Non-nap

A note from today's non-nap: Zadie had told me she wanted to nurse, so I laid down topless. She cuddled up and said "I'm happy to see you!" I said "I'm happy to see you, too --" but was interrupted by "boobie." I laughed. "You're happy to see my boobie?" She asked "What did I say to your big boobie?"

I re-told that story to Mom today, and Zadie overheard, and this time she asked "What did I say to your big, big, big boobie?"

An up and down weekend

Saturday was almost all devoted to chores and household stuff. We did make time for lunch with Monkeygirl at the Shack. Naturally, the company was good. I was a little disappointed that they've taken the two vegetarian sandwiches off the menu, but they made me something yummy anyway. It was a nice lunch. Zadie was charming, chatting up the waitress, but also a terror, shrieking and turning the florescent sign on and off.

Today, Zadie woke us up at 5:45. We had brunch plans that got cancelled, so we went out for breakfast by ourselves. I asked Zadie whether she would prefer Cafe Bernardo or Fox and Goose, and she said "Cafe Bernardo." So we went there, parked, and started walking to the restaurant when she said forcefully "I WANT to go to Cafe Bernardo." I said "Good, me too." She said again "I WANT to go to Cafe Bernardo." I was like "Okay, well, we're walking there right now." Almost in tears, she insisted "I WANT to go to Cafe Bernardo." Finally, I asked "Honey, do you mean you DON'T want to go to Cafe Bernardo?" She nodded. I asked if she wanted to go to Fox and Goose instead, and she nodded again. Well, what the hell, I thought. We went back to the car and headed to Fox and Goose. About halfway there, in the same whiny tone, she started insisting "I WANT to go to Fox and Goose. I want to go to Cafe Bernardo." By this time, I could tell the subtle difference between "want" and "WANT" (which means "don't want"), but I was done with the fickle-ness. We had a nice meal at Fox and Goose.

Then we went to the farmer's market, where she was fine, and the park, where she had a nice time except that she got soaking wet and didn't really want to leave. At home, she fell asleep on my lap, which was a surprise (it was only 10:00). I had to go to the restroom really badly, so I held it as long as I could, then lifted her off my lap, waking her up. Since I have a really hard time getting to the gym on the weekends*, I decided to take her to the gym to swim, which she enjoys, but to walk there. It's about two miles away, so I got a little workout. She decided not to swim but to go into the kids' play area, and she had a great time -- well, until I was forced to climb up into the "space maze" to get her out. Twice.

Finally, we came home and I fed her lunch, then tried to get her to take a nap again. She just wouldn't, and although I was exhausted, she was determined not to let me sleep, either. I had some ugly thoughts for a few minutes and ended up letting Sweetie take care of her while I hid under a blanket for a while.

Then we went to dinner with Grandma, where she was pretty well-behaved. I bought her a new lamp and it's on a timer set to turn on at 6:45 on weekday mornings and 7:20 on the weekends. I told her she's not allowed to get out of bed until the light comes on, but that she can read books or play with toys until then. We'll see how it goes -- she's a pretty willful kid, frankly.

*On the weekdays, the gym is open until 10, so it's pretty easy to go after Z's asleep. But it closes at 8 on weekends. We have plans Sunday afternoons. She won't go in the child care center by herself. Sweetie has plans Sunday morning and can't watch her. Saturday morning is cleaning time. Saturday after naptime I usually go grocery shopping and make dinner. But I know i need more exercise than just two days a week, which is what I usually get if I can't go on the weekend.

Universe kicks my ass again

Right as I go and write a negative post about how hard teaching is, the universe grabs my head and points me to the good again.

First, we had a movie night at school tonight, and the kids were awesome and sweet to Zadie and we all laughed at the movie and ate the best green papaya salad I've ever had.

And then my aunt posted this on my Facebook (I've edited it for privacy):

Kara I heard the best compliment about you today and I just had to pass it on. A clerk in ******, told me she had a teacher named [Mockula] and she was her favorite. Her name is S******, you had her at [junior high I worked at] and she said you kept her in school when she was going to give up. She is very grateful and appears to have a good job in the pharmacy. These are the things that make all the bad days worth it. (oh, and of course the big $ we make!) Have a great weekend.

No Child Left Behind, my ass.

While I frankly don't think vouchers, charter schools, or merit pay are the answers to all our problems (and I don't really know what the answers are, either), I do recognize that we leave kids behind all the time.

I have kids in my 11th grade English class who can barely write a coherent paragraph. And if all goes as expected, they will graduate from high school and probably go to college, where the teachers will rant about how they're in need of remediation. I know, dude. They were in need when I got them, and I tried to give it to them. As high school teachers, our natural instinct is to blame the junior high teachers. And when I was a junior high teacher, we blamed the elementary schools. It just goes right on down until you get to some poor, sweet, beleaguered kindergarten teacher yelling "What the hell am I supposed to do? The kid has never seen a book before he got here, he's absent once a week, tardy two out of three days, and his parents took him out of the country for a month in January!"

We can't blame the parents. I mean that and I don't. Obviously, you'd have to be a fucking idiot not to realize that kids who come from homes with educated parents and books and shit do better in school. But what good does it do for us to blame the parents who don't have that stuff? It's still our job to educate their children. That's what all this "closing the achievement gap" business is all about.

But there are places where we could be doing a better job. At risk of being Dooced, here's a (completely anonymous) story from last week.

We haven't done a lot of long-form writing yet. Mostly one or two sentences or maybe a paragraph. This young lady (we'll call her Faye) has turned in some stuff of varying quality. Sometimes it's quite good, and other times it's riddled with errors. But it's so hard to tell what's going on in a few sentences. We did a longer piece of writing the other day. I read her first draft. It was SCARY bad. Like, the first four sentences were riddled with errors to the point that it was incomprehensible. Then the next four sentences were fluent and brilliant -- and completely plagiarized from the text we had read. The next day they were typing this same piece of writing. Faye had taken her rough draft home and left it, so I told her to just start again. I looked over her shoulder and saw some really odd sentences. Stuff that was totally fluent, but missing a word. I glanced at the girl's computer who was sitting next to her and it all made sense; Faye was copying, but her English skills weren't even good enough to understand that she wasn't copying accurately.

Long story short, I called the counselor and we met with another gal and went over Faye's cumulative file together. Although she has been in this school system in English-speaking classes for TEN years, she was only at an "early intermediate" level as an English speaker. That's one step above beginning and a far cry from where you'd expect she would be. Her teachers had met with parents on three separate occasions for a formal meeting to see how they could help her out because she was struggling, but had never considered testing her for special ed. In junior high, even though she was at early intermediate and was a fluent English speaker, they put her in classes designed for beginning English speakers.

How does a kid like that fall through the cracks? Is it because she's a language-learner that they assumed she was doing the best she could? How could her English skills not improve over ten years? How do we expect her to pass the exit exam? How are we preparing her for work or college?

Almost all my freshmen are at the below basic or far below basic level according to test scores. That means they read and write at a level several years below high school level. My goal is to move them two years in one year, but even so, that puts some of them at a 6th grade level in the 10th grade. There are five special ed kids in that class and three or four more who probably ought to be. A lot of kids need individual attention in order to even pick up a pencil. So yes, our school system isn't working as well as it could. I think we're doing our best at my school. I'm trying personally to do my best. But somewhere along the line, something isn't working.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Hey, you know, all that said, I've had some really good work-related moments lately. I've found myself collaborating with the English department to improve that curriculum I don't love. We've really used our time wisely, worked together, and strengthened the writing part of the program a lot. I had an interesting discussion with my fellow IB teachers today about the exams and the program in general and what we can work on. We talked at length about grading and the reasons for giving grades in a meeting a couple weeks ago, and I heard some perspectives that were enlightening. We did some interesting stuff in my small learning community related to different ways to improve kids' retention, one of which also prompted a stimulating discussion amongst teachers. I went to a training where I got some valuable ideas, including something I'll use this spring with my 11th graders for sure. I'm trying to set the bar higher for my 9th graders. Last year I had a bunch of really rough kids, so if I could get them to work at all, sometimes it was such a struggle that even if they'd done it wrong, I'd be happy that they had just done it. None of that this year -- today I made a kid do something over 4 times (I asked nicely and gave encouragement and suggestions) because it wasn't right and it was clear he didn't understand. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about my job this year. Only took ten years, huh? Twenty more to go, and then I'm blowing this popsicle stand!

I'm letting Zadie take the lead...

and today is the first day since she was a few days old that she hasn't nursed at all.

Date night

Well, date night was lovely!

We saw Sherlock Holmes, and while it wasn't exactly what Arthur Conan Doyle probably envisioned, I quite enjoyed it. We did, however, see about 40 minutes worth of trailers, only one of which didn't foretell the decline of western civilization. It was, by complete coincidence, called "Date Night," and it starred Steve Carrel and Tina Fey, so there you go.

We also had a great dinner, although service was somewhat leisurely tonight. The waiter was quite nice, and when I asked him for a wine recommendation, he offered to bring me tastes of a couple. I ended up with a Spanish Albariño, and thank goodness I didn't have to order it by name to get a second glass, since all I could think was "Armadillo? Amarillo? Amontillado? Armada? I couldn't have ordered a Spanish Armada, could I?"

Also, Sweetie and I talk frequently, but not for, like, 90 minutes straight. Frankly, I was a little worried that we'd default to talk about Zadie, but as it turns out, we're still best friends, and we had a lot to talk about.

Then we picked up the kiddo, who was full of energy, but I eventually got her to sleep.

Have a good night, all! I did.

Saturday morning pics

Playing with bindis.


Coloring.


Corndog.


And then of course she fell from a height onto her head and won't take a nap and suddenly hates tuna and we're going to drop her off at Grandma and Boompah's.

Tidbits

Zadie has been asking what words mean a lot lately. For example, I was singing Joni Mitchell's "Little Green" the other day and sang the line "sometimes there'll be sorrow." She said "Mama, what does 'sorrow' mean?" Once she has an acceptable answer, she's happy. And my dumb ass decided to recite "Jabberwocky" to her. Yeah, that's right . . . the one that begins "Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." It took about five minutes to get through that line.

My new haircut has had very positive responses. Oh no, not just compliments -- I got a spontaneous round of applause from a group of kids at lunch, I got hit in the arm twice by a fellow teacher, and one kid stumbled all over himself comparing me to the singer Pink, and trying to get out of the fact that he then called her "sexy."



More Zadie stuff -- the other day she saw the golden arches and said "M for Mommy!"

Then she was talking to the cat and said "Mina, you're a good cat. Do you have good booby time with your mommy?"

I got her hooked on Bjork videos... muahahaha! Incidentally, I totally want to wear the stuff that Bjork wears. I apparently can't search images worth a darn, but there's an orange dress she wears in the "It's Oh So Quiet" video that is the perfect little shift. And there's another one (perhaps from the "Possibly Maybe" video where she has this pink mod thing on. Just adorable.

Okay, that's about it. Sweetie and I have a date night tomorrow, and I'm excited! We haven't gone on one since last summer.

I forgot a few things

I was mentioning her imagination, but I forgot to say she's been acting like animals, too. For example, the other day she said "Meow! I'm a cat!" I said, "Okay, I'm a cat, too." I pretended to lick my hand and stroke her hair, and she came at me with her tongue out and tried to lick me.

At breakfast yesterday, she told us "You're the mommy monkey... you're the daddy monkey... and I'm the baby monkey!" Then we all had to make monkey noises for a minute.

Also, for anyone wondering about the creeping death on my face, it's finally creeping away. I mean, it's still quite noticeable to me, but between the two allergy medicines and the cortizone cream, it's much better than it was a week ago.

I got a haircut yesterday, and it has gotten good reviews so far. In fact, I got a spontaneous round of applause from the students at lunch today. Here's a bad picture I took with my phone.


Okay, I think that's it now!

Valentines, three day weekends, pigtails, imagination, weight loss...

Hi all! Well, just a bit of an update. It's been lovely to have a couple three-day weekends. It really takes the pressure off of trying to get all the cleaning and shopping and such done and allows us fun time. This weekend we haven't even had our free day, and we've already gone to ArtBeast and the playground and visited Grandpa John!

Valentine's Day isn't a huge deal around here, but we do celebrate how lucky we are to have all this love. Sweetie and I exchanged presents (books for both of us!) and Zadie got two cool Mo Willems books from Daddy and stickers, bubbles, barrettes, and lip gloss from Mommy. We also all got presents from Grandma and Boompah and candy from Grandpa John. For dinner tonight we got take-out from Boon Boon Thai cafe. The food was good, and it was extra-special because we ate it on a blanket in a living room picnic.

WIth the barrettes I got Zadie were two ponytail holders. I figured we'd put them away until she had a bit more hair, but she begged to put them in, so I figured I'd try. Here's the result.


Doesn't she look grown-up? I mean it -- every once in a while it really strikes me how big she's getting or how much she's grown, and to me, with the pigtails on, she looks so much more like a little girl than a baby.

Her imagination is just going wild. She still keeps up a running monologue about what Baby Max might say, but she seems to be adding her own characters to the mix. For example, she's been talking today about "Miyoki." I couldn't figure out who it was, so I finally said "Is Miyoki your friend?" She said yes, so I guess Miyoki is a brand-new imaginary friend.

When last we left our blogging heroine, I was feeling a little "Sheesh, how am I ever going to lose this weight?" Now I'm feeling a little more "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." So that's good. Anyway, I've lost a little over ten pounds, which makes me feel a little better. It feels like an accomplishment. On the other hand, according to Weight Watchers, that means I need to reduce my calorie consumption even more, by four "points" a day. Well, that doesn't sound like much, but it's a cup of rice, or an apple and a banana, or a cup of no-fat frozen yogurt or two oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies and a rice cake... Anyway, you can see where I'm going to have to cut back more. Probably in the dessert region. Boo.

Okay, that's all for now! Take care, and I hope you're all well. Happy Valentine's Day!

The awesomeness that is Zadie

I haven't posted a video in a while. This one spans a couple months (and is under 3 minutes, don't worry!).

The poopy truth.

Having Zadie is absolutely one of the best things to ever happen to me, and I wouldn't change it for the world. But just in case there are any 15 year olds out there thinking "gee, parenting sounds awesome!", we do have some rotten times, too. In the interest of honesty, here are a few.

Zadie has been sick, and although I'm empathetic, that does make life a little rough around here. For example, she currently hates everything. With the possible exception of candy. She didn't want to be put down, so I offered to put her in the baby carrier while I made dinner. I barely got her hooked in and said "This'll be fun" when she started screaming "It's NOT FUN! I don't want to be in the baby carrier! I don't want to be on your back! It's not fun! AUUUGGHHH!" So I quickly took her off and asked if she wanted me to just hold her or if she wanted to walk on the floor. She indicated that she wanted to be in the baby carrier, but on my chest. I tried to put her on again and the screaming began again. "I don't want to be in the baby carrier!" She doesn't want ANYTHING and sometimes goes back and forth between wanting something and not wanting it so fast I can't keep track. This is one of those days that I think we could offer her a free ride on a magical pegacorn with chocolate-milk boobies on the neck that would take her to Disneyland, and she'd yell "I DON'T WANT a magical pegacorn ride to Disneyland! AUUGGH!"

And let's try to be discreet, because I certainly don't want to be one of those mommy bloggers who talks about poop, but you know what happens to your gut on antibiotics? It happens to her, too, but she can't take care of it herself yet, so I (and my sainted mother) get the pleasure of dealing with the effects.

And finally, the terrible twos for most kids mean testing boundaries. And the same is true for Zadie. What's odd about Zadie, I think, is that punishment means less than nothing to her. Time outs? She laughs. Taking stuff away? There's nothing she's that attached to. Taking away privileges? It seems too distant and abstract and long-term... like "In two hours, we won't go to frozen yogurt, and we might have gone otherwise." So this is kind of an evolving process, and in the meantime, there's a lot of yelling in restaurants and throwing food and standing on electronics and attempting to overturn the furniture and biting/pinching/smacking.

I'm not really complaining, just sharing, and I have to tell you that there are lots of good times, too. Like this one, earlier.


And this, from this weekend.


And just now. She got a Valentine earlier with a sucker attached, and wanted it right away. I said she could have it after dinner, and she was pissed. But then she ate dinner, so I cleaned her up and told her she could have her sucker. She said "Yay! A holiday sucker for me!"

Who's the boss?

We went to Fox and Goose for breakfast, mainly because I REALLY like going out for breakfast. Anyway, Zadie was more or less done, when she shrieked. I said "If you shriek again, we have to leave, and we're leaving your eggs and bacon here." She shrieked again. I bundled her up, she shoved another bite of bacon in, and we left.

Then, the whole way home, we had this conversation:
Z: I don't want to go bye-bye!
Me: Then you shouldn't have screamed.
Z: I don't want to go bye-bye!
Me: Then you made a bad decision, because I said if you screamed again, we would leave, and you screamed again.
Z: I don't want to go bye-bye!
Me: That is too bad. We went bye-bye because you screamed.

And variations on a theme for the rest of the ten-minute drive until just before we pulled into the grocery store lot, when she said," I don't want to go bye-bye... I'm the boss!"

Weight check-in

Well, I've lost almost ten pounds (my official weigh-in is tomorrow). Which is great! My fat pants are falling off my ass. On the other hand, I kind of looked at that number, ten, and compared it to the total number I want to lose, which is somewhere between 50 and a googolplex, and I just felt kind of discouraged.

Not discouraged enough to quit trying or to gorge myself on cookies for a weekend or anything. I'm still doing well and I'm making progress, and I feel good about that. But man, I have a long road ahead of me*. Especially considering that if I lose all the weight I want to, I still have to keep it off for, you know, the rest of my life. And I've shown before that I'm not good at portion control when I'm not accountable to something like Weight Watchers. I guess we had better hope it's still around in fifty years, so that I can still be counting points when I'm 84. I think after 84, if I feel like going into the Cheesecake Factory and ordering one of everything, I'm just going to go ahead and do it.

*I'm not telling you how much I have to lose, but I've lost ten pounds in 5 weeks. If I keep losing at this rate, it'll take me another 7 or 8 months to lose it all. And there's no guarantee I'll keep this rate up; many people hit a plateau at some point and weight loss slows down.

Ah, sunshine!

We had a beautiful weekend.


At the farmer's market, where the apple lady gave Zadie her own small apple, free of charge.


At the playground after the market.


And we were at a different park on Saturday.


There were some gymnastics.

Sunshine is nice. Now it's raining again. Blech.

Just an update

My doctor emailed me and still thinks the crap on my face is an allergic reaction, so I'm going to treat it as such for a few days. If it doesn't get better, I'm to call. So if you see me in public, I may not be a plague-bearer.

Uh-oh, contagion!

Yeah, Zadie has been a little cranky lately, especially about diaper changes. She's been yelling "No wipe me with a rag! Be gentle! Be nice to me! It hurts my feelings!" She did have what looked like a minor case of diaper rash, so we had been putting a barrier cream on, but I didn't think it was a big deal.

In a related note, last week I wore some makeup (foundation) after not wearing any in a long, long time. The next day, my jawline was a little broken out, so I put on MORE make-up to cover that. By that evening, I had a full-fledged itchy rash. Today, almost a week later, the itchy rash has spread all the way up to my temples on both sides of my face. I tried cortizone, allergy medicine, and calendula gel, and nothing had any effect.

Last night, Zadie woke up after being asleep briefly and started yelling "I hurt! I hurt!" I gave her some Tylenol and some food (she hadn't eaten her dinner), and then I put her back in bed. Suspecting an ear infection, I called the advice nurse at Kaiser for an appointment, which we got for this morning. She woke up again quickly. She was super fussy, begging to nurse, and seemed to be in a lot of pain. Although she slept from 11:15 to about 4, that was about it. The rest of the night she needed to be held. She never could exactly tell me what hurt, but when I asked if it was her vagina and patted her over the diaper, she howled in pain. I then figured the diaper rash must have been very painful, too.

Cut to this morning -- Mom takes Zadie to the doctor, who determines that she has TWO infections, the ear infection I suspected and a staph infection in her diaper area. My mom, who is faster on the uptake than I am (thank goodness), said "My daughter has had a rash on her face for a week that she thought was an allergy..." The doctor said "She needs to see her doctor."

So, I probably have a staph infection on my face, and Zadie has one on her butt. What a pair, huh? There's a lot of hand-washing and antibacterial gel and antibiotic ointments and liquids going on around here, and probably more once my doctor checks her email.

By the way, being tired from a night of holding a sick baby is NOTHING compared to actually hearing your baby scream "I hurt! I hurt!" and not being able to alleviate it.

Of course, given my friend's recent loss, just having my sweet baby feels like the world's biggest blessing, cranky, screaming, sleepless, and perfect.