-profit preschool started in 1965 to serve low-income families in Madison, TN.  (This is the northern suburb of Nashville where my church is and Memaw lives.)  The International Order of The King's Daughters and Sons is a religious philanthropic organization that I'd never heard of before meeting Memaw.  Their goal is to "lend a hand in service."  Um, yeah.  I think you could say they have done this for our family!

Memaw is a King's Daughter.  She has been one for a long time.  She works very part-time at the Day Home as part of their development team (sidenote:  the woman is 83 and still works because she wants to!).  The Day Home is not just any preschool.  Every person that works there has a college degree - most of them in early education and development.  Some of them have or are working on advanced degrees.  They care deeply about the education and emotional well-being of their small charges.  And it shows.  They make an effort to learn about each home environment (some of which are very troubled).  They incorporate elements of Montessori and Reggio education into their lesson plans, which are posted on the wall near the student folders for all to see.

They offer superb education for young people at a marginal, sliding-scale cost based on income.  They get lots of grants and are always actively seeking donations.  They accept children starting at age 2 1/2 and potty-trained.

But Vicki Jo was neither of these things.  She had just turned two on April 2, and was just beginning to tell us when she needed to use her potty.  They took her anyway, mostly because of Memaw.  And they knew that our situation was pretty pressing.

It has been one of the best things that has happened to our family.  They took Vicki in and basically potty trained her for me.  She is now totally dry during the day.  She is learning so much.  She tells me every day about new language and math skills she is picking up.  I hear daily about each of her friends in class - Jorge and King and Ciara and Autumn and Micah - and her teachers, Ms. Jasmine and Ms. Sonya.

Vicki has a hard time going to school in the morning.  She still cries a little when I drop her off.  But they tell me that she is fine after a minute or two.  And when I come to get her in the afternoon, she is playing joyfully, and has all the adults wrapped around her finger.  I cannot wait until they open their Infant-Toddler Center next spring, and Todd gets a chance to be at King's Daughters too!