All Rileyed Up

I picked up The Boy from school today where I learned that the events of last night had left quite an impact on him:

That’s me hitting a rabbit last night with my car.

Also, I like that he gave my car a spoiler. Boys…

P.S. Optional title for this post: Kill the wabbitt, kill the wabbitt!

It’s been a long day at school.

Dad is out of town.

It’s bedtime.

Yet she’s still trying to finish eating her late dinner.

Little No Limit is clearly reaching her breaking point [as are we all, my friend... as are we all] when it happens: the seat she is sitting in at the dinner table falls over. It is a bench, like, a picnic bench. That was the kind of seating I wanted at the dinner table. Don’t ask why. I just did. The bench fell over and while she started off sitting on top of the bench, she wound up being underneath the bench by the time it fell. How do children do that? Are they all as lithe as a friggin’ contortiontist/laser-security-decoder?

So Little No Limit wound up under the bench, at which she burst into tears. Huge, tired, loud tears.

As for me, I was tired. I was worn out from my day, not really in the mood to deal with Crying Child Def Con Four. But there is something about your own child’s cry that you cannot ignore. She may be five now, but when she makes that sound, I suddenly feel I ought to check my boobs lest they be lactating. Sorry if that was too gross an image — but seriously: I hear her cry that cry of “I can’t take this world no more!!!!!!” and I just want to reach out and pick her up and make all her problems go away.

So I pick her up.

She cries.

I wish that her problems would go away.

She still cries.

And without much thought to the next course of action, I start to sing.

The song is a made up song. I used to sing made up songs to Little No Limit all the time when she was a baby. The lyrics never changes. Repetitive of the phrase “baby girl” and then details creep in about her, like “she has a mommy who sings made up songs” and “she likes to wear pink.”

They kind of make me laugh, these lyrics, because the “baby girl” of my song is a quiet, calm girl whereas the real Little No Limit is a decisive, vocal, emotional, opinionated, and exuberant child who cries when she falls randomly off the dining room seating bench and hurts herself. But she’s still my baby girl and when I sing, her cries goes from loud to soft to none. And let’s face it, she’s proabably the only human in history, besides The Boy, who stops crying after hearing me sing (usually, my singing makes kids cry).

I’m sure if Simon saw me, he’d describe me as the “Worst singing mother halfway between San Francisco and LA” (I’ve always found it funny how he gives people geographical descriptions for their horridness, “worst in the world,” “worst in Miami”, “worst in the room”) So I’m glad I’m not singing for Simon. I’m singing for a much more important critic: someone whose very look in the eyes can swing my mood. Someone who after I cackle out my best-to-key performance I could manage, smiles at me and says, “Storytime?”

Yeah, I got a story for you, Little No Limit. It’s about a woman who never knew her singing voice. Until she found you.

***

And on the subject of our daughters, check out this babseball video my brother just sent me. A man, his daughter, and a foul ball at a Phillies game — HA! HA! Too cute.

I went to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Zing! Zang! Zoom! circus show over the summer. It’s the circus show that does a lot of magic. Some highlights: the elephants painted a watercolor that my sister-in-law and I debated recreating and claiming came directly from the elephant (it was a bunch of vertical lines, so recreating it was a strong possiblity). I also bought a bag of cotton candy that came with its own magician’s hat (a blue cone-shaped kind a la the Magician’s Apprentice). I somehow also wound up buying the kids light-up toys — a sword and wand for The Boy and Little No Limit respectively. And then there was the show itself — full of magic that left me and my sister-in-law scratching our heads wondering “How did they do that?”

But nothing — NOTHING — topped the start of the event.

For an hour before the show starts, the audience is invited to walk on the center floor, try on costumes, and take up-close pictures of and with circus performers.

Ahem.

DID SOMEONE SAY I COULD TRY ON THE CIRCUS COSTUMES?????

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

Le chupacabra! Ole!

My turn, Mom!

Little Bo Peep goes wistful…

I’m the Magician’s Apprentice!

Um… Mom, why are you in this picture?

Just because! Ole!

***

To see upcoming show dates and buy tickets, visit the Ringling site here.

***

I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Feld Entertainment. Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Last post, I quoted Offspring. This post, Fugazi. What next, Primus?

Of late, I’ve been channeling my girlhood musical tastes and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been surrounded by 10 to 13-year-olds for the past two weeks. School started on August 24th and I was there bright and early for the first bell. I get up every morning between 5:30 am and 6. I leave the house and don’t return until 5:30pm. Through the course of the day, I read, write, teach, talk, and drive 90 miles. And when I get home, I make dinner and pass out. And to think, I used to to think I didn’t have time BEFORE I started working.

As much as I’d love to tell you about all of my amazing students and the clever things they say and do and how their behavior makes me miss and not miss my youth simultaneously all day long, it turns out that I posess more discretion than I ever gave myself credit and take their confidentiality seriously. Instead, I shall regale you with tales of The Boy and Little No Limit, which begins and ends with the bloodthirsty ways of… BITING!

Let it be known up front: I have never had any trouble with biting betwixt the kids. The kids are enrolled in a comprehensive classroom of Kinder, First, and Second graders. The Boy, having already spent a year in school with a diligent teacher who taught them the finer points of following a regimented schedule, had no trouble easing into the rigors of classroom life. Little No Limit, on the other hand, just wrapped up preschool, where Free Play Time was the order of the day, and Chilled Out Teacher ruled the classroom. I wouldn’t have had that any other way, and I have no doubt she’ll adjust to Kindergarten, but the first week of school, The Boy came home every day and reported how Little No Limit didn’t listen when the teacher said this and didn’t do when the teacher requested that.

It being the first week of school, we didn’t push the matter on either of the kids — him for tattling or her for not listening. Little No Limit being Little No Limit, she took matters into her own hands to give him a heads up. On Monday of the second week of school, I learned that she had repeatedly bitten her brother, the final bite resulting in actually breaking his skin (and it was no small break either — full upper and lower teeth marks). This is a big deal to me, a huge deal in fact because in case you don’t know/remember, The Boy has serious eczema. While the prospect of dealing with a human bite is never fun because of the possibilty of infection, in the case of The Boy, the likelihood of an infection is higher than the average bear. Fortunately, it’s been a week and all seems to be healing well, and we had a looooong talk with Little No Limit about expressing herself (”no matter how mad you are at your brother, it is never acceptable to bite him”) and with The Boy about tattling (”you can let Little No Limit’s teacher tell us if she isn’t listening in school”).

In other news, I also spent some time on a deserted island, wherein I formed a survival group with with an elected leader with the people I was deserted with but then the group broke apart and most of them succombed to savage ways and they killed my sweet friend Simon and my fat friend Piggy and just when I thought was done for, I was saved. At which point, I wept for innocence, the darkness of man’s heart… uhhhhhh… sorry about that. I’m thinking about Lord of the Flies. Probably because I found this in my yard today:

WHAT IS A BOAR SKULL DOING IN MY YARD???????

Oh, right. I live in nature now. Ho hum. Just another day in the Life of Riley.

P.S. Here’s a hint to one of my future posts: guess who got a Kindle!!!!! I can already tell you — the Kindle is one bad mothershutyomouth.

P.P.S. Watch the video in my sidebar and enter to win a free GE appliance. Do it. DO it. (it’s just not as funny in writing as it is when Ben Stiller says it, huh?)

P.P.P.S. To anyone wondering why I quoted that Fugazi line, it’s because I was talking about emo with a student and that song got stuck in my head and then I was thinking of a title for this post and it seemed appropriate given how long I’ve gone without blogging. Ho hum. Just another day in the Life of Riley.

Just over a month ago, I moved to large lot of land in rural central California. I went from living across the street from a liquor store and walking distance to nearly everything to living walking distance from my mailbox and little else. The nearest gas station is about 15 miles away and it’s only open during select hours.

There have been some growing pains, but my favorite reason for being out here is to see the kids running and playing where kids ought to run and play: outside.

We go on nature walks and look for something different every day. We’ve found nests (one of which looks big enough to be an eagle or hawk nest – The Boy was a little wary of that one. The hawks scare him a little… I do admit, their circling and soaring can be a little unnerving). We’ve also found baby trees (collectively dubbed “Twiggy” by The Boy), distinguished between the calls of different birds (we can only clearly identify the owl, the rest we just imitate), spotted funnel shaped webs housing funnel spiders (terrifying for mom, exciting for all else), pointed out the different colors of leaves and types of trees, stargazed, and with all this, worked up a bit of a sweat on account of the extra walking running around.

This is a big deal to me, and it turns out, a big deal to a lot of people. Children in the US are increasing in obesity — one of the stats I read was more than fifty percent by 2011. Meanwhile, the amount of time children spend outdoors has declined fifty percent in the past 20 years. Coincidence? Hmm.

The great outdoors. They’re not as far as you think. And despite how wrecked our economy is, the government does still fund national parks and every city has local parks to support kids gone wild. Use them. And if you still need a little more prompting, visit the Forest Service’s website, Discover the Forest.

Discover the Forest

The Plan for the Weekend:

Drive to Orange County on Saturday. See family and friends. Spend night at friend’s house. Attend baby shower on Sunday. Enjoy food and conversation at restaurant. Drive home.

The Reality:

It’s never good when your car starts to sound like a lawnmower, I suppose. It also isn’t comforting when the speedometer swings back and forth between 0 and 120 like it’s been possessed. Least exciting of all is when these two things happen simultaneously and you are precisely halfway between home and your destination with no friends or family nearby, nor anything besides a stretch of interstate going through the heart of California ag country (ie, middle of nowhere).

I called AAA for a tow which cost me $4 a mile after the first seven miles, and when your starting point is BFE, you go well over that free seven miles (to the tune of $84 – that’ll teach me for not buying the premier membership).

After dropping my car off, I went to the airport where the only open car rental places in Bakersfield were located. They refused to rent a car to me. I didn’t have a major credit card. I had a credit/debit card. Using a debit/credit card required an additional $200-400 deposit (depending on the car rental place), but that money wasn’t on the card because it was in my wallet. Did that help? No. You remember that old song by Wu Tang Clan where they say “cash rules everything around me”? Well, I don’t think car rental places thought much of those lyrics. Three separate car rental places told me they didn’t accept or handle cash. I had two people (husband, mother in law) willing to give their credit card over the phone and receive and sign and fax back an agreement to them, but no, that’s not acceptable either. Talk about uber-lame.

The tow guy gave me a ride to a hotel which had no problem using my debit card and I suddenly found myself with a free night to myself. Hey, a silver lining! I was looking for that! I spent my free-for-a-night evening vegging out and watching The Express and Sex in the City on HBO. I also discovered a TV show on MTV called America’s Best Dance Crew hosted by the guy on Saved By the Bell (the one whose character dated the girl who went on to star in Showgirls) which was entertaining for about 15 minutes before I got irritated by all the commercials.

This morning, I woke up, enjoyed my free breakfast, went swimming, and watched a lot of CNN talk about health care coverage – can I just say that I love James Carville and Mary Matalin?

Husband and the kids drove 3 hours to pick me up and when we neared home, the kids asked to go to the movies, and I thought to myself, why not. Guess what we saw? G-Force. Guess what else? I laughed. On a weekend like this one, you have to take the laughs that come to you.

Funnier than you’d expect. Assuming you expected it to be stupid.

Good grief, can you believe I’ve been without the Internet since my last post???? How did people live before the Internet??? Or phones, for that matter. I was without a phone for about a week.

My move is slow going, but coming along. More later. Gotta clean out my inboxes. In the meantime, enjoy this book review I wrote of the absolutely beautiful Mrs. Somebody Somebody by Tracy Winn.

I walked outside to this. I just can’t believe it will lead to anything good, but we shall see…

Guess what – I have a job!
It doesn’t start for another month and a half, but hey, I’ve got it.
And guess what else – I’m going back to school!
It, too, doesn’t start for another month and a half, but hey, I’m going.
Want to know what I’m going to do, huh, huh, do ya?

Drumroll, please…

I’m going back to school for an MS in Special Education and a Special Education teaching credential.

Fanfare please…

I’ve spent a few years now navigating the world of IEPs and I have learned a lot about Special Education from the parent’s viewpoint. I’m ready to see the other side. An all too important side, no doubt. I often wondered – how do you come up with the IEP goals and how do you teach the children to reach the goals? How do you deal with slow math learners or Struggling Readers? Do you teach children with special needs the same way you teach in general education? For that matter, are there any specific teaching methods to general education?

In my current school district, there are a variety of options for education. Children can enroll in a language immersion program, which is a K-5 program that the students graduate from speaking two languages. Pretty cool that the kids are bilingual, but if you happen to move when your child is in third grade, you’ll be disappointed to see how behind they are at a different school. There’s also a charter school in my district, which follows the Waldorf educational model. In addition to being much more hands on in their teaching methods, they also don’t teach reading until second grade. My current school district also offers a homeschooling curriculum and works with the parents who choose to do this. And the school where my kids will be going for the 09-10 school year follows a comprehensive school model, where some grades are grouped together (eg, The Boy and Little No Limit will be in the same grade, K-1). All in all, I’m very excited to learn about these different approaches to education.

While I know a lot of people are sour on No Child Left Behind and think education is not so hot these days, there are an amazing number of resources for teachers right now, and I intend to utilize them. I’m sure the road ahead will be difficult, but for the moment, bask in my excitement with me, won’t you?

Little No Limit made up her own lyrics to the Mexican Hat Dance, inspired by her culinary tastes:

Quesadilla
Potatoes, potatoes
Quesadilla
Potatoes, potatoes
Quesadilla
Potatoes, potatoes
I do not like spicy food.

Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, watch out. There’s a new lyricist in town.

And for those of you who enjoy using your body as an instrument, please enjoy this lovely rendition of The Mexican Hat Dance: