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Our Family Read-Aloud
  • The Hoboken Chicken Emergency
    The Hoboken Chicken Emergency
    by Daniel Pinkwater
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  • Your Five Year Old: Sunny and Serene
    Your Five Year Old: Sunny and Serene
    by Louise Bates Ames
  • Book of Days: Personal Essays
    Book of Days: Personal Essays
    by Emily Fox Gordon
  • The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding (La Leche League International Book)
    The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding (La Leche League International Book)
    by La Leche League International
  • Gilead: A Novel
    Gilead: A Novel
    by Marilynne Robinson
Monday
Oct192009

Transition: part two

When I started writing this piece about the transition in the first month of school for WJ as he stays in preschool despite his chronological age, I thought this was a story in two parts.  I think I am deciding that the story has three parts (at least).  I want to get to the good news.  There is good news.  But the bumps in the road are difficult to ignore.

Part Two of this story involves the Kindergartener’s enthusiasm about all things Kindergarten. 

We thought it, and still think it, important for WJ to have time with his friends from before.  We want for him to make new connections in his new class, but a handful of his old school friends are the ones he held hands with while lying on a blanket as four-month-olds who could not yet even turn to look at one another.  They are children with whom he has spent the vast majority of the days of these last years and we knew that his sense of normalcy depended partly on continued time to play with the friends with whom he is so comfortable.

One on one, these interactions are positive, just like old times.  But when two or more of his kindergarten friends gather together, the conversation tends to hover around one topic: Kindergarten.

The picture above is WJ trying to keep a stiff upper lip at our favorite sushi restaurant earlier this month.  What you don’t see in the picture is three of his former classmates, just to the right, all singing new songs they had learned together at school.  At first WJ watched and listened with great interest; he is a true lover of all things music.  But as they moved from verse to verse and from song to song (I may be exaggerating here), it became clear that WJ felt out of place.  His five-year-old social skills left him unprepared for successful maneuvering of a situation like this—inside jokes, you-had-to-be-there moments, secret handshakes and the like.

Here is where my protective mothering instinct rears her ugly head.

I emailed a little with a friend whose son is also spending another year in preschool.  She confirmed this pattern.  When her son had a play date with an old classmate, the classmate talked a lot about kindergarten.  I began to jump up to cry out with indignation, “Why can’t they just get over it already?  It’s only kindergarten!  What’s the big deal?”  But before I uttered such nonsense, my wiser friend offered some insight.  “I wonder if it might wear off a little as the school year wears on.  It's such a big transition that those kids are quite caught up in it.” 

Of course.  Kindergarten is a milestone.  It brings backpacks and lunchboxes, music class and gym, new games, new songs, new teachers, new learning.  And when I listened carefully to WJ’s friends, I heard that their kindergarten talk was not even just that.  When I listened hard, I heard a whisper of their knowledge of WJ and their affection for him. 

What are the two topics that surfaced most in the guess-what-else-happened-in-kindergarten conversations? Music class, first. (And how many times has WJ begged these children to be in his band when they would have rather been dancing princesses?) And secondly, the new and amazing fire facts showered upon them by Fire Fighter Ron who visited their class one afternoon of late.  (What is that under WJ’s bed?  Is that two huge baskets of fire fighter dress-up gear? And on his shelves?  The entire line of Playmobil rescue equipment?)  These friends really are just that.  WJ is not with them in class anymore, but there are times when they think of him and how much he would love the things they are doing.

They all, WJ as the preschooler who stayed and his friends as the newly crowned Kindergarteners, need some support in knowing how to come together peacefully.  WJ needs words and strategies for getting involved in the conversation or changing the topic when he feels left out.  His friends need to know that there are kind ways to tell him about the wonderful new experiences they are having and ways that are not so kind.  And when the waters grow difficult to navigate, they all need adults who will step in and gently guide them on the way.

Just this week, I worked nearby as WJ played with his Two Best Friends.  The two girls began to sing a song from school.  He said to them, “Remember? I don’t know that song.” And they graciously stopped. 

Then Friend One suggested that they play out the story of the magic fish.  WJ said, “Remember?  I don’t know that story.”  “Ok,” she said and she thought around for another idea.  Then she laughed. 

“WJ,” she teased, “You do know that story.  It is not from kindergarten!  It is from summer camp!  You were there!”  He chuckled.  “Oh, yeah!  I remember now!” 

There is still a Part Three (at least) to this story of the transition. But for now, I am thankful for old friends and the ways that they know you and the times they can grow with you.

Saturday
Oct172009

New look

 

Many thanks to Ted Mauseth at MausethDesign, LLC for his help with a new banner image and color palette here at Ready to Wait.  The image is so quiet and peaceful that you would have no idea, unless I decided to tell you, that three not-so-small-anymore boys were having their own version of a wild rumpus behind and around us as we fiddled with the banner this weekend.  

Thanks, Ted, for your time and your expertise.  I owe you some serious babysitting... send 'em on over!

Wednesday
Oct142009

Apple crispish

When you have made a commitment to taking it slow and you have a school holiday right smack in the middle of October, you go to the pick-your-own farm.  You watch your child delight in nature and in his cousins and you drive home with a trunk full of the goodness of the earth.  And you hope your child’s superstitiously declared desire to “eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away” will hold out for at least another month so as to insure a sizable dent in the bounty of fruit you are lugging out of the car.

And when your child surveys the wonders of his harvest and announces with joy and anticipation, as you attempt to find places to store this collection of fruit in your tiny city apartment kitchen, “I am ready to bake,” you have only one choice.  You put the catching up on emails, the finishing of paperwork, the making of dinner on hold and you bake with your child. 

With great excitement, WJ washed and chopped apples as I made an attempt at overhauling the Joy of Cooking’s apple crisp recipe.  I used whole-wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose and substituted half honey and half agave syrup for the sugar.  I knew the topping would be wet instead of crumbly with these substitutions so I planned to add some oatmeal, but found that I only had steel cut, which I have never baked with and this did not seem a good time to try.  I added a handful of almonds to the dough and food-processed it.  Still wet.  A handful of wheat germ; still wet.  Staring into the open cabinets, I saw the Honey Nut Cheerios and thought to myself, couldn’t hurt!  So I added a big handful of those too and chopped them in the food processor.  The dough was doughier but still not the chunky crumbs you usually sprinkle atop a crisp.

Our apple crisp was not all that crispy; maybe it was crispish, a little more like a cobbler.  But it was crunchy thanks to the nuts and the Cheerios.  And it was warm and sweet on a cool fall evening, keeping us together at the table for a few minutes more.

Have you picked your fall fruits yet?

Sunday
Oct112009

Transition: a story in two (possibly three) parts

Part One:  We are about a month into this school year.  Perhaps transition is a funny word to choose to describe these weeks.  From the outside it might seem that since WJ is repeating a year, staying in the same classroom with the same teachers, little has changed. 

It has, however, been an adjustment.  The things that are different are significant from WJ’s point of view.  The transition has revolved partly around the fact that his classmates, the Two Best Friends included, mostly went on to kindergarten without him.  In this we find the first part of the story.  How has it been for WJ to be left behind?

At first, it was hard.  Harder than I imagined, actually.  People said, and I soaked myself in the poisoned Kool-Aid of this hope, that children this age would not even notice when a friend repeats a year.  As an educator, I knew in my heart that this hope was vastly underestimating The Child.  But I hoped it for the sake of ease and, admittedly, avoidance.

The hope was in vain.  The Child is not dull; The Child is curious and seeks to understand and order his experience. We have at some point in these weeks encountered every classmate of WJ’s who went on to the kindergarten class in our school.  All but one has greeted him excitedly and then asked, within the first several seconds of their interaction, “Why aren’t you in kindergarten?”  After either WJ or I reply with our carefully crafted answers, the children naturally follow with, “But aren’t you five?”

I knew in my heart that the children would notice both his absence from their classroom and his presence in the preschool, but it was somehow a surprise to me that they would ask about it with such consistency.  I guess I thought perhaps WJ’s peers would not care, that it would not matter, per se, would not be a big deal.  I believed that their immature social constructs would translate into an innocence about hierarchy and such. 

But it does matter to them.  It is with great concern and confusion that the former classmates consider WJ and our answers to their questions.  I am sure there is a sociology or anthropology project in here somewhere.  WJ is to his five-year-old peers an incongruity to be investigated.  Furrowed eyebrows abound and if we offered magnifying glasses, I believe the children would accept them for a closer look.  

WJ has been standing tall through the Playground Inquisition, but it has not been entirely easy. He is not dull either.  His eyes dart to me often and when he begins making funny, twitching faces I intervene with a matter of fact tone and a quick change of the subject. 

I am glad for WJ’s bravery and resilience and for our continued sense of peace about the decision for him to wait for kindergarten.  I believe WJ has moved beyond his sadness about our decision but it is not quite a comfortable fit yet.  It is a little like his new school pants that still need to be cuffed.  

Sunday
Oct042009

Potato Rosemary Bread

 

Now is when I confess my love-hate relationship with Peter Reinhart and, more specifically, with his tome, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice

As I am working this year to slow things down, I find that this book fits the bill and I am grateful for the challenge from Nicole, the food blogger at Pinch My Salt, to bake each and every type of bread described in this thick volume.  Nowhere in the entire book will one find the words quick or easyThis is hardcore, Old World baking. The loaves take days to prepare.  And when the bread emerges from the oven, it is perfect. It quiets my family at the table.  This is real bread and every attempt brands me a real baker.

Take the Potato Rosemary Bread I made this week.  I don’t know what I loved more about this recipe, its heaping cup of mashed potatoes or the succulent cloves of roasted garlic. 

And as I was working through the instructions on Day Two, I stopped in my tracks and nearly swooned.  Pepper!  I had missed it in my preliminary readings (more on this later).  A bread with pepper!  Oh my!  I considered leaving my husband and heading off to find Peter Reinhart for surely he is my soul mate.

But right about now is when it becomes impossible to ignore the hate part of my experience with the recipes.  Bread baking is both an art and a science.  On both fronts, these recipes are the baker’s version of the X-Games.  And let’s just say that I am a little out of shape.

After choosing a bread to tackle, I read the recipe thoroughly and scour the kitchen and various specialty stores to make sure I have all of the ingredients.  Then I carefully consider our schedule to verify that I have time available in the correct increments necessary for the recipe.  I read the recipe again the night before I begin. 

Often the first day’s steps can be completed easily in the late afternoon with WJ. Day One typically involves some water (at room temperature), some yeast (quick acting), and some flour (carefully measured).  What could go wrong? 

Let’s see…  I could forget to leave out water and have to take a break for the water to adjust to the correct temperature or else play a crazy guessing game trying to remember what room temperature feels like, which risks killing the yeast, quick acting or not.  Or I could turn the mixer on, set on SLOW albeit, and watch, jaw dropping to the floor, as the carefully measured flour rises up like a cloud and showers down on the counter.

On Day Two, when the tasks are divided into mixing, kneading, fermenting, forming, proofing, and baking, any number of things could go awry.  I could forget to add the rosemary until after both the mixing and the initial kneading.  I could knead, and knead, and knead and still find the internal temperature of the dough to be three degrees below Reinhart’s guidelines.

I could get so distracted by the temperature issue that I miss the instructions tucked in at the end of that dense paragraph, the instructions about spreading those miraculous cloves of roasted garlic over flattened dough and kneading them in before the two hours of fermenting and one to two hours of proofing.  I could miss that detail entirely until I spot the garlic on the counter while sliding the nearly finished loaves into the oven and be left with no other option than to squish the garlic and spread it in globs over the top of the dough, hoping for the best.

At each turn, there is an opportunity for failure.  Which brings me right back to the love, because nearly every time I come face to face with Mr. Reinhart and the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, I walk away amazed that somehow I have been able to keep up.

 What challenges have left you feeling suprised with yourself?