School Daze

Anyone following Reid's school saga knows that the academic life of a 2.5 year old isn't all juice and cookies.

After a couple visits to the interim school last week, Reid officially started there this morning. Last weeks visits were mostly successful; one day K stuck around and I was in the classroom for the other day. And Reid had some initial whimpering but seemed to be okay. All weekend long, we've gone back and forth with him attempting to capture a moment when he admitted that he wanted to go back to the new school.

This morning, we took Reid to the new school. He burst through the door and began playing with the plastic wheelbarrow, helpfully saying, "wheelbarrow!" This was good. He leapt into the action, and seemed quite comfortable in the big main playroom. K walked his coat and supplies into his classroom, and then we walked him there himself.

Things began to unravel at this point. Recognizing that school was starting, Reid began to cry. It was hard to walk away. It was precisely this experience that we were striving to escape by leaving the last school. He was breathless as we went through the door.

We sat in the car with tears in our own eyes, thinking about the little boy in the big new school crying, and the little girl waiting in K's belly who could make things a lot harder for him.

The End of an Era: Reid Gets a Haircut

In our house, there have been hours of debate over whether Reid needs a haircut. Literally, hours. Some days, we would come upon Reid swatting at his face like it was being menaced by flies. About six months ago, K researched the place where you can take your child and prop them in front of a television while someone cuts their hair. I've mostly been anti-haircut, mostly because I thought his hair looked fabulous and because my grandmother pointed out that once you cut his hair, he's not your baby anymore, he's a little boy.

But the time came, and today, as good a day as any, we got his haircut. The before, during and after are below. Enjoy.

No Pictures; Just Concerns

I've found that parenting is a lot about making mistakes, correcting them, and then trying to learn before the next thing comes along. Sometimes you just keep making mistakes. Sometimes, you can't know if it's a mistake you're about to make.

K and I both are concerned about the next steps in Reid's pre-school/daycare life. First, though, the good great news. Reid was accepted to a Montessori school and will be attending said school beginning in September. We're really proud that the folks at the school saw in Reid some of the important traits that hopefully mean he'll thrive in the Montessori atmosphere. Everywhere you can read debates about different early education methods, and we've done moderate amounts of research without going overboard. There are lots of different angles on the Montessori school decision for us, including financial concerns, but we feel quite confident about the decision.

The thing we're concerned about is what happens between now and starting Montessori in September. Of course, we're all going to have a gigantic life impact when this new little baby is born in the next little bit. In the meantime, we've decided to pull Reid out of the school he has been at since he turned two in July and put him into a more structured daycare until Montessori starts in September.

The scheduling of this probably could be worse, but not much. The baby is due April 13, but our Alan Greenspan-inscrutable (but far more pleasant) OB thinks things could start happening a bit earlier, so we're on our toes. The situation at Reid's current school had been in decline for the past few months. Dropping him off became parent-hell: He would scream and howl and hang onto your leg like a condemned man. The ladies at the school insisted he was fine five minutes after we left, and we believed them. The teacher Reid had since he got to the school went on maternity leave recently, and her return date was never certain. Based on Reid's (admittedly unreliable) reports, it seemed that his move up to the older kids room when his teacher left wasn't going well. He complained a lot of fighting and getting pushed by other boys. I'm sure he was pushing and fighting, too, if not the first day, then after days of watching kids fighting and pushing. We were seeing more fight-play at home. Reid appeared, too, to be cultivating a genuine antipathy for the new teacher. They watched television too much and hit the playground too little.

We decided it was time to go. We were willing to admit that we made a mistake choosing this school and we found a new place that we were really pleased with. All of this happened when we didn't know whether the Montessori thing was going to happen. It was a longshot, made even longer by the financial situation. (Did I mention we're having another baby?) So we get Reid into the second school and he was scheduled to start there next Monday.

Then we found out that he got into the Montessori.

Two moves in a year and three in 14 months seems bad, doesn't it? It seems like we're doing something wrong, doesn't it? I searched around and couldn't find anyone who really thought it was a problem, surprisingly. This sensation that our correction was really an overcorrection was heightened when Reid began to love his old school. He would still fight us all the way out the door, dreaming up new and elaborate ways to not get dressed, not get in the car, never finish breakfast. But then, for the first time since we arrived here this summer, he didn't cry upon arrival. He seemed perfectly fine. The boorish bosslady of the school laughed at me and said, 'See, he's finally getting it.' I was despondent. Were we making a mistake?

That week continued with Reid being completely normal, which is abnormal considering that he had howled like the man in the iron mask until the Friday before. Today, K dropped him off and he was back to the moaning toddler, sobbing and begging you to stay. It turned out that last week, violating the (loose) system that governs the school, Reid was permitted to hang out with one particular aide in the 4-year-olds classroom, and today she wasn't there.

So we're back to being confident about getting him out of this school pronto. He is excited about going to a new place with new kids and new friends. We didn't want to spook him by transferring the word 'school' just yet, so we're calling it by the daycare's official name. He came home from school today and asked to go there. "No more school."

Just a couple more days, son.

Big Boy Room

A few weeks ago, the paint finally dried on Reid's big boy room, and he moved in.

The room was a labor of love. His mom conferenced mightily with our fashionable relatives and friends about color selections, paint options and bedding. Our only mandate from the room's eventual occupier: orange and blue. Orange is a documented favorite color. We have no idea where the blue came from.

Anyhow, hat's off to Target for having some wonderful bedding that captures Reid's color selection to a T, and includes a monkey driving a jeep.

Evenings and weekends for about a month leading up to the actual painting of the room, Reid's mom and I labored to make the long-neglected guest room -- home to discarded infant toys, ironing boards, and off-season clothing, hiding place for Christmas gifts and space-bags full of spare linens -- into a livable space. Step one was finding somewhere to put the guest bed.

Next, we must disposition the hundreds of things accumulated in the room. Unfortunately, many of these things had to go in airtight containers to our creepy basement. This means that they will only be retrieved when it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY because the basement isn't something you should mess with. Seriously. We also took care of all our charitable deductions for 2006 by donating millions of unused treasures to the Goodwill. Okay, mostly pillows, blankets and clothes.

After the furniture and clothing from the room is cleared, the paint must be scraped. Lead concerns not withstanding, the room has a chronic case of primer-less paint accumulation. Peeling paint covers the walls and the only way to ensure that this doesn't happen with our at this point unfinalized orange and blue is to scrape away paint and smooth the edges down with spackle and sandpaper. This takes weeks and several industrial tubs of sandpaper.

When the scraping, spackling and sanding is finished, the room looks like 11 sacks of flour were exploded within. The scrubbing begins. At this point, I realize that this is something our family can seriously take pride in. So I bust out the high quality drop paper and seal the floors up like a pro. There's tape and paper everywhere. It's an art studio in here, and you could eat off any surface. I'm prepping the walls, taping the floor, caulking the dodgy seams around the doorways and windows. I'm making my boy a room.

This all happens behind closed doors, of course, so Reid can be pleasantly surprised.

Uncle Sean comes in and earns deserved kudos by supervising the final phase of actual color applications. Remind me to tell you about the revolutionary tapeless gravity method of homepainting. It's awesome.

Finally, the room is ready for move-in. Reid is glowing. He loves it. He loves his big-boy room. He takes everyone to see it. Even if they've already seen it. But he makes us proud because he's proud of it. He announces some days, out of the blue, "I want to play big boy room." And we all go up to play. It's wonderful.




[Thus begins hair-brained scheme #1: I will rent a pickup truck and drive it to Nonni's house. Behind the wheel of some kind of monstrous chrome-vehicle, I strap two beds to the cargo area and head to the Steel City. I cover everything in a tarp and about 1100 bungie cords. Halfway up an mountain-for-the-east-coast, the rip-roaring winds and my own lead foot set the bungies launching across the interstate and leave my tarp trailing behind me like Supertruck's cape. I pull over to assess the damage, call the tarp a loss and roll the shredded disaster, grommet's waving in the wind, into a rubber-smelling ball and toss it into the back seat. (King cab, natch.) As if on cue, a thunderhead blows about seven minutes of sustained rain on me and I quickly perform some mental math and determine that the best way to avoid waterlogging the mattresses is to drive very fast. Amazingly, this seems to work.

Moving the beds into my mom's house is harder than it looks, but with the help of some neighbors we get the things up a flight of stairs and I send the guys packing. I know it won't fit up the final ascent without some serious elbow grease, and it's more than you'd ask of an acquaintance. We break for some food and soak up Pittsburgh's utterly Steeler-soaked local scene. Vincent's Pizza and we're the only people who aren't wearing Hines Ward or Jerome Bettis jerseys.

Back at the house, mom and I decide to have one last go at getting the boxspring up the stairs. This takes two and a half hours and by the time it's up there, it is unrecognizable as part of a bed. It is a torture-device-looking rack of tangled wires with wood on two sides. The wood from the other sides has been removed. As have the fourteen or so cross-slats. Hammers in hand, we set to reassembling the boxspring and re-jiggering the wire mesh so it resembles a mattress. I slept on it that night, the sleep of the just.]