Category Archives: Isla

extracurriculars

I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about my kids’ activities, and Covid is not helping.  Last year, L took ballet one day a week and jazz dance one day a week.  Then, during the summer she did swim team, after a Covid delay.  I also have been teaching her piano since school got cut.  So, in summary, during the school year, she did dance two days a week plus piano.  In the summer, she did swimming four days a week plus piano.

L’s ballet school promoted her from pre-ballet to Level 1.  (I’m sure this is standard unless the child is really struggling for some reason.)  Level 1 ballet meets twice a week for an hour each time.  They are doing virtual classes this year, but it’s still a really big commitment.  L used to want to be a ballet dance but has been rather lukewarm on it lately.  I’m not a huge ballet fan myself, but I don’t want to influence her interests and choices.  I initially thought she should stick with ballet this year since twice a week isn’t too much time and the online aspect makes it much cheaper (cost cut by more than 50%) and saves us a lot of driving.  But L said she doesn’t want to do it.  I am 100% sure I could convince her to do it  – not make her, but make her want to do it, but I haven’t done so.  I feel like if she tried it one more year, she’d start learning more advanced skills and maybe like it more.   L has been more enthused about swimming lately, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that swimming is in-person.  We had been talking about having her do swim team for a couple months in the fall, but they meet five days a week, so I think it is really not feasible in combination with ballet.  But what do I know?  And she could go to swim three days a week or something.  (There are no meets, so I don’t think it’s a big deal to not attend all the practices.)  However, because of Covid, swim lots are very limited, so it’s harder to be casual about it – planning and financial commitment is called for.  L is already signed up for contemporary dance at another dance school where she originally studied ballet, but that class is on hold indefinitely, until the governor moves the county to Phase 3.  My assessment is that this will not happen before the new year.  But again, what do I know?

I have all these conflicting desires for my kids.

  • I don’t want them to be overscheduled
  • I want them to participate in the arts – dance or music being the most obvious choice
  • I figure if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it well, which means time commitment
  • I am turned off by ballet, the obsession with thinness, what it does to women’s feet, and generally I find the traditional ballets uninspiring
  • I feel like ballet is a really good basis for doing other types of dance
  • I don’t know enough about dance to provide any kind of support at home, like I can with piano, soccer, swim, etc.
  • Team dance (the alternative to ballet) requires a five hour a week time commitment.  I think that’s too much at age 8/9
  • I want L to experience team sports, but she’s really turned off by any sport in which she might get hurt, like soccer or basketball
  • I think it’s really important for the girls to be involved in athletic / fitness activities.  My kids, especially L, would much rather read or sew than move their bodies.  L takes so naturally to things like piano, sewing, reading, origami – things that involve focus and sitting still.  She doesn’t seem to have as much natural aptitude for soccer, dance, etc.
  • I think you can become very good at anything, including things for which you have no natural aptitude, with consistent practice over a period of years
  • But it’s nice to do things at which you naturally excel and enjoy

Bri did soccer once a week for a few weeks last fall.  I was hoping she’d be able to do junior swim team this summer, but between the baby and Covid, I just wasn’t able to get her into lessons to make that final leap in skill level.  She took swim lessons twice a week this summer, and she appears to be ready for junior swim team.  (She can swim a length of the pool freestyle fairly comfortably.)

Right now, I’m leaning towards signing up L and B for swim for September.  That would be 3:30 to 4:30 for L, five days a week, but I figure we’ll give her at least one day off.  I’ll continue to teach her piano, and we’ll hold off on dance (unless the dance class she’s signed up for starts) until October or November, at which point we’ll sign her up for some kind of virtual dance class.  L will do swim twice a week from 5:30 to 6 through September.  I worked very hard with Bri, in addition to her lessons, this summer, and doing at least a month of junior swim team should solidify the skills she learned.  The swim place is ten minutes from my house.  It’s an outdoor, heated pool.

I’m just tempted to put L in ballet.  It IS remote, and with no school, I do think she has time.  Such a hard call!  The tough part about ballet is that you’re committing for the whole year.  In a couple years, I’m sure L will make up her own mind about what she wants to do, and I won’t have enough influence.  But for now, I feel a lot of responsibility because she still listens to me.

I’m sure this is more detail than any of you cared to read, but I’m curious if anyone else is struggling with these types of decisions for their kids, and what you’re doing.

positive thoughts

I was thinking some rare positive thoughts about pregnancy this morning, so I thought I might as well post them.  I’ve reached the cute bump stage.  For the longest time (I’m 23 weeks, folks!), you couldn’t really tell I was pregnant.  I just looked chubby.  (You still can’t really tell when I’m in running clothes.)  Finally, though, I’m clearly pregnant, BUT I haven’t reached yet the whale-like unwieldy third trimester stage where my belly just takes over my body.  I feel all curvy and feminine.  Normally, I am absolutely not a curvy, feminine woman, and I’m totally fine with that, but it’s kind of a nice novelty for now.

L finished out the swim season, and I’m very proud of her.  Swim team is not what you’d call relaxing, and she made big improvements in her swimming.  She can swim 25 yd free in 27 s, which is not bad at all.  She drastically improved her backstroke and learned breaststroke well enough to compete and not get disqualified and look quite confident.  She kind of learned butterfly, though she got DQ’d the one time she competed it.  At the end of the season, she earned an award, along with some other swimmers, for being a good sportswoman, and one of the coaches said some really nice things about her.  I really liked the swim team.  It was very welcoming and they had a good program for the younger kids.  It’s one of the best teams, if not the best teams, on the Eastside.  I always find sports team success interesting.  I think it’s as much about good organization, inclusiveness, and growing kids, regardless of whether they have natural talent, as just lucking into having some athletic kids on the team.  I’ve written before about how my father was a very successful coach, despite (or because of) insisting all kids get equal playing time in games.  I feel like the head coach at our club has been successful for a lot of these reasons.

B is learning how to swim, oh so slowly.  She’s a competent dog-paddler, but definitely not there yet with freestroke.  But it’s nice to know if she was pitched in the drink, she wouldn’t sink like a stone.

Junuary

L had her first swim meet last night.  (She’d previously had a practice swim meet with her team only.)  The whole event went fine.  I’ve noticed in general, swimming doesn’t seem as big or as popular in Seattle as in SW Virginia, despite the much larger population.  Why?  Well, last night’s meet was a case in point.  It was in the 50s and drizzling on and off.  Seriously, folks.  Does weather in the 50s make you want to go swimming outdoors?  The pool is heated, so it’s not that big of a deal, but the kids spend a fair amount of time standing around shivering in their suits.  We’d brought a towel and sweats for L, but it was not enough.  She was frozen, and so were the rest of us by the time we got home.

Oh well.  Life in the Pacific NW has its ups and downs.  It’s definitely different!  We all woke up freezing this morning since we haven’t been running the heat and the temperature dropped below 50 last night.  We finally gave in and turned on the heat for a couple hours.

swim swim swim

B: I don’t like it when you leave me home alone.

Me / H: When did we ever leave you alone?

B: When Daddy is working and Mommy is resting and L is having privacy.

Me / H: (laughing at the cuteness of her turn of phrase) You don’t like it L is having privacy?

B: It’s not fair when some people are having privacy and other people are bored.

Me / H: Don’t worry, when the new baby is here, you’ll always have some to play with.

.

L had her first swim team practice yesterday.  Pro tip: In Washington, swimming pools, even outdoor ones, are always heated!  The pool is actually quite balmy, even though it’s still in the 40s at night.  I was quite pleased with the revelation.  Anyway, I’m quite proud of L.  She did great.

H attended the swim team parents’ meeting tonight  (I’m still only marginally functional due to morning sickness, so he’s been basically single parenting the last seven weeks.)  He was intimidated by how serious it was.  “Everyone was like – swim, swim swim, my kid has been swimming for years, swim, swim, swim, everyone so obsessed with swimming.”  What else would you expect at a swim team meeting?  But I’m amused.

I think swimming is a great life skill, and I think after a couple summers of swim team, you’re a swimmer for life.  You’ll always be confident in the water, even if you never swim competitively again.

school

I’m fairly amused by L’s writing.  Because she’s going to French school, she writes her numbers the French way, and they write English exclusively in cursive.

Sample 1:

I’m too lazy to search for a writing sample at the moment . Maybe later.

So far, I’m actually extremely pleased with L’s school.  H and I thought the academics were probably sub-par, a conclusion we drew form the 90s era “computer lab” and the fact that they obviously have a much smaller pool of teachers to draw from.  But I think the coursework is actually fairly rigorous for first grade.  Memorizing 10 lines of French poetry every couple weeks is on the face of it rather pointless, but I think it’s teaching L a type of rigor that will serve her well.  Weekly spelling tests in French and even French worksheets are always challenging, just due to the language barrier.   L’s French has taken off, thankfully.  (At one point late last school year, I was wondering if she would ever learn.)

On the social side, I am worried.  I see in L all the things that I myself struggled with in elementary school – paralyzing shyness and general social awkwardness that my sister never struggled with, and similarly, L’s little sister has no issues with.  In addition, L has a level of cautiousness that I never had, and the combination I fear will make life difficult for her as she grows older.  Her teacher says she is usually on her own at recess, apparently by choice, because she considers the games too rough.  (L says the same thing.)  Her teacher is absolutely wonderful and working to help her include herself in the games, but just as lack of ability in math or reading given a different rate of learning will become more pronounced, I fear the same will happen with social skills.

For myself, I feel that I’ve managed to attain enough social skills to function relatively well in society and at work.  My theory is that most people plateau at some point, maybe 16 or 18 or 21, and for those of us who were behind, if we continue to work at it, we can catch up.  I do feel I caught up a bit.  In school, I do think i struggled doubly because I was much younger than everyone else, thanks to starting school in PA with a 12/31 deadline and a 12/23 birthday and then moving.  L is nearly a full year older than I was in first grade, and I’m hopeful that that will help her navigate a little better socially.

school days

L’s been back at school now for about a month.  Homework started in week 2, and it’s more or less ramped up since then.  Occasionally she has a worksheet to do, and those are no big deal.  What’s much, much harder are things that require studying.  First of all, she has two spelling tests each week, one in French and one in English.  Trying to get her to study has been like pulling teeth.

Then, she had to memorize a French poem that was about 16 lines long.  Now, Jonathan and I both studied French in school, but that was a long time ago, and many parents are in the same boat, so the teacher sent home a recording of the poem being read.  But that just makes it that much harder to learn, as we have to try and play the recording over and over again, at least until we can pronounce it properly.  (To our ears anyway – L is not impressed by our French.)  Learning a 16 line poem or song in English wouldn’t necessarily be a walk in the park, even.  So that was a challenge and nearly brought us to blows.  After a couple weeks to learn the first poem, we all heaved a sign of relief . . . and then L brought home another French poem to learn today.

We’re also struggling to figure out what she’s supposed to have done when.  I expected she’d just bring home a worksheet or something due the next day, but we’re getting a bunch of these studying tasks with a few days lead time that require our participation.

Friends with kids . . . is this similar to your experience?  I don’t see why homework is necessary in first grade anyway.

On the plus side, L told me she made a new friend today, with a new girl who only speaks French.  (It’s funny how L classifies kids in her class.  Last year she insisted – accurately no doubt – that she didn’t speak French.  All the other kids in her class were classified as English speakers, French speakers or both – no wiggle room.  You either speak a language or you don’t.)  Anyway, even after a year, L hadn’t owned up to actually speaking any French except on rare occasion.  But now’s she’s starting to admit she does speak a bit, and she apparently had a conversation with her new friend in French, which is kind of cool.

 

in my mind, in my head

Loving the Gigi d’Agostino mix of In My Mind.

I’ve been reading to Isla for about four years now.  Every night.  It’s one of the most effortless parts of parenting for me.  The kids are happy, and I’m happy.  Reading kids books, the picture books, can make me a little crazy.  I don’t mind the good ones (Ox Cart Man, The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree, Make Way for Ducklings, etc.) but the lame ones are just horrid.  Chapter books, though.  I love them.  The kids are still letting me pick, and I’ve been picking ALL my childhood favorites.  I wanted to make a list, so here goes.

Surprise Island (Boxcare Children #2), The BFG, Stuart Little, Where The Mountain Meets the Moon, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (I can’t recommend this one), The Moffats, Abel’s Island, Strawberry Girl, Island of Blue Dolphins, Caddie Woodlawn (twice), The Secret Garden*, Over Sea Under Stone, Heidi*, The Trumpet of the Swan, The Family Under the Bridge, Betsy-Tacy, Little House on the Prairie* (thrice), Pippi Longstocking, Little House in the Big Woods* (twice), Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Winnie-the-Pooh, Danger in Ancient Rome, Rescue on the Oregon Trail, Charlotte’s Web (twice), James and the Giant Peach, The Tale of Despereaux, The First Four Years, Those Happy Golden Years, Little Town on the Prairie* (twice), The Long Winter (twice), By The Shores of Silver Lake (twice), On The Banks of Plum Creek* (twice), Matilda*, Anne of Green Gables*, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I may have missed one or two, but that’s the bulk of them. 45 readings of 36 books.  There are still a good few I want to read.  A Little Princess.  Joan Aiken’s series, including my favorite, The Stolen Lake.  Maybe James Herriot.  Little Women.  What am I forgetting?  I finally bought the first four of The Magic Treehouse, mainly to appeal to Briony.  I’ve actually read her a few Amelia Bedelia.  She’s been slower than Isla to take to the chapter books.  Isla loved LHOTP at age 2, whereas Bri is only really now having the patience and vocabulary to appreciate them at age 4.  Anyway, I thought the treehouse books might appeal to her.

I can see Isla’s reading comprehension growing by leaps and bounds these days.  Whereas before she definitely missed a lot of subtleties (in the early days, she missed a lot of important story points, never mind the subtleties), she follows the story much more closely these days.  Bri still misses a lot, but she seems to enjoy listening anyway.