It was the first week of school for all 3 kids, a celebration of sorts, and achieved milestone so to say. Sure sure, it marks the end of an era, and era that was wonderful, but as a parent who's goal is to raise independent children that leave the nest permanently at the age of 18, it was a good milestone. Some rue the day, some rejoice in it, different strokes for different folks.
It's fair to say that i overdid it this week... exercise every morning from 9-10am, there was a hockey game Wednesday night, i ran into a concert on Monday night and a late night blog the other night. Overdoing things is my ace up the sleeve, i will not miss out because it was too much.. i will just continue to overdo, it's the way i roll. Think something is important then get into it, game of cricket, have a hand in it... from the Alien sex Fiend song "get into it"... just to keep our quotes accurate. The song was a bit of a theme song in 3rd year University... memories set to music... nothing beats that. I believe it is also important to show your children to do the stuff that you think is important, and to say "I'm too tired or overwhelmed" is unacceptable.
We signed our kids up for the "hot lunch" program... you eat from the cafeteria rather than pack a lunch... i draw from experience on this one, although i learned a lot this week. the menu is pre-determined so if it is not what they want i will pack a lunch.
On the first day i threw a small piece of poppy seed cake and an apple into the twins pack in case they got hungry from not enough lunch. On their introduction i took them into the cafeteria so they could see the process and was told... don't worry everybody is new, we will go through everything.
So when i picked them up from the first day they were faint... i asked how was school... "good but you didn't give us enough food to eat" as Hailie stumbled to the left... WHAT??? No sometimes you don't get the real answers from kids, even though they are naturally honest, so we broke it down... Kaiya got involved (who is in grade 3). So i went back to the kindergarten teacher and asked if Hailie and Emily ate lunch... the answer i got was well they had some stuff so i thought you thought that was all they needed, and they ate more than some of the kids. Holy shit i thought, so i mentioned that they had lunch cards and the teacher was glad i pointed that out. in fairness to the teachers they are overwhelmed and in these situations you tend to notice the kids who are loud and causing issues rather than the kids who are quietly starving and too shy to speak up. Clearly my error for not showing up... as a former teacher i will never begrudge a teacher or tell them how to treat my children rather i want my children to learn that life is not an easy ride and you need to overcome all obstacles.
Shit happens.. my kids starved on the first day of school... should i freak out or realize that this was the greatest lesson.
On the second day of school i showed up at lunch time 11am for the Kindergarten class... there were Hailie and Emily with their hot lunch trying to open their milk, too shy to ask... i opened the milk and hung out for a bit. Now because of education funding cuts lunch is only 15 minutes, which is crazy cause it took me 45 minutes to feed my kids at home.. focus on your food, sit properly, don't worry about that... you know if you know. But the thing is the class is dismissed from lunch but if you want to stay and eat you can so i told them... you girls stay and finish your food if you are not done in the 15 minutes... you don't want to be hungry at school. They looked very seriously at me and said 'no we don't want to be hungry at school"... so they stayed and ate. i showed up every day, after the first day, for lunch to reinforce the message and to go over opening the milk technique. They can open their milk now and are solid in the idea that they want to eat their whole lunch. just a note, you can always turn a negative into a positive.
On my end the school secretary saw me coming in every day to get a "guest pass" to get into the cafeteria to make sure everything was OK, and pitched the idea that i could help out doing recess monitoring, because of course they are underfunded and desperately need volunteers (go war go).
Now you have to see things from my perspective... after 8 years i finally have a moment away from kids.. i love my kids, and would try to move the world for them... actually i wouldn't cause i know it is an impossible task, but the sentiment is there. But this is a week i have been waiting for for a long time... so to be suddenly hit with the concept of 1) peak sun (my arch nemesis) and 2) a field of screaming kids (my other arch nemesis) i went from free falling in a state of bliss to stuck in a gel that had a gravitational pull... you see our family's motto is to always help and volunteer whenever possible.. it's a good place to be, a path to a rich life for sure. But if i were to go to therapy, which is not my style i believe my therapist would recommend staying away from kids. In fact a perfect job for me would be a teachers assistant.. i would work the same hours as my kids, but the reason it wouldn't work is that once i got off work I would be burned out of kid duty and my own children would suffer.
So there i was in the office. pressed with the volunteer plea... my brain frozen. there was a vision of me trying to kick start my brain for an excuse like a person might try to start a dirt bike, and i came up with "i have something on the stove", which was total bullshit of course, and i slipped the noose.
The the deli ma came... i need to go in to make sure the kids are OK at lunch, cause they are too shy to ask for help in a room full of chaos, but to do that i need a pass, which means i need an excuse to not volunteer for recess duty... so i have to show up in a welding mask one day, cause I'm in the middle of welding a child safe device, and a clown costume the next day cause i have a gig entertaining children, and a lab coat the next day because I'm working on a cure for some childhood disease... just to make sure my kids get enough to eat and too see what is actually happening, and to remind them that they are allowed to stay past the 15 minutes to finish their food.
This is where the starving on day one payed off big time... they know one thing, they don't want to go hungry so they stay together and finish their lunch, a thing my 8 year old has yet to learn, because when everyone is leaving to play in the playground the pull is irresistible, unless you know real hunger.
How did I do? free time flies quickly, and there are many things that need to be done, one needs to be organized and have a plan. Floors to wash, bathrooms to clean, food to prepare, gardens to tend, neighbours to loiter with, exercise, bogus excuses, music gear shops patron, food to purchase, Internet to distract, rugs to wash, projects to finish, songs to write, books to read, photographs to organize... there is never nothing to do, and that's a good thing... life is excellent and i wouldn't trade mine for anybodies.
Time keeps on slipping into the future (Steve Miller of course)... King Hell drums on that track played by Gary Mallaber who is a Los Angeles session drummer the Internet tells me. I think good drummers need more respect, trust me without a good drummer you are fucked. You are watching the singer or the guitar player thinking it is all happening, but if the drums aren't happening nothing is.
There was a free water aerobics class this week... me and a bunch of female senior citizens making like washing machines in the pool, it would have made for a fine reality television show... i think I'm not really a television person although i believe my children could use the help of the sesame street character "Count", as our homework is to help our kids learn to count... one of the negatives of a no TV household... of course there are too many positives to enter a serious debate about the issue... if a cable company could provide me with something that didn't load up on the hoarse shit perhaps we could have a conversation, but that's not the way. Any system that treats the common citizen like some rube sucker can lick a shit as far as i am concerned.
I will not buy, will not believe, i will not see what they tell me to see.
Never think your kids are falling behind on some week to week basis... you just run the chance to instill a prospect of failure that is unnecessary. My oldest daughter was late to read but now reads constantly... she was never told anything. i was late to read and was told i hated reading and only liked hockey and so i bought into that, which is why i suffer such obvious illiteracy. In school you learn how to learn, sometimes it takes longer for other kids, do me a favour... don't bring the hammer down on a kid, they are just a kid, everybody develops at their own rate... talk to me in grade 11 when some are solving more complex math problems than others, but perhaps those not solving math problems are excelling in other areas. Don't be a fool and pin your hopes on your kid. they might have a talent that is outside your "hope" range. Don't rob them of the chance to explore that one, they want to please... park your ego and let them be.
It's fair to say that i overdid it this week... exercise every morning from 9-10am, there was a hockey game Wednesday night, i ran into a concert on Monday night and a late night blog the other night. Overdoing things is my ace up the sleeve, i will not miss out because it was too much.. i will just continue to overdo, it's the way i roll. Think something is important then get into it, game of cricket, have a hand in it... from the Alien sex Fiend song "get into it"... just to keep our quotes accurate. The song was a bit of a theme song in 3rd year University... memories set to music... nothing beats that. I believe it is also important to show your children to do the stuff that you think is important, and to say "I'm too tired or overwhelmed" is unacceptable.
We signed our kids up for the "hot lunch" program... you eat from the cafeteria rather than pack a lunch... i draw from experience on this one, although i learned a lot this week. the menu is pre-determined so if it is not what they want i will pack a lunch.
On the first day i threw a small piece of poppy seed cake and an apple into the twins pack in case they got hungry from not enough lunch. On their introduction i took them into the cafeteria so they could see the process and was told... don't worry everybody is new, we will go through everything.
So when i picked them up from the first day they were faint... i asked how was school... "good but you didn't give us enough food to eat" as Hailie stumbled to the left... WHAT??? No sometimes you don't get the real answers from kids, even though they are naturally honest, so we broke it down... Kaiya got involved (who is in grade 3). So i went back to the kindergarten teacher and asked if Hailie and Emily ate lunch... the answer i got was well they had some stuff so i thought you thought that was all they needed, and they ate more than some of the kids. Holy shit i thought, so i mentioned that they had lunch cards and the teacher was glad i pointed that out. in fairness to the teachers they are overwhelmed and in these situations you tend to notice the kids who are loud and causing issues rather than the kids who are quietly starving and too shy to speak up. Clearly my error for not showing up... as a former teacher i will never begrudge a teacher or tell them how to treat my children rather i want my children to learn that life is not an easy ride and you need to overcome all obstacles.
Shit happens.. my kids starved on the first day of school... should i freak out or realize that this was the greatest lesson.
On the second day of school i showed up at lunch time 11am for the Kindergarten class... there were Hailie and Emily with their hot lunch trying to open their milk, too shy to ask... i opened the milk and hung out for a bit. Now because of education funding cuts lunch is only 15 minutes, which is crazy cause it took me 45 minutes to feed my kids at home.. focus on your food, sit properly, don't worry about that... you know if you know. But the thing is the class is dismissed from lunch but if you want to stay and eat you can so i told them... you girls stay and finish your food if you are not done in the 15 minutes... you don't want to be hungry at school. They looked very seriously at me and said 'no we don't want to be hungry at school"... so they stayed and ate. i showed up every day, after the first day, for lunch to reinforce the message and to go over opening the milk technique. They can open their milk now and are solid in the idea that they want to eat their whole lunch. just a note, you can always turn a negative into a positive.
On my end the school secretary saw me coming in every day to get a "guest pass" to get into the cafeteria to make sure everything was OK, and pitched the idea that i could help out doing recess monitoring, because of course they are underfunded and desperately need volunteers (go war go).
Now you have to see things from my perspective... after 8 years i finally have a moment away from kids.. i love my kids, and would try to move the world for them... actually i wouldn't cause i know it is an impossible task, but the sentiment is there. But this is a week i have been waiting for for a long time... so to be suddenly hit with the concept of 1) peak sun (my arch nemesis) and 2) a field of screaming kids (my other arch nemesis) i went from free falling in a state of bliss to stuck in a gel that had a gravitational pull... you see our family's motto is to always help and volunteer whenever possible.. it's a good place to be, a path to a rich life for sure. But if i were to go to therapy, which is not my style i believe my therapist would recommend staying away from kids. In fact a perfect job for me would be a teachers assistant.. i would work the same hours as my kids, but the reason it wouldn't work is that once i got off work I would be burned out of kid duty and my own children would suffer.
So there i was in the office. pressed with the volunteer plea... my brain frozen. there was a vision of me trying to kick start my brain for an excuse like a person might try to start a dirt bike, and i came up with "i have something on the stove", which was total bullshit of course, and i slipped the noose.
The the deli ma came... i need to go in to make sure the kids are OK at lunch, cause they are too shy to ask for help in a room full of chaos, but to do that i need a pass, which means i need an excuse to not volunteer for recess duty... so i have to show up in a welding mask one day, cause I'm in the middle of welding a child safe device, and a clown costume the next day cause i have a gig entertaining children, and a lab coat the next day because I'm working on a cure for some childhood disease... just to make sure my kids get enough to eat and too see what is actually happening, and to remind them that they are allowed to stay past the 15 minutes to finish their food.
This is where the starving on day one payed off big time... they know one thing, they don't want to go hungry so they stay together and finish their lunch, a thing my 8 year old has yet to learn, because when everyone is leaving to play in the playground the pull is irresistible, unless you know real hunger.
How did I do? free time flies quickly, and there are many things that need to be done, one needs to be organized and have a plan. Floors to wash, bathrooms to clean, food to prepare, gardens to tend, neighbours to loiter with, exercise, bogus excuses, music gear shops patron, food to purchase, Internet to distract, rugs to wash, projects to finish, songs to write, books to read, photographs to organize... there is never nothing to do, and that's a good thing... life is excellent and i wouldn't trade mine for anybodies.
Time keeps on slipping into the future (Steve Miller of course)... King Hell drums on that track played by Gary Mallaber who is a Los Angeles session drummer the Internet tells me. I think good drummers need more respect, trust me without a good drummer you are fucked. You are watching the singer or the guitar player thinking it is all happening, but if the drums aren't happening nothing is.
There was a free water aerobics class this week... me and a bunch of female senior citizens making like washing machines in the pool, it would have made for a fine reality television show... i think I'm not really a television person although i believe my children could use the help of the sesame street character "Count", as our homework is to help our kids learn to count... one of the negatives of a no TV household... of course there are too many positives to enter a serious debate about the issue... if a cable company could provide me with something that didn't load up on the hoarse shit perhaps we could have a conversation, but that's not the way. Any system that treats the common citizen like some rube sucker can lick a shit as far as i am concerned.
I will not buy, will not believe, i will not see what they tell me to see.
Never think your kids are falling behind on some week to week basis... you just run the chance to instill a prospect of failure that is unnecessary. My oldest daughter was late to read but now reads constantly... she was never told anything. i was late to read and was told i hated reading and only liked hockey and so i bought into that, which is why i suffer such obvious illiteracy. In school you learn how to learn, sometimes it takes longer for other kids, do me a favour... don't bring the hammer down on a kid, they are just a kid, everybody develops at their own rate... talk to me in grade 11 when some are solving more complex math problems than others, but perhaps those not solving math problems are excelling in other areas. Don't be a fool and pin your hopes on your kid. they might have a talent that is outside your "hope" range. Don't rob them of the chance to explore that one, they want to please... park your ego and let them be.
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