Orientation

My two high schoolers go back to school tomorrow.  My oldest will be a Junior.  My middle child will be starting ninth grade.  My youngest will be in sixth grade but he doesn't go back until after Labor Day.  This year they will all be going to different schools, two of them on buses, one walking, all leaving the house at different times.  We've bought supplies, cleaned out backpacks, and made sure everyone has a key to the house.  I've set my alarm for the first time in months.  I'm not sure what more there is to do but I don't feel like we're really prepared for this shift into a new more intense schedule.

The biggest change will be for my middle child venturing into a new school where she doesn't know anyone.  Mona had her two days of freshman orientation last week.  She will be in the class of 2022.

From my perspective this feels strange for a few reasons, including the fact that I remember when the idea of the "Year 2000" seemed very far away.  All the futuristic stuff when I was a kid was set somewhere after 2000.  And now I have children who will be graduating two decades or more into that spacey sounding millennium.  (Still no flying cars, though, or even real hover-boards.)

Also, high schoolers seemed very grown-up to me when I was a child, and now of course they seem outrageously young.  Even though I didn't feel like an adult at 14 I remember that knowledge of it being the oldest I'd ever been and it seemed like a lot.  In many ways I wanted to be autonomous, but it was scary to start really thinking ahead about a future away from my parents and how hopelessly unprepared I was for it.  I see my daughters struggling with those ideas now.  I'm struggling with it from the other side, thinking ahead to letting them go.

For orientation I walked my daughter to her new school both days, which is about ten minutes from our house and at the other end of our neighborhood park.  It's the school my grandpa attended back during the Depression.  It's a school that has a troubled reputation but is in transition.  It was my daughter's first choice, even though she had lots of possibilities available to her around the city.  I'm proud of her for wanting to go to our neighborhood school even though she doesn't know anyone there.

It was hard to leave her there both mornings.  It reminded me too much of her first day of kindergarten.  Which is funny, because I don't really remember the first days for my other children.  I have pictures of Aden with her earnest smile and bejeweled purse posing outside of Head Start downtown when she was three, but I can't remember much about the actual drop off.  She loved school, but she usually cried when I left.  Did she cry that first day, though?  I don't remember.  I don't think so.  And Quinn's first day?  I'm pretty sure I cried.  But did he look back at me when it was time for me to go?  Or did he wander off into all those Montessori materials and not bat an eye that I was leaving?  I don't know anymore.

Mona I remember, though.  Everything has always been more extreme with Mona.  She always climbed the highest, swam the farthest, and continues to surprise us at every turn.  Guiding her has always been my truest test as a parent and not one I often feel I'm passing.

On her first day of kindergarten she clung to me and cried in a way that I didn't feel I could leave her.  I ended up sitting with her on the floor outside of her cheerful looking classroom unsure of what to do.  Her teacher (to whom I am forever grateful for being on Mona's side so fiercely in her first years of school) came to us in the hall and said the perfect thing: 

She started by saying that whatever I wanted to do she would support because I knew my child best.  But that in her experience at that moment Mona was in charge and didn't really want to be.  She was sure Mona would be fine after I left.  And of course she was. 

That doesn't change how painful it was to walk away.  Leaving your child with other people to a world you are not directly a part of is wrenching.  I knew Mona needed to form her own relationships with friends and teachers and that's how it's supposed to be, but it's scary.  It felt the same all over again leaving her at the high school, although this time all the tears were mine on the walk home.  I just want it all to go well, but I can't control that.  I want my baby to be okay.

The orientation turned out to be a bit overwhelming and didn't go as well as my daughter hoped, but she admitted it had nothing to do with the school or the people there.  She said everyone was nice.  There are amazing opportunities in this high school, such as a mural club and a classroom where they put together an entire race car every year and culinary classes...  She's looking forward to French class and a course in computer applications in art which she will rock.  All of that is harder to face until you have friends, though.  She was acutely aware of that the first day, which was lonely.  The second day a couple of kids found ways to introduce themselves and now she feels better.

She's created a beautiful dragon costume out of a hoodie that she plans to wear on her first day.  That should send a clear message about who she is and what she's about, and with luck attract people to her side who can appreciate her.  I hope it's a good year.  For all of us.

Mona the Griffin

Mona's costume this year was an interesting challenge in a couple of ways.  She wanted to be a griffin, and she wanted to make as much of it as possible by herself.

The first step was to make sure we were on the same page, since we were talking about an imaginary animal and I needed to get a sense of what she had in mind.  I asked Mona to draw me a griffin, and she quickly sketched out this:

Makes that iguana costume look easy, doesn't it?

The Recycled Kangaroo

Aden wanted to be a kangaroo for Halloween again this year.  She loves being a kangaroo.  She likes being soft, she likes having a big tail, and she likes having a pouch (which conveniently holds either candy or the dog).

Aden has been a kangaroo many, many times.  It was the first costume idea she picked for herself when she wasn't quite three.  (I made several suggestions, but when she realized she could use the pouch of a kangaroo costume for Trick-or-Treating, that was it.)

The main thing I learned from that first kangaroo costume was that in subsequent costumes not to include feet.  I didn't expect my kids to wear their costumes over multiple years (and for any and every occasion), but they do, and room for added leg growth has proven necessary.



So as much as Aden liked being a snowy owl last year, and a zebra the year before, she really liked her kangaroo costume from the year before that and decided to wear it again.  It just needed a few alterations.

Quinn the Iguana

I've got it relatively easy this year for Halloween costumes.  Partially because I've got the process down by now, and mostly because of my daughters' choices.  Aden wants to recycle an older costume, and Mona wants to make most of hers herself.  The only costume I was making myself from scratch was Quinn's.  Quinn asked to be an iguana.

Last year everyone wanted wings.  This year it's all about tails.  Iguanas have nice, long tails.

Quinn picked out some green fleece, I made my standard jumpsuit, got some lighter fleece for the front and the frill, and spent an evening watching Netflix while stitching on the grey spiky bits along the spine.  Quinn helped me stuff the tail and then I took it to work to paint.

The Finished Kangaroo!

Done!  I'm done!  (And I'm actually ahead of schedule and not stitching up the last bit of someone's costume right before the Halloween dance.)  Here is Aden in her newest kangaroo outfit:

Plus it turns out the dog fits in her pouch, so she is a very happy girl.





Three done and none to go!

So now I should maybe, I don't know.... make violins?

Masked Mona

I am honestly surprised that Mona didn't want to make her own costume this year.  She likes creative control over her projects and she has such specific vision about things that I was sure I would only play a peripheral role in making her Halloween outfit.  But she decided she likes having me make her costume and even though I didn't come up with a design that matched what she imagined, she seems really pleased with the outcome.

Mona the raccoon:

A Kangaroo Tale (Babble)

I’ll bet most of you don’t do errands with kangaroos much.  Pity.  When you grocery shop with a kangaroo it makes everyone smile and the whole experience is more amusing than it has any right to be.  Sometimes I have three kangaroos along.  Sometimes just a big one.  Sometimes a teeny one.  But most often it’s the middle sized one, and this week that one went to choir.

Both of my daughters are members of the Milwaukee Children’s Choir.  They love it.  They have beautiul little voices and choir is fun and it meets every Tuesday night.  Last week Mona asked if she could go in her kangaroo costume.  I made that thing two Halloweens ago and I’m amazed it’s still holding together.  Mona likes to lounge around in it at home and I don’t care if she wants to wear it when we go out, but she’d never worn it to choir before.  I asked her if she was sure, and she was, so off we went.

But when we got there, in Mona’s words, “Everyone’s embarrassed of me.”  All the kids in the choir were so delighted that Mona was a kangaroo and everyone wanted to sit next to her, but it made her too self-conscious to participate.  She sat on my lap or on the floor for the whole hour, and despite both the efforts of her sister and the kind words of the teacher, Mona wouldn’t join in the singing.

One of the most interesting things about Mona is that she does wonderfully eccentric things and has great dramatic flair, but it’s private.  In any other kid her behavior would look like an attempt to get attention.  Her tastes lean toward the extravagant, but it has nothing to do with what other people think.  It’s all for her own entertainment, and if anyone takes notice she withdraws.

As she’s gotten older (if you can think of the ripe old age of six as ‘older’) she’s become more worried about what other people think.  I don’t want that to affect her creativity, but I understand it.  I don’t like being the center of attention either, so I don’t push anything.  I just want her to be comfortable with who she is, and if who she is is sometimes shy, that’s fine, but it’s hard to watch your child miss out on something he or she would enjoy without a good reason.  I felt bad that Mona missed out on that choir class.

Many months ago Mona asked me what she should do if people ever laughed at her.  I thought about it a moment, and decided the best response would be to give them a haughty look and say, “Jealous?”  She liked that, and we practiced it by her walking into the room and I would point and laugh, and then she would say, “Jealous?!?” with a big smile, and I would look dumbfounded which cracked her up.  By the next day she couldn’t quite remember it, so when I laughed at her she said, “Nervous?” which I actually like even better.  (I mean, really, if you were trying to put someone down and he or she said, “Nervous?” wouldn’t you suddenly be nervous?  How great is that?)

In any case, we talked about how she should have reacted at choir rather than missing out on a nice time.  I didn’t make her go sing because I appreciated that she was embarrassed, but I pointed out that everyone loved her as a kangaroo.  That nobody was mean about it, or upset.  There was no reason to say to anyone ‘jealous?’ or ‘nervous?’ or anything.  It was all good.

Well, that must have sunk in, because this week she asked again if she could please wear her kangaroo costume to choir.

“Are you going to sing this time?”   Yes.  “You promise?”  Yes.  “You won’t be all self-conscious and embarrassed?”  No, I’ll be fine.

So I made her bring along a change of clothes this time just to be safe, and off we went.  Maybe she just needed a week to mentally prepare, but this time she was completely comfortable.  Everyone was thrilled the kangaroo was back and Mona sang and participated in all the games and had a lovely time.

On the way out of the building (with Quinn sound asleep in his own kangaroo costume weighing a ton in my arms), I asked Mona how it went.  She said, “It was great.  But no one asked for my autograph.”

I love that crazy kangaroo.