The weeks are flying by

I am always amazed how the start of school has the ability to speed up time, at least for a mother.  I certainly don't remember time flying by when I was still a student.  In fact, during my last few years of high school, upon the reception of my agenda, I would immediately flip to the last day of school and write the number one; I would then count backwards until I arrived at the first day of school which would be numbered near 200.  I would then do the same for all the days with the exception of the weekends.  Thereby I would have a running count of how many school days (not counting the weekends) were left until the end of the year and how many days in total remained until the end of the year.  In retrospect, I was obviously desperate to break free of public school.  I am definitely not looking to go back.  I often wonder why I got my bachelor of education.  But then I hear my mother's words:  What will you do if you lose your husband?  Optimism is not inherent in my family of origin.  Thus, the teaching degree.

Another rare quality among my sisters and me is athletic ability.  Well, now that I write that, I think that I need to qualify it.  My sisters and I are all very devoted athletes:  not one of us tends to miss a day of individual exercise without a good reason.  Good reasons count as sickness, injury and labour.  You will notice that I said individual exercise: we all pretty much (for lack of a better word) suck at group sports.  I am not so sure about my younger sister but I know that my older sister and I spent most of gym class either ducking the ball or forgetting our gym clothes.  My older sister actually forgot her gym clothes so many times that she passed gym by only 1 or 2%.  This makes me laugh now because my older sister has to be one of the best female runners that I know.  She's a speed demon despite a distinct lack of sleep and three children under 5 (which at one point were all under 4).  But, I digress.

Gym was consistently my lowest mark.  Not so for Dave.  Dave loves to hear me tell stories of my gym fails:  staring at the rope hanging from the ceiling and wondering how in the world I was meant to get my body more than two feet off the ground, let alone to the ceiling; telling the gym teacher that I was unable to even attempt a hurdle because I was sure to suffer flashbacks to horseback-riding injuries when confronted by the actual hurdle; earning Participaction each and every year in the Canada Fitness Test; and, last but not least, breaking my foot while standing in line for the vault.  My gym teacher was incredulous regarding the last incident and made me keep my shoe on and 'get back out there' as there was no way that I could have possibly broken a bone while standing still.  I clearly recall walking home with a broken foot while being hit by snowballs by Devin Bhatt.  I arrived home crying where I was told to be quiet as not to wake the baby.  When I finally did go back to school after a failed Ace bandage, an eventual cast and a bottle of Tylenol, I acted up during the national anthem and my grade four teacher yelled:  Culshaw, just because you have one leg doesn't mean I can't kick you out of here!  I think that school is markedly different now.  But back to athletics.

The funny thing is that most of those superb athletes of my childhood couldn't run a step if they tried now that they are adults.  I have learned that early blooming ain't what it's cracked up to be.  I am a relatively late bloomer.  I started running at 18 and managed to do so while wearing turquoise jogging pants and a grey sweatshirt that had some sort of animal on the front.  I did, however, keep at it.  I kept at it so much that a jogging stroller is a second vehicle around these parts and race times are frequent discussion points.  Then I injured my foot in the early Spring and had to start biking.  Consequently I became that mother of five who runs and bikes.  Little do these people know that I was once the chubby kid with the overly-pronated feet, weak ankles and the bad haircut.  Late blooming sometimes makes all the difference.  But, once again I have digressed.  Onto Dave.

Dave is another story when it comes to gym prowess.  I don't think that he would have married me if we had gone to the same elementary school.  He yearly achieved Gold in the Canada Fitness Test and actually signed up for gym in high school when it was no longer mandatory.  What a weirdo.

So, all of the above is simply a prelude to the following statement:  my children's athletic abilities astound me.  They can run really fast and long; they can hurdle over high jumps; and, wonder of wonders, they can do the monkey bars.  I can still only hang pathetically from the first rung.

Consequently, from time to time, I might sound a little overly proud of the kids' athletic feats.  Here goes:   Jacob and Hannah have hit grade three and are now allowed to compete in the upcoming Partridge Run.  The run is 800m cross-country and in order to compete they have to place as one of the top six girl and boy runners in their class.  They consistently place first.  Hannah's first win came despite wearing a pair of crappy shoes that kept coming undone and causing her to stop and re-velcro and then re-pass the other girls.  I am amazed by this.  The funny thing is that they are not.  Running comes so easily to these kids that they simply can't understand the kids who need to stop.  "Mom, so and so actually had to walk!" they tell me.  They don't seem to grasp that I was so and so.

Anyway, if I happen to post way too many pictures of them crossing lines and receiving ribbons come next week, I apologise in advance:  something vicarious is going on.

Firsts

Yesterday was the first day of school for Dave, Jacob, Hannah and (drumroll, please) Benjamin.

I had the pleasure of accompanying Benjamin to his interview with the kindergarten teacher. His interview was at 9:10am; however, he sat on the front-step with his lunch-kit in hand and his back-pack on his back from 7:30am until 9am when we finally left for the big walk to school. A friend mercifully watched the youngest two for me so that I could just be with Benjamin.

Benjamin: who has now officially become Ben according to his school cubby and the correspondences from the teacher. I remember Dave's mother telling me that she named Dave David, not Dave. She told me that school named him Dave; now I understand. One day when I pull all the kids from school (and finally homeschool) I will tell the school board that Section 43 of the Education Act (by which a teacher is allowed to act in the place of a parent when necessary) does not extend to the shortening of names.

Nevertheless. Ben passed his interview with flying colours or, rather, partial phonics and a complete inability to name letter names. This was a result of the phonics program that I used last year. It teaches kids the sounds that letters make but not the names of the letters. When the teacher asked Ben what letter S was, he replied, Snake. O was ostrich and J, well, J was Jacob and Joseph.

The remembrance of his two brothers launched him into a speech about Jacob being the biggest and Jo-Jo being the almost littlest but then there's Baby Isaac. And Sam. The teacher said, Sam? And Ben said, Yeah, my dog. And she sweetly said, Is he your pretend dog? And he said, No. He's my golden retriever and that means that he's golden, sort of like yellow. She then ticked off the box that says: People outside of his family can understand 75% of what he says. However, she did note that he said wabbit, not rabbit.

He was then asked to draw a picture of himself. Hannah asked me later if it was a floating head with sticks for legs and rectangles for arms. I answered yes and she nodded as if to say, That's what he always draws. However, dear Hannah, this time the floating head and its accompanying appendages were under a big blue ocean right next to a submarine. Wow, creative, said his teacher. Interesting, thought I. And then I was told to say good-bye. Just like that. As if he was going off to surgery and I would meet him in recovery.

I watched as he approached the circle-time carpet where the other Senior Kindergartners were waiting.  He was instructed to choose a seat. He circled the carpet like a scared, but haughty, animal before carefully choosing the letters Nn upon which to plop his bottom. And that was that. 

 And I walked home alone and retrieved Joseph and Isaac and felt stressed despite having not much to do. And when Ben arrived home he refused to describe his day, immediately changed into his pjs and went to the basement to play trains. Apparently he has been sworn to an oath of secrecy that has something to do with the importance of bedtime.

Hannah was a little more forthcoming and told me that after recess Ben had left the school yard to enter by the front door. I guess I was too emphatic about the importance of using the front entrance when we arrived that morning for his interview. Luckily his sister caught him and told him to get back in the yard and into line. Which he did; except that it was Hannah's line. So, she corrected him again and all was well. Dave later told me that he overheard Hannah instructing one of the Educational Assistants on bus and walker protocol at the end of the school day. This EA couldn't remember the exact procedure so Hannah reminded her that the walkers were allowed to leave after the departure of the first bus. The EA nodded and said, I believe you, Hannah. And all the walkers left. No wonder her report card says: Hannah is very good at understanding the rules of the classroom.

And now I am left with my two youngest. Isaac is focused completely upon walking and waiting for Hannah to come home. Joseph wants to go out for walks and trips to the bakery where he cries if he is not allowed an eclair - which he insists are bagels with lots of cream cheese. So, we go to the grocery store where he strongly asserts his God-given right to choose what goes in the cart. By aisle 3 we  accumulate chocolate milk, several Fruit-to-Gos, a box of Ritz crackers and a package of colourful sunglasses.  I had come for milk. "But I need little glasses!", he protests. And that's that.

Except that today at lunch I asked Joseph if he missed Benjamin and he look mournfully at me, said, "Yes.  He's not here to make me laugh," and threw his head down on the counter and tried to sob.  He is slightly melodramatic.  He is also a little dangerous as the lullaby that I overheard him singing today bears witness:
Rock-a-bye, baby on the treetop;
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall;
And down will come baby...
Into a bunch of branches with pokey things all over them;
Cradle and all.

I kid you not.  I have been left at home with my most determined child and a baby. I had better find a hobby.

Videos in honour of Isaac's first year

This first video is proof of Isaac's walking. He took his first steps around a week before his first birthday and he literally has never looked back. He wakes up each day determined to ace bi-ped ambulation. He is our earliest walker: all, with the exception of Jacob, walked after their first birthdays. This video is also a testimony to parenting styles; and how I might need to reassess mine;) As you can see, life around here is full of life. If you have ever watched the Clouseau/Pink Panther movies, Isaac reminds me of the little old man who stands still while the gorilla in the car is chased by the police outside of the nightclub.

And this video is just classic birthday stuff. He didn't like his cake and tried to give it back on several occasions. He also had no interest in birthday gifts and kept shoving aside his wrapped gift in an effort to make it to the walker that was Hannah and Jacob's first birthday gift. Also, note the little boy with the gun and how he is shuffled out of the birthday shot in one swift move by Dave.