Hanging Out

When I went to sign out The Little Empress from school the other, the Director of the school happened to be standing nearby and told me an interesting story about TLE and how she plays.

The girls in her class were “having a dress up party” and TLE had joined in. Rather than dressing up with the other girls, TLE decided that she would be a kitty cat. She crawled around on the ground, mewing and rolling onto her back and playing with her friends as they played dress-up party. When the Director came in, TLE mewed and nuzzled her leg.

TLE’s quite the imaginative little thing! I love the fact that she’s not afraid to be original in a crowd. I can only hope that she will continue to not be afraid to be exactly who she wants to be.

You’ve got a favorite song or songs . Sometimes a whole frickin’ playlist of songs that you absolutely, positively adore and feel the need to share with the world. That’s awesome. We may even share musical tastes which would make it even more awesome.

You know what would make it more awesome? NOT MAKING IT AUTOPLAY ON YOUR BLOG. Just because they make a widget for it DOESN’T mean that you HAVE to include it on your blog.

Please, do your blog readers a favor. Don’t include auto playing music widgets.  Give your readers the option of choosing to play the music on their own. Please?

Love,

Me

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This PSA was brought to you by someone who frantically had to search for the mute button before searching, fruitlessly, on a blog’s sidebar for the controls to turn off an aforementioned auto playing music widget. Auto playing music widgets are like the auto playing midis of the late 1990s. It wasn’t a good idea then and it isn’t a good idea now. Just sayin’…

Choose one only, please

I’m in the process of filling out paperwork for The Little Empress’ school district assessment. On the form, they want me to identify her ethnicity.

Choose one only, please says the form.

But she’s not one only. She’s two. She’s (2) Asian – Vietnamese and she’s (4) Filipino. To claim that she is one but not the other is to deny a whole half of her heritage.

Yeah, I know it is just a form but it horks me off something fierce. It is stupid that in 2011, decades after Martin Luther King’s “I had a dream” and the civil rights movement that antiquated school forms still expect families to be of one ethnicity.

I wonder how many idiot forms like this I’ll encounter during her school career or if districts will wise up to the fact that more and more kids are coming from mixed backgrounds.

And for a side rant…

I find it interesting that Filipinos are considered neither Asian nor Pacific Islander on this form. We’re Asian, dammit. Geez.

We took a road trip to see family in SoCal over Thanksgiving. Lots of food and lots of company was to be had. But perhaps the best part was seeing how much The Little Empress loved playing with her cousins A1 & A2. The boys showed her a favorite place of theirs to play: Dirt Hill! Forget fancy toys, all a kid really needs to have fun is a huge pile of dirt! TLE loved it!

Running down Dirt Hill

BIIIIIIG pile o' dirt!

While digging around in the dirt, the boys unearthed this fellow.

Burrowing dirt bug of some kind

We have no idea what he was but he was a big guy!

Ever since we left, TLE has been asking to go back to play with her cousins. Next summer, for sure!

While we were down there, we also went to the Santa Ana Zoo. The zoo itself is pretty small but it was a great place to explore and run around on Thanksgiving morning.

On top of a tortoise at the zoo

Since getting back, we’ve been getting ready for the holiday (holidaze) season. We took TLE to her annual visit to Santa, dressed in her new pretty velvet blue dress. She had waaaaaay more fun playing in the waiting area with the “snow” than she actually did seeing Santa.

Investigating the "snow"

The next week, we went to a friend’s house one afternoon to make “gingerbread” houses out of graham crackers. It was a lot of fun!

But TLE had way more fun playing with her friends and having candy for lunch than she did actually making the house. Figures.

Chocolate for lunch? AWESOME.

This was just what I needed to hear. I really needed to be reminded to slow down, relax, enjoy and be thankful for what I have rather than rush, rush, rush into whatever comes next.

I’ve noticed that Things Happen ™ when I let go of my normal routine and just let things flow… just a little bit. I think God meant for me to hear this song today; I’m thankful that I stopped to listen.

Bad news: The budget includes $3.1 billion dollars lost from public education.

Most people identify either as liberal or conservative. I’m just frustrated. No one can agree on anything and everyone loses.

TLE the Christmas Elf... in September

(And again the photo has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. Lam, I know you love it! )

The Hubs ™ and I have been discussion what to do about TLE’s preschool needs. I thank God every day that The Little Empress’ current school is fully funded by the county’s Early Intervention program. She has absolutely blossomed and thrived at the school. As I’ve said before, I just can’t say enough good things about it. (If I ever get the opportunity to give back to the school, I will. Oh yes I will.) Ideally, I’d like to put her in preschool but that depends on both her progress as well as our finances.

The one downside to her current school is that she will age out of the program on her third birthday. It is sad but is a consequence of the way the Early Intervention program is set up. We’ll be having an assessment meeting tomorrow morning, to assess her progress and begin the process to transition her from the county’s Regional Center program to the local school district. At this point, it isn’t clear how long her speech delay will qualify her as special needs and I have no idea whether or not she will need an Individual Education Plan (IEP) but we’ll be beginning the process anyway.

With that in mind, I’ve looked at preschools in the area. I am leaning most towards a highly recommended co-op preschool. The school has been around for years and the director of TLE’s current program sent her children there and couldn’t say enough good things about it.  I love the idea of parents participating in the school. While I don’t get much “off” time with a co-op preschool, I figure it is a good compromise between day care and home schooling. This is the school I’ve been eying since we moved to the area and will likely send her to. I’ve visited it several times and think the concept is great. Plus, the tuition is very affordable.

TLE’s current school keeps hours more like kindergarten, spanning from 8:30AM to 1:00PM. I was concerned that the shorter classes will be a bit of a shock for her so I decided to look into other all day programs just to see what they had to offer. I think that I passed out just looking at some of the prices. All day daycare with preschool programs built in are pretty expensive, even for just two or three days out of the week. But I think what absolutely floored me was the cost of specialized preschools like Montessori or fine arts programs. These preschools were more expensive than if I were to put TLE in the local Catholic school! We simply cannot afford those prices.

It made me stop and really think about why I want to send TLE to preschool. For me, it comes down to the fact thatI want her to have the best start in life that I can possibly give her. And I believe that being able to participate in preschool is part of that. After seeing her with her nursery school classmates, I’ve come to the realization that to her, it is all play. She gets to interact with new and interesting people and in the process she learns. And that’s fine. Because, really, chances are that she is not going to demand of me why I didn’t send her to the most expensive school in the area. All I can really hope for out of her preschool experience is that she has fun. And I hope that if she remembers any of it, that she remembers it fondly.

As a parent, I am finding myself bristling a lot these days when reading my social networking feeds. I have quite a few friends who do not have children, some of whom are childfree. Which, honestly, is fine with me. I am not one of those parents who will espouse a misguided belief that one is incomplete without children. In fact, I respect folks who know, for whatever reason, that they don’t want children.

But if I read another status update about how annoying children are, I will have to smack someone. Hard. Upside the head with a truck, even.

Yes, children that tantrum can grate on one’s nerves. Trust me, I know. I have a champion tantrumer whose tantrums can and have lasted near two hours. But let me tell you something: that child is not out to annoy you. Trust me, you’re just not that damn special. So for the love of god, don’t act personally insulted that just because you can overhear a child tantrum, or that they’ve ruined your day and/or your entire outlook on children. Small children tantrum. It is normal. You, oh-insulted-one, most likely tantrumed as a child and embarrassed the everloving snot out of your poor parents at some point during your esteemed life. So quit with the holier than thou attitude. The End.

For the record, I can’t stand it when people assume that just because a child is tantruming that they are either a) being ignored or b) being bratty. Some kids, for whatever reason, due to sensory issues, special needs, etc. tantrum like they’re on fire and there’s nothing that can be done until it passes. And just because a tantrum lasts for god knows how long doesn’t mean that the parent is somehow absent or not taking care of their child.  I can assure you that while I’m sure there are some douchenugget parents out there that don’t take care of their kids, this is probably not the case for most parents. In fact, I can attest to more than a few occasions when I’ve simply sat down and sobbed right along side my tantrum-prone child because I dared to change her diaper at the wrong minute. And absolutely nothing prepares you for the stares and the not-so-silent blame that you get when you seek help for a tantruming child.

And while I’m in a ranting mode…

To those that complain that folks bring their kids to conventions or geek parties or another function with adults… stop whining. Seriously. Geek parents do not bring their children to geek functions to piss off their childfree geek peers. We could really give a sh*t what you think. God forbid that a geek family want to do something together and include their children in their geekery. Granted, parents shouldn’t run over people with their strollers (that’s just plain rude) but blaming it on the kids? How’s that work? Blame the parents for being douches, not the kids for having been brought to the convention. Jeezus.

What evil lurks beyond this grin?

• Michelle: OOOOOOOOOOMFG.
• Michelle: DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR DAUGHTER JUST DID
• Michelle: She came up to me and was like, “Baby euw. Baby euw.”
• Michelle: She had a full diaper. So I was like, “Okay, I’ll change it in a second.”
• Michelle: She keeps tapping my shoulder. “Baby euw. Baby euw.”
• Michelle: Then she PUTS HER FULL DIAPER ON MY ARM.
• Michelle: SHE DONE TOOK IT OFF. POOP AND ALL.
• The Hubs ™: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*SOB*AHAHAHAHA
• Michelle: I realized that she was telling me — “BIG BIG EUW! BIG BIG EUW!”
• The Hubs ™: If I could praise her from here, I would.
• Michelle: YOU SUCK.
• The Hubs ™: <3

ADDENDA: Poop was (thankGOD) contained within said diaper. But still. OMFG EUW.

Stories like this warm my heart but it saddens me how many families are facing foreclosure everyday. If only everyone had a happy ending like this family…