…because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

jools never used to be the pickiest eater on the planet. in fact, he will eat (and enjoy) random things, like salmon tikka. but the boy will not eat fruit, nope. and the boy refuses to down yogurt. while he will sometimes eat a scrambled egg, options start to get limited here. and i was tired of feeding him cocoa krispies, which is what the boy really wants.

so i let my fingers do the walking, and i found a recipe for double chocolate pancakes from the site feeding my kids better.  yeah yeah yeah, i know. feeding them chocolate chips for breakfast is not exactly health food. but there are good things, like eggs and milk in there. and any time the boy goes to school with a full belly, well, fist pumps all around.

anyway, i made some yesterday afternoon and set them out to cool. (and yes, i used my beloved guittard cocoa rouge powder in them.) the boy came home from school and was famished, probably because i put the kibosh on his buying cookies (to go with his lunch, which consists of a few snacks that all are acceptable — this week — on this list.) so i warmed up a pancake.

he loved it.

he asked for more.

BC came home from school on the late bus. girlfriend tried one and ended up eating THREE.

okay, okay, so i’m not feeding them sugar-free, natural perfection. but i think we have a keeper.

sadly, i don’t have a picture. (people kept on eating them.) so close your eyes, and imagine a brownish pancake with chocolate chips…

yes. it floweth out your child’s backside. yours, too.

as parents, we all think the world of our children. why wouldn’t we? they are all amazing creatures, each one a special flower annointing the earth with a special glow.

of course, your child is more special than the rest.

your child is a kind and gentle person, ever-so-talented academically, ever-so-agile in sports, ever so social and perfect.

and that is why you cannot believe that your child said anything threatening to my child. you cannot fathom that your child called my child stupid, he called him dumb, he told him he ought to kill himself.

and that is also why it isn’t surprising that you invited a few boys over for a playdate while they all stood in a group with my son… only too bad for mine — he was the only one not invited by you, all in front of the others. i was standing there; i heard it all.  or how about the time you cancelled my son’s long-awaited playdate at your house so that another friend of his could come over instead? of course, my son wanted to know why you did this. you can’t imagine how fun it can be to have to come up with a more palatable reason why an adult would be mean to a kid.

this, of course, isn’t one particular person; this is just a composite of some of the bullshit my child has had to experience in the past 6 months.

now see i am the biggest fan of each of my children. that much is true. but i also don’t believe that the sun shines out of their backsides. i’m well aware that my son, for example, occasionally engages in behavior that isn’t stellar. and when i know about it, i call him on it. it’s simply not acceptable behavior.

but not every parent participates in his child’s upbringing as i do, apparently. because there are plenty of parents who are not willing to believe that some pretty harsh things come out of their kids’ mouths.  they cannot conceive of their child engaging in hurtful behavior. shoot, so many of them cannot see how they participate in this behavior, so how can you expect them to see it in their child’s?

i’m tired of lazy parents who live in denial about their kids.

she gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse…

when our kids were born, we never assigned godparents. see, i never grew up with godparents, so it never occurred to me to select anyone in particular to be godparents to our kids. besides, i thought hopefully, all my brothers, brothers-in-law, and sisters-in-law will hopefully take some liking to our kids and that’s pretty cool, right? (lord knows i am extremely crazy about my nieces and nephews.) not only that, but as i have no biological sisters, i have some friends who my kids have called aunt so-and-so and who have always been very kind and generous to them, treating them as their own and even looking after them at critical junctures.

when BC was young, my friend M2k (or aunt M2k, to be specific) fell head-over-heels for my girl. somehow, M2K got the whole girly-glitter-pink thing that i never did (probably due to the whole i grew up with brothers thing.) over the years, M2k has gotten BC all sorts of wild and crazy stuff from her travels; she has visited the girl whenever she’s in town; she even watched the girl while i was in labor with jools. and BC is just as crazy about M2k, for mary loves the lamb you know. one day, little BC announced: mommy, aunt M2k is my fairy godmother.

i loved the image of M2k floating around with wings and a wand. it suits her generous and loving self so completely.

anyway, we were talking about M2k the other day, as the girl is excited for the day when M2k becomes a mommy herself. and  somehow, our conversation turned us  to thoughts of a mutual friend of M2k’s and mine, David. David doesn’t get over here too often; he lives a continent away.  But when he visits, he always has paddington bears for everyone, or GOOD chocolate bars that you can’t get here, or even foreign coins for the boy’s collection.  he is big-hearted and a dear softie and someone with whom i wish i could spend more time in real life.

David, you should know, also happens to be gay. it’s not something that has ever mattered to me, the girl, or anyone in my house for that matter.  it certainly became clear the first time he and i ever went shopping together — Best. Shopping. Buddy. Ever. (outside of my mom.) but in general, he isn’t my gay friend. he is my friend who happens to be gay.  he never said anything to the girl about this, as it really isn’t something that came into the conversation.  (his kilt, of course, is another story. the girl was FASCINATED by the kilt he has.) but the girl knows, and the girl doesn’t really care.

why am i spending so much time belaboring this point?

the other day, BC and i were talking about music. somehow, we got on the topic of a singer named Adele who has a gorgeous voice. i mentioned that David had met her once, and she was wildly impressed. we ended up talking about how David was doing, and then she lo0ked at me and, with a straight face, said: mom, if Aunt M2k can be my fairy godmother, can David be my fairy godfather?

at first, i had to stifle a chuckle. the girl clearly had no idea of the weird double entendre she had made. then, i had to resist the urge to slap myself for even thinking such a thing. wow, things get awfully ingrained in your head. did you really say that? i asked the girl, thinking she was being extra cheeky.

you don’t think he’d want to be? she asked, straight-faced.

i got over myself quickly and realized that just because that stupid idea flashed through my brain, i didn’t need to flash it through hers and continue down the path.

you can ask him, i replied. i bet he’d be delighted.

i told the story to David later. bless his heart, he didn’t seem offended by my tale. in fact, i hope he wasn’t drinking anything when he read my message, as i can picture the beverage spit all over his keyboard. (and wot a waste of wine that would likely be.)

true to form, he said he’d be delighted. you know, how could he possibly refuse?

so it has been a thrilling day.

i’m still fighting some upper respiratory thing, finally with some ceftin since it’s the next antibiotic in my rolling list of meds. i’m feeling stellar, and that alone, makes it a great day. then, i knew it was trouble when i heard my cell phone play “darlington county” — that’s my ringtone for our public schools. seems i had to pick the boy up from school because he was whacked in the tooth on the playground by a metal piece of playground equipment that another boy was bouncing on… then, he threw up, so i took him home. after an initial rest period, he seems okay, so i’m just going with the no-concussion track for the day. hope i’m right.

you know, mom, there goes the whole idea of adam and eve.

exactly right, i replied.

so i guess the day wasn’t a complete wash

9/11. a day that shall also live in infamy.

i’ve written before about what happened in my little world on 9/11. i think it’s safe to say that the day was the most terrifying day of my life, shepherding my then-two-and-a-half-year-old while panic-stricken in the flight path while wondering where on earth my husband, my aunt, my family could be.  everyone who was alive and old enough can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing that day.

and we have a tree in our yard, one of the 182 planted all around our county, in memory of the pentagon victims.  every day, i look at that tree, now tall and very leafy; and when i’m not cursing the fact that it needs a trim because it’s branches have overspread and sometimes whack my car in the driveway, i smile wistfully, thinking about a lady i never had the chance to meet, a lady who was my co-worker and friend’s wife, a lady who was on that plane. a lady whose daughter recently wrote a column that moved me.  in that column, the daughter talks about how her mother, a clinical psychologist, would note that the last stage of grief is acceptance and renewal. instead of asking her to basically attend her mother’s funeral every year, she writes, why not instead make it a day to look ahead and to look inside at ways we can understand and behave better toward one another?

i must admit, the media lead-up to 9/11 is overwhelming. someone must be very afraid that americans will forget the day, as if it were some minor blip on the radar; and so we get panelists after panelists discussing foreign policy. we get memorials, we get survivors, we get audio and video from that fateful day. it’s all very compelling, like a car crash; but all these things are seared into the national psyche, and it’s as if we are looking backward and not forward.

perhaps it benefits a generation of kids who were not alive or not at least old enough to know what actually happened; but then i look at my daughter, who was a toddler at the time and know better. unlike me, she has had to practice emergency drills at school for terror attacks. she knows how best to hide in the coat closet and squish down along with her classmates in case a gunman is coming. you steer clear of the classroom door, she tells me, and you stay down.  even my son, born after 2001, knows full well that sometimes, you need to practice in case a bad person is in your school.  i remember when they had to figure out danger plans at my son’s daycare in case the children were on the playground and an attack took place. all these plans, and it all starts with protecting babies in daycare, children in schools.  there’s a whole different culture of awareness now, since 9/11, at least down here in DC and, i suspect, in the NY metropolitan area. and it extends all the way down to our littlest citizens.

friends sometimes ask me whether i wish i could move away from this area. and after 9/11, i desperately wanted to. i live in the flight path of national airport and dulles, and the sound of planes overhead jarred me for months after the event. i would look into the sky and pray that the airplane overhead stayed suspended and continued soundlessly to it’s predetermined destination. i became afraid of planes, too, and flew infrequently. in short, i felt powerless in the face of horror, and i wanted to somehow get out of its way.

but the truth is that horror can be anywhere. and so can beauty be. after living here for over 20 years, i have grown to grudgingly love this area, a place that belongs to the whole nation. it’s a beautiful place, especially during the early spring, when flowers bloom amidst the urban world. every day, i can drive by the capitol, the national mall, abe lincoln and thomas jefferson, and see important visual statements about our nation and it’s values. it’s far from nirvana, of course, but it’s really a beautiful, important place.

i want to protect this beauty.

i want to be a part of the citizenry that says no to terror; i want to be a part of the group that lets terrorists know that while they do harm us in serious, painful ways, that we respond. and yes, we respond in grief at first — but we eventually get past that crushing weight and move into acceptance and renewal. my city’s not of ruins; it’s of people who fight terrorism simply by being here and living their lives.  i have accepted that i am here, and i have accepted that, while painful and frightening as it can be to live here, i am going to live here as long as i can stand it. i am going to live here as long as i can love it.

and i intend to love it as long as i can.

i know, i know. i’ve been scarce.

it’s been a crazy year. but no matter what the gods threw at us, we were buoyed by the idea that at the end of june, we were going to spend 8 whole days at club med sandpiper in florida, followed by some time in south florida capped off by a visit with my old friends plus a phillies game versus the hopeless hapless helpless florida marlins. sun, beach, fun — what could be better?

to be sure, we have been to club med sandpiper before. 3 or 4 times, to be exact. (sort of.) we loved the fact that the kids loved having fun in the kids clubs while mom and dad did anything from flying trapeze time (no lie) to water skiing, to rollerblading to golf (okay, well, BS is the golfer; i find golf snoozeworthy.) there was a man as old as methuselah who taught the yoga classes, there was an adult pool and a restaurant for adults only as well as endless, delicious food.

and the bread…

club med sandpiper has undergone a pretty big renovation. where there once was a patio where the kids ran and ran, there’s now another pool, a lovely one with chaises all around. but if you want to sit in one of those chairs, you’d better put your stuff down on one to reserve it by about 8am or you’ll be sorely disappointed, as we often were.  at times, we escaped to the adult pool, only to find other adults bringing their children to it. (!) one day, one lady removed her bikini top (a no-no on the beach, despite the number of people who were not from the US of A) while two clearly-under 18 boys ogled. (only adults have the clear wristband.) one actually stood up and stared at her freed boobage. i walked over to beavis while his butthead friend looked on. you do know this beach is for adults, right?

hey, he replied earnestly, i’m almost 17.

there was a lot of this sort of entitled attitude i experienced here on my visit, a surprise, maybe because this time, there was a predominance of americans?

there were some pretty major changes in the dining, and not just that my beloved chocolate bread was only served at lunch and dinner. firstly, the adult-only restaurant was gone, replaced by a lunch/dinner/post dinner snack type restaurant with an unchanging menu. one time, the girl and i went to have a snack. she ordered a cheese quesadilla with guac. i ordered the crudities, which were tiny, itsy-bitsy pieces of vegetables. (the carrot portion of the dish probably consisted in total of 1/2 of a baby carrot.) good thing i wasn’t hungry.

the main restaurant is buffet-style. in the past, there were simply massive tables where waiters would seat you and others together, travelers as well as the employees (or G.O.’s, as they are called). this was actually wonderful, as you ended up meeting other people easily and felt part of a community of sorts. not so anymore. now, people sit wherever they want, and there is a serious predominance of reserved tables. sure, if you have taken your family of 18 on vacation together, you probably want to sit together. but there were tables of 4 which bore the little Reserved For signs and which we found rather obnoxious. (of course, one day, one of the tables had a sign that said Reserved for Korn. sweet! my BS exclaimed. there are rock stars eating here!) we only sat with another couple once, by our invitation. we never sat with a G.O. (of course, we sat with plenty of flies, which aboundeth.)

anyway, you care about the food, and i do, too. gone is the freshly squeezed orange juice; i’m sure some stupid americans complained that it was too difficult for them to squeeze their own o.j. and why should i have to squeeze my own juice — i’m on vacation! (spoilsport.)  the omelette guy is the best thing about breakfast; every day, i had my egg white omelette and my oatmeal and was happy as a clam. (note to self: are clams really happy? how would anyone know?) especially important, considering there was no chocolate or white chocolate bread at breakfast. (have i mentioned how much i love this stuff?) curiously, the skim milk went M.I.A. most mornings. i’m not sure who you have to sleep with to get skim milk instead of whole or 2%, but it was annoying.

i’ll combine lunch and dinner. it’s easy to combine them now, as they are pretty much interchangeable. in the past, there were theme nights, and it was fun, albeit scary, for an american palate to encounter some euro foods. not any more. usually, there was some asian (read: fried rice or something indian-like/curryish) sort of food which was heavy on the salt and limited on the actual spice or flavor. in fact, BC thought that they must have a basic asian flavor that they use for all their asian food, and it isn’t even good. there are often pieces of fish or fowl and sometimes beef. crab legs one night. but nothing stood out.  and the desserts were completely lackluster and repeated. in the past, there were different desserts cranked out by the bakers. now? it’s the same few sorts, rotated, plus cookies at lunch. so dull, the kids and i decided to eat our beloved chocolate bread for dessert.

waterskiing and rollerskating are no longer part of the program. (well, you can waterski, but it costs extra now.) i tried taking a golf lesson to attempt to catch up to my BS and try to play on the pitch and putt. the lesson: how to grip a club. the instructor spent 10 minutes berating me because i have a lefty grip. then, he told me to stand behind him and watch. oh, and whenever he said left, i should substitute right. thanks. after not being able to see him, i waited until the question and answer time. only, too bad for me — he had a cellphone call to take. i waited patiently for him to finish, then i approached him. only once again, too bad for me — i encountered a french-canadian golf gang hell-bent on monopolizing the teacher’s time. literally every time there was a break, i tried to get his attention. sadly, i am not cute and don’t speak with a french accent, so he continued to pay attention to these amazons from montreal. finally, fed up, i left the course.  i had stood in 90+ degree heat and wasted my time for an hour. thanks, dude.

(the husband had a similar experience in the teacher’s intermediate class. so it wasn’t just a beginner neeb like myself.)

i spent some time in the weight room, which is nice but small. people hog the ellipticals and the one treadmill. and people also don’t wipe down the equipment. (the husband was stunned as i brazenly told a man next to me not to forget to wipe down his machine that he had drenched. yes, i am that lady.) once again, another situation where you have to fight to get to do something you should be able to do on vacation. another hassle. and as in most cases, the G.O.s are not paying attention and don’t want to get into any sort of situation with patrons.

the girl is old enough for the teen club; she was allowed to basically wander the place at will, which she loved. but the boy was not so entranced by his group, the manatees. and frankly, i had the feeling that the G.O.s who ended up with his group probably had somehow felt like they had gotten the short end of the stick. i didn’t sense that any of them particularly liked kids, which is such a vastly different experience than what i had had when my kids were younger.  back in the old days, G.O.’s tried to create a fun pride in the group with cheers and songs. i didn’t see any of that happening here.

and then, there was the slapping incident.

jools tells me that he wasn’t allowed to eat dessert. i asked him why. he tells me that he said: ew, gross! when this one boy stepped on a grape. and then, the boy slapped him. now, two things should be evident here to any of you who are parents: 1) the story makes no sense, and 2) WTF? a kid slapped my kid? so, like any concerned parent, i went to talk to the G.O. well, yes, she said, jools lost dessert because he didn’t listen and went to get dessert before she said he could get dessert. (which, for reasons i don’t understand, they were only allowed to get the ice cream and not the cookies, which is absurd. oh, and they wouldn’t let them have soda. hello? this is VACATION. i paid for all this food. let my kid eat whatever he wants, thanks very much.) this had happened the day before, so she wanted to teach him a lesson.

okay, i replied. so tell me about the slapping part.

well, she continued, a boy did slap julian. i asked her what happened to that boy.

he lost dessert as well.

hold the phone. are you telling me that not listening and getting dessert is on the same level as slapping another person?

of course not, she said. i talked to his dad. (i don’t think there was any time for her to actually have spoken to the father, and there was never any apology. i doubt this ever happened.) so the next day, i had a kid who didn’t want to go back to group, and i frankly didn’t want to send him there because i wasn’t certain he was being treated fairly and kindly. considering the kids camp is the number one selling point of this entire operation, this is a serious dealbreaker.  while i adore spending time with my kids, we have always adored club med sandpiper because the kids have fun and the parents get a break. and now? no breaks for mom and dad.

so basically, we have here uninspiring food, G.O.s who don’t seem to care a lot about the kids in their care, pushy people, an inability to participate in most activities because they are crowded, adult-only places where the adult-only place is never enforced by anyone, and just not a lot of fun to be had at a not-so-cheap cost. we used to hold all other vacations up to club med sandpiper — we didn’t care that it wasn’t the fanciest place. we l0ved the feel of the place. we loved the community. we loved the energy. and now? there’s none of that. sure, the physical plant is probably somewhat improved, but in general? a serious, serious disappointment.

and this was our big vacation for a few years. thanks for nothing, club med.

in memory of a great and inspirational man.

today is the anniversary of the assassination of the reverend martin luther king, jr, MLK. i prefer to reflect on his life rather than his sad demise; but thanks to this classic u2 song, i will never, ever forget what happened early morning, april 4.

like any human being, MLK had his flaws, but i wonder why our society fixated on his misdeeds. when you think of all the good MLK did in his brief life, who really cares whether he had affairs? i’m beginning to think that so many people in power think that to be an option; i don’t agree, obviously. i think we expect our heroes to be made of something out of a storybook: but these leaders are, inevitably, flesh and blood. i suspect that if any of us were judged under a microscope, we would all be found wanting in some way.

the bigger question i think people ought to ask themselves, though, is what have i done for the world? i struggle with this question daily. one day, i was actually upset about my answer. people like MLK inspired me as a child to do something important for humanity. MLK helped african-americans and other people of color make important gains toward achieving their proper, equal place in american society. i do not believe i have ever done anything as critical.

some people just try to make it through the day. others are looking toward the weekend, the future, the promised time when they can achieve a measure of happiness. me, i want to do something good for the world. and i just wasn’t seeing how i was getting there as a stay-at-home mom. BC came up to me as i sat, slumped. what’s wrong, mom? she asked. i no longer hide my moods from my daughter; she knows me as a whole person as well as her mom.

well honey, i replied, when i was your age, i thought i was going to do something important to help people in the world. and i just don’t see how i’m accomplishing that at all right now.

BC, thoughtful 40-year-old-in-a-12-year-old-suit, breathed in for a second. then, she replied: you’re raising julian and me to be good people. isn’t that enough? i smiled and hugged her hard.  perhaps it is, i mused to myself.

so i now have a dream. maybe it isn’t as lofty as MLK’s. maybe it will be far-reaching, maybe not. it is certainly inspired by the man.

and hopefully, it will be fulfilled through my children.

yeah. i’m that mom.

today was the big day in second grade. parents were invited in to see the two-part museums the children had created for american studies and science. part one involved native american tribes. each class contributed two docents to discuss their particular exhibit. i was thrilled to witness jools and his little girlfriend rose perform as docents, discussing all sorts of native american things. (not as thrilled as jools was. he often isn’t selected for these sorts of things, and as he was this time, he was jumping out of his skin. he couldn’t wait to do his bit. which, i would add, he did knowledgeably and marvelously, unbiased mom that i am.) we all moved around to each class’s native american exhibit, listening to their classes’ docents discuss all things powhatan.  it was really a creative and well-done idea, and i send many kudos to the teachers and kids who worked very hard to put it all together. a lot of learning clearly took place!

part two of the exhibits involved their biome unit.  (i don’t remember anything about biomes when i was a kid. we just talked about nature.) the kids learned about three different biomes: the desert, the deciduous forest, and the grassland. each child was to make a diorama depicting an animal from one of  those three selected biomes. they also needed to write about the animal, it’s interdependent relationships,  and interesting facts. there were quite a few bison, many cheetahs, lots of slithering snakes, all probably selected from the big list o’ animals distributed at the start of the project. did we pick one of those aforementioned animals?

of course not.

when we sat down to discuss the selection of the animal, we went to a website recommended by the teacher as a great resource on animals. from there, i’m not sure where we went, but we stumbled on an animal which, the minute i read its name, i knew would be the one the boy would select. ohmygawd how COOL, the boy exclaimed when i showed him a picture of this little, nonpredatory, ant-eating aussie lizard. it was settled. our animal would be: the thorny devil.

now i could tell you loads and loads about this adorable little dude, but a picture (or video) is probably way less verbose and far more informative than i’ll ever be.

anyway, we read together in books and on the web about this little creature. as he has a tough time writing neatly, the boy typed a sentence a day about this lumpy lizard until we had critical mass.  we also discussed how to make the diorama. i reminded mr. man that i passed the second grade; so while i’d be glad to talk about the project and help him get what he needed, for the most part, he was on his own. he painted the inside of a girl scouts thin mint box blue and pasted cotton balls for clouds. we put down a mass quantity of glue on the bottom and poured sand (from our old sandbox sand bag) on it. he made a shrub out of green tissue paper from an old gift. the husband bought the boy some clay, and he fashioned a lizard as best as he could out of several colors. and then, he stuck toothpicks all over the lizard to show it’s spikes.

so today in class, after the native american museum part of the program, we entered the kids’ classrooms, whereupon everyone stood up and talked about their animal. the boy did a fine job mentioning that the devil gets water by both absorbing it through it’s tummy as well as by drinking the rain gathered in the little valleys created by the spiky skin on his back. well done, little man. he was so very, very proud.

and i was, too.

so then, we all walked around the classroom, admiring everyone’s work. i noticed plenty of ready-made plastic animals stuck into boxes. some dioramas were really quite realistic — one boy put actual cacti into his to show it was the desert. (i’m too much of a slacker to have gone there. bully for him.) and i stopped for a moment, standing by the boy’s diorama, when i overheard two boys talking as they peered into jools’ work. look, one boy said, laughing as he looked at jools’ interpretation of the thorny devil. he stuck TOOTHPICKS into his lizard. that looks dumb.

and i couldn’t help myself. i know i’m supposed to behave. i know i’m supposed to be an adult. and i know i would say something sharp to my son if i heard him making fun of someone else’s hard work. and, as part of the global village which it takes to raise children, i spoke up.

you know, i said, giving my sternest parental look, it’s really hard to make those spikes. you shouldn’t make fun of something if you haven’t tried it.

the boys looked at me, surprised, then sheepish. and fled.

natural instinct is a hard thing to fight.

because you just never know where your inspiration will come from…

so yesterday was purim. purim, to me, is the very best jewish holiday going. chanukah gets more press because here in america, it has ended up in a tit-for-tat with christmas. american jews run to the shops to buy altogether too many things for their offspring, because G-d forbid jeremy or sarah feels left out of the gift-giving frenzy. oy veis mer.

but purim? hands down, it rocks.

i sometimes call purim the jewish mardi gras. (well, only in my little bear brain, of course: obviously, it has nothing at all to do with the tale behind mardi gras, but it’s almost as much fun.)  sure, you have to sit through the reading of the book of esther (the megillah, as in the whole megillah fame. not to be confused with the gorilla of a similar sounding name.) but every time the evil haman is named in the story, you are encouraged to make boatloads of noise (vuvuzelas, anybody?) to blot out the sound of he who should not be named, one of the bigger villains who wanted to kill all the jews. (sadly, this appears to be a recurrent theme in our cultural history.) it’s literally the only time i let my kids yell boo in public (though in all fairness, i haven’t yet taken them to a yankees game.)

you’re also supposed to get seriously wasted on this holiday:

A person is obligated to drink on Purim until he does not know the difference between “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordechai”

honestly, as a mom and as a person of a certain age, i don’t really ever get to do this. and i still didn’t get to do this. but it’s nice to know in the back of my mind that i’m supposed to do this on this one-time-only basis each year.

i did, however, eat my weight in hamentashen this year, the three-sided cookie that we red sea pedestrians eat as a traditional holiday treat.  old skool ashkenazi jews like to eat them with poppy, prune, or apricot filling. bleh. over the years, though, i have enjoyed more and more delightful fillings, like cherry, chocolate, and basically anything not poppy or prune oriented. i mean, imagine if you did get drunk AND you had eaten a lot of prune-filled delights? i shudder to think.

so what the hell does this have to do with a psychedelic hit, you might ask? (well, besides the being wasted part of things.)

many synagogues put together a purim carnival for the children. ours was no exception — lots of games and a moonbounce for the kiddies to enjoy. BC missed the entire thing because of a prior girl scout commitment (and BOY, was she mad.) but jools? he had the time of his life. he played all sorts of carnival games, winning tickets to earn small prizes. that being said, his eye was on a particular prize — candy. he loaded up on a lot of hershey kisses and miniatures.

but then, he went up to a friend of mine, who was running the prize area, and he was counting his tickets. how many do you have? she asked him. he continued to count.

i’m trying to see whether i have enough tickets. i want to get a peppermint patty for my sister. she loves them. i want to get one for my dad, too.

bless my friend’s heart. thinking of your sister and your dad is a mitzvah. you can have one for each of them, no tickets required.

i am always incredibly grateful when a child does the right thing and an adult reinforces the message.  it really does take a village to raise a a child, and moments like these, i’m so glad to find like-minded people in my little village of sorts.  it’s magical, it’s meaningful.

and, like incense and peppermints, it’s so sweet.

sometimes, we all need to be mellow (and respect the stuff that’s yellow.)

the story goes that here, in the people’s republic of arlington, one of the full-day public elementary preschool programs has booted a three year old girl for having more than eight accidents in a month. i am actually quite familiar with this sort of situation; jools was three when he started at claremont’s sister school’s montessori program. and while he was potty trained by that point, something about the program discombobulated him. they didn’t nap. they were very structured. and, in short, he had accidents.  the teacher and the teacher’s aide were not happy about the situation, and neither were we. ultimately, we pulled him out of that program into a more day care-like situation, where he proceeded to have many dry days and never looked back.

while i feel badly for the little girl and her mom, i think a lot of their anger is rather misplaced.  here in arlington, elementary school-sponsored preschool is not universal. you get in via lottery (or sometimes via an older sibling preference) unless you are entering one of the income-based programs.  these programs are not daycare programs — these are classroom-based programs where the children essentially have a similar experience to their older compatriots. this is far more structured than what you might get at some fluffy preschool program. it’s a bargain, financially- speaking, if you can get in. and for some kids, it’s a great fit. they are both intellectually and physically ready for the experience.

for other kids, it’s a nightmare. their little bodies aren’t ready for the full-time pressure of monitoring when they have to go. sometimes, they get so engaged in an activity that it’s too late before they realize they needed a pit stop. there’s nothing wrong with that, of course — it’s developmentally quite appropriate for a lot of kids.

but one thing i have learned in my short but eventful career as a parent — sometimes, a class or a program may be fabulous, but it’s not a fabulous fit for MY child. for whatever reason, there have been situations which just didn’t work out for my kids. so BS and i dropped back, figured out plan B (or sometimes C), and punted. it wasn’t easy — sometimes, it caused challenges that upset our daily lives at work and at home. but we did what we had to do and we moved on.

arlington county public schools is pretty specific and up front about what they expect of children in the program: children must be potty trained. this is not daycare, people. this is a public school.  they tell you up front that they won’t be changing nappies, and they mean it. and while even older children occasionally have an oops! moment, these occurrences are not and should not be something that disrupts class with frequency or else it isn’t fair to the other kids who are completely ready for the experience.  no child should be shamed about his ability to control his body. but no child should be forced into a position where she’s facing embarrassment on a daily basis. if this sort of thing happens frequently, as a parent i would recognize that something is not right for my kid. and, recognizing that the school is not going to bend a whole lot on this matter, i would have moved my kid. period.

but blaming the school is not fair. i think in our society, we always look to point the finger at anyone but ourselves.  i would think it would be more useful to instead focus energies on finding a place that works best for the child and which welcomes her — all of her.