Singing the Hokey Pokey while all Hell breaks loose

My two littlest kids go to a wonderful little preschool that is housed in a church on the campus of The University of Texas. The very same campus that yesterday had a gunman walk into a library and kill himself after walking several blocks and firing his AK-47 randomly.

Yesterday morning was one for the books.

I was scheduled to be the “helping parent” in Campbell’s class, which meant we had to be at school by 8:15. As I was turning across Guadalupe into the parking lot, police cars came flying down the street, lights and sirens going. It looked like something out of a movie. When we got inside, one of the school moms was standing in the entry talking about a gunman on campus.

All the parents there, myself included, immediately reached for their phones to find information online, only to be disappointed. One of the teachers turned on a radio in her class, and the morning DJs were talking about a hot sauce festival. We had no idea what was going on.

Slowly the news filtered in that there was indeed a gunman and that the campus was on “In Shelter” mode, which meant that everyone was to stay put and lock the doors. Our little school went into lockdown mode – all the doors and windows were closed and locked, the kids weren’t allowed on the playground, and two dads were stationed by the entrance to let people in and keep them in.

This meant that all the parents who were at the school to drop their kids off had to stay there. They all wandered the halls, cell phones in hand, calling and texting work and family and whomever. I sent texts to B and to some friends and took a call from my dad, who was in South Carolina listening to our local NPR station and had heard the news. He had more information on what was happening than any of us in the school did.

Our school director, who has only been on the job for a month, did an incredible job handling a stressful situation. She kept the teachers and parents informed of the latest developments and worked to make sure the kids had no idea what was going on. I could tell some of the kids in the school were picking up on their parents’ stress, but everyone in our classroom was just fine.

Things did get slightly surreal at times. Like when we were singing the “Hokey Pokey” with the kids as the campus air raid sirens were sounding. The sirens went off every half our, each time followed by a booming announcement telling people to stay indoors. At one point I was upstairs in the church kitchen washing up the snack dishes and looked out the window to see helicopters hovering at roof-top height. It was all very unnerving, to say the least.

I was amazed, though, to see a parade of students walking and biking in to campus. Apparently they hadn’t gotten the word about the University’s being shut down, although given the number of e-mails, tweets, and Facebook updates that were flying through the interwebs, I’m not sure how that’s possible. And when I watched news coverage later in the day, I was stunned at the number of gawkers hanging out on the other side of the police tape watching the action. Did they think that being on the far side of the tape made them safe somehow?

A little after noon the All Clear was sounded, and everyone at the school breathed a huge sigh of relief. The director made the decision to shut the school down for the rest of day because UT was also closed.

As stressful as it was to be at the school, too close for comfort to the action, I am grateful I was there instead of at home and not able to get to my kids. The few parents who had dropped their kids off before the lockdown must have been just frantic. I’m not sure what I would have done had I been in their position – I think I might have disobeyed the lockdown and driven to school just to be there with them. But I’ll never know.

I spent the rest of the day pretty rattled, pondering the might-have-beens of the situation and feeling profoundly grateful that everyone except the gunman was safe and sound.

And I hope to never have to go through such a situation ever again.

School-zone vigilante

Now I know we've all had our moments of spaciness in school zones where we've gone faster than we should have. Two close friends have even gotten speeding tickets in school zones for just such offenses. I can forgive being a harried and hurried parent taking kids to school, provided you don't make a habit of it.

What I can't tolerate is those who think the school zone doesn't apply to them because they are too important to slow down and watch out for little kids. This morning I exacted my vengeance on just such a woman.

Our neighborhood has a pretty wide main drag - one way on each side of an arroyo (dry ditch in Spanish). Each side is wide, but it's not two lanes, not even close.

I was tooling along, heading to school with the girls, going the regular speed limit, when this woman blew up behind me and almost rear-ended me. She stopped short but continued to drive right on my rear bumper. After about 100 feet of this, we hit the school zone, so I slowed down even further. She crawled further up my back bumper. Then she started swerving from side to side to try and pass me - passing on the right in a school zone! So I moved to the center of the lane and held my ground. I could see her yelling at me in the rear-view mirror.

I made her even angrier when I stopped to let a whole group of kids cross in the crosswalk, which is the law, by the way. She nearly ran into my bumper again, stopping just in time to sit there and seethe.

Once we started moving again, she turned off on a side street, squealing her tires as she went.

I know it was petty of me to act like that. But honestly, how much of a hurry to you have to be in to deliberately speed in a school zone? How much of a self-important jerk do you have to be to assume that the school zone doesn't apply to you?

Of course, having written this, I'm going to space out tomorrow morning and get busted for it.

Campbell's turn

Today Campbell headed off to his first day of preschool. He'll be going every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 9-1 to the same little school that Ella and Lily both went to. In fact, he has the same teacher, the divine Ms. K, the girls had.

I bought Campbell a new lunchbox on Monday for school. He was very proud of it, even if he wasn't all that sure what exactly it was. He carried it out to the car all by himself.

When we got to school, his reaction was pretty funny. He looked around the car and then gave me a puzzled glance, kind of like he was saying, "Why are we here? W (our carpool buddy) and Lily aren't with us." We walked to his classroom and put up his lunchbox and supplies, and he immediately started playing with some toys. But then after about five minutes, he went to the gate and started rattling it, ready to leave I guess.

Ms. K got him involved in playing with our friend L (W's little sister) at the water table. He was happily occupied there when I gave him a quick kiss and ducked out. Unfortunately, he realized I was leaving before I made it out of the gate. But I stayed strong and kept walking. I trust Ms. K completely in dealing with him, and I knew he was just fine in her hands.

The report when I picked Campbell up was that he cried for a few minutes but then stopped without a problem. It will be interesting to see what happens when I take him on Thursday when he knows he's going to be left behind.

I celebrated my morning by going home, straightening up the house, taking a shower without any short people bothering me, and taking a two-hour nap. I'm going to make the most of the next two months of two free mornings a week while I can.

Off to school they go

Ella and Lily started school this morning. I can't believe the summer is over already, but I'm grateful it is. The bicker twins were getting way too tired of each other and of me. We came home from vacation to the good news that we'd gotten the teachers we'd requested, even though we'd heard rumors that the principal didn't take parent requests into consideration.

Our school is one of the few in Austin ISD that has mult-age classrooms. Last year Ella was in the combined kinder-first, and we LOVED both of the teachers. So when we found out that Lily is now in that class, we were thrilled. It made dropping Lily off at her first day of kinder much easier for everyone since we all already knew her teachers from last year.

Ella is now in the combined second-third class, and it will be interesting to see how she handles not being one of the big kids in the class. She can get a little too big for her britches sometimes, and I think being in a classroom where she's not the oldest and smartest (that's her opinion, not mine), will be good for her.

In preparation for school, I let the girls pick out their own first-day outfits. I wasn't thrilled with Ella's choice, but given some of the things I'd already vetoed, I viewed this as a good compromise. It turns out that it's hard to buy clothes for a seven-year-old if you don't want things with Hannah Montana or High School Musical on them. So far, we've been free of both those movies/shows/whatever they are, and I'd like to keep it that way. Plus, all of the stores we went to seemed to think that we live in New England, where it might actually be cool enough to wear long pants and sweaters and tights. I really had to scrounge to find any shorts. My quest for clothes is complicated by the fact that Ella refuses to wear skirts or dresses - because she can't hang upside-down on the monkey bars when she does.

Shopping for Lily, on the other hand, was much easier. The little girl sections had lots of cute skorts and dresses, and Lily's not all that fussy about her clothes. If it has hearts or flowers, she'll take it. And she'll wear dresses. She did, however, refuse to wear her new "very fast" running shoes until she went to school today because she didn't want to get them dirty.

Tomorrow I take Campbell for his first day of preschool, and I have a feeling it will be hard to decide which of us cries harder.

"But it's Presidents' Day!"

That's what Ella wailed when I rousted her out of bed this morning. She was operating under the mistaken belief that school is closed on all holidays. She has no idea why Presidents' Day is a holiday, but she's very sure that she shouldn't have to go to school. I'm not telling her that the little boy across the street, who goes to private school, didn't have school today. That would just be salt in her wounds. She probably would have protested having to go to school on Valentine's Day if it hadn't been for the lure of cards and candy.

I can kind of see where she gets the idea, though. It seems that we've had a day off of school every other week since the end of winter break, and I'm getting tired of it. Every time we get into the swing of our school routine, we get jammed up by a three-day weekend. The worst part is that they aren't real holidays, ones that would keep B home from work, so I'm trapped here with three bored kids bouncing off the walls and furniture.

I pushed Ella out of the car this morning despite her complaints of the unjustness of the universe. When I got home I looked at the school calendar and noticed that Ella has next Monday off - parent-teacher conference day. Sigh. Two weeks after that we have Spring Break. Doesn't the school district know that it's highly inconvenient for us to have the kids underfoot that much?

Not one of "Those Moms"

Last Friday Ella's school celebrated the 100th Day of School. They had parties in the classrooms, and all the kids had to do a "100 Day" project. The projects had to be some sort of visual representation of 100 - stickers, baseball cards, pokemon cards, noodles, etc. Ella did a times table to 10x10, of which she was quite proud because she did all the multiplication on her own.

She brought the times table home Friday very upset, saying that everyone else in the class had their projects hung in the hallway, but she did't. I suggested that she talk to her teacher and ask about it, but Ella wouldn't do it.

This morning I ended up driving Ella to school because I slept through the alarm and we missed the carpool. When we arrived, the kids were all busy with their morning routine, and the teacher was in the corner sorting through homework. So I took a deep breath and asked her why Ella's project wasn't on display with the other kids'.

I smiled very big when I did it, and I prefaced my question by saying, "I don't want to be one of Those Moms." It turns out there was a legitimate explanation for Ella's project being sent home instead of put on display. The teacher, whom we adore, went home sick Friday at lunch time with what turned out to be strep. She was so dehydrated that she ended up in the hospital over the weekend on IV fluids. The sub who took over the class didn't realize that Ella's project was supposed to be put up instead of sent home.

In the end, I am so glad that I didn't go in with a chip on my shoulder, complaining that Ella wasn't being treated fairly. Instead, I hugged the teacher and told her she should call the next time something like that happens so that we can help in some way - really, we love this teacher; she is so tiny and cute that you want to put her in your pocket. When I left, she was kneeling next to Ella and explaining the mix up. Ella's project will be put on display this morning after math time.

When Ella started school, I promised myself that I wouldn't run interference or meddle in her school life too much. I think she needs to learn to deal with issues with her teachers and classmates on her own. But this is one time that I'm glad I ignored that promise. What started out as a simple misunderstanding could have turned into something much worse if I hadn't spoken up. Ella's feelings had been hurt, and nothing gets my dander up more than having one of my children upset.

But now everything is better, and Ella loves her teacher again.

LIly's excellent adventure

Lily had just the best day on Wednesday. Ella's class was giving performances of skits they've been rehearsing for the past several weeks. I couldn't go, but our neighbor, whose son is in Ella's class, was taking her daughter, so she offered to take Lily with her. Lily was so excited she could barely stand still as I got her dressed. Lunch was right after the performances, so our neighbor stayed for lunch with the girls. Lily got to eat in the cafeteria with Ella and felt very big. Ella felt very big because she got to show Lily where to line up and how to pick out her food, and she got to pay for Lily's lunch on her school charge account.

Ella's class party was after lunch, so I headed up there to join in the fun. The party was in the library, and it was so funny to see Lily file in with all the first graders. She fit right in, even if she was a bit shorter than they.

During the party, Lily and Ella worked together to make Christmas cards and ornaments, and they sat next to each other for snack time. I was really regretting having forgotten my camera.

The highlight, though, was the snow fight. Some of the parents brought in this stuff that is essentially the inside of diapers, which, when you add water, turns into this fluffy stuff that can be molded into snowballs. Ella's teacher lined all the kids up in the story area, told them about the surprise, and led them in a silent celebration, which was hysterical to watch. Lily had huge eyes through all of it.

After the fun of the snowball fight outside, Ella's class lined up to head off to music. Lily jumped in line, holding on to Ella's hand. When I retrieved Lily from the line and explained that it was time to go home, Lily threw herself flat on the ground and sobbed that she wanted to stay and go to music with Ella. I explained that the school rules didn't allow her to spend all day at school with her sister, that it was just a special occasion that she was able to be there for the skits and the party, but she didn't want to listen to me. It wasn't until I bribed her with the promise of cartoon time at home, that she pulled herself together and walked to the car with me.

As a result of all this, Lily is now chomping at the bit to start kindergarten in the fall. She asks me at least once a day how much longer it is until she can go to school with Ella. I think she'll be disappointed when she finds out she won't actually be there WITH Ella, but I think it will be a short-lived let down. She is just going to love kindergarten, especially if we can get her in with the teacher we want to have.

In the meantime, I have to reconcile myself to the fact that my baby girl will be going off to school in a few short months.

The state of our schools

Even though I left last night's PTA meeting feeling pretty good about the future of our little school, there were three bits of business that troubled me. Actually, they made me pretty angry.

First, our school's commercial-grade dishwasher has been "condemned" by the district. Apparently it was original to the school when it was built in 1950-something and has broken to the point where it cannot be repaired. So does the district install a new dishwasher? No. There is apparently some obscure ratio of students/teachers/staff that decides whether a school NEEDS a dishwasher, and our school doesn't have the right ratio. Instead, the kids eat off Styrofoam trays that release all sorts of fun chemicals and MELT when hot food is put on them. Each day the school uses enough trays to fill a dumpster and then pays $100 per day to get the dumpster emptied. Because all that is apparently better than buying a new dishwasher. So the PTA and the soon-to-be-formed environmental club are going to research the cost of a new dishwasher and the cost of hiring someone to wash the dishes and see if the PTA can donate the money to the school.

Second, the school's photocopier can't keep up with the demand. The school doesn't have the money for a second one, so the PTA is looking into leasing one for the school, at a cost of $6,000 for two years. This started a bit of a commotion at the meeting, because some man kept yammering about how he works with copiers all the time and knows how we can get one cheaper. Nevermind that the PTA has to go through the district's leasing office to get the copier. The guy wouldn't let it go until the treasurer, the divine Lisa R, asked him he'd like to make a motion to research copier leases. He said no. As is typical with those kinds of folks, when it was time to put up or shut up, he shut up. Too bad he had to annoy everyone and slow down the meeting first.

Third, the PTA donated $50 to each classroom for school supplies. It's great that the PTA did this, it really is. But I'm upset because I know that $50 doesn't even begin to cover what the teachers use in the classroom and because I know that the teachers will each still spend hundreds out of pocket to buy stuff.

All of these things made me angry because they proved yet again how low a priority our local, state and federal governments put on education. It is beyond ridiculous that the school district hasn't replaced the dishwasher in the school. Raising funds for a dishwasher should not have to fall to the PTA. It is insane that the teachers all have to line up to use a copier that overheats and shuts off at about noon every day. Their alternative is to go to a copy shop and pay for copies out of pocket. And finally, teachers who barely get paid subsistence wages should not have to be shelling out their hard-earned money for classroom supplies. That is beyond wrong.

Our country is wasting flying spaghetti monster knows how much money in so many ways - the quagmire in Iraq springs to mind as one example - but our schools go lacking for basics.

Last night's meeting was enough to get me pretty riled up. I've now volunteered to handle the e-mail newsletter, monthly print newsletter, and PTA Web site and coordinate the spring book fair. I realized that instead of shaking my fist and railing about our president and the wrongs he's committed, I can instead actually do something to make one part of my world a better place - and I'm picking our school.

Warm, with a hint of cool

That's what the weather felt like to me tonight as I walked to and from our elementary school for a PTA meeting. Warm with a hint of cool is entirely different than cool with a hint of hot, which is what happens in the spring. Right now, the warm with a hint of cool holds the promise of fall and cool evenings and even cooler mornings. It holds the hope that I might just survive my 13th summer here in Austin. I love the fall in Austin; it's my reward for making it through the intolerable summers.

The air smelled so good out as I walked home. I don't know if lots of people have recently mowed their lawns, of if some particular tree is in bloom (which could be the cause of my miserable allergies today) or what, but it just smelled so good. I finished the walk home in such a peaceful mood - at least until I walked in and saw that the dinner dishes were still on the counter. Sigh. In B's defense, he was working pretty much the whole time I was at the meeting.

The PTA meeting also helped my mood. Our nice little school is definitely in transition. The school has a pretty diverse population, with a large percentage of Hispanic and non-native English speakers. Last year the PTA sort of fell apart, for a lot of reasons, but this year's committee is really on the ball and really committed to working with the school and changing a lot of things for the better. One of the goals of the PTA is to get the minority families more involved, and I saw the beginings of it tonight. There was a pot-luck dinner at the school before the meeting, and there were families of all shapes and sizes and colors and ethnicities in attendence. It made me proud of our little school.

The meeting also had the highest member attendance it's had in years, with lots of parents who are new to the school. It's great to see so many new folks coming in to work on making the school a better place. Seeing everyone there reinforced my decision to have the kids attend the neighborhood school. Great things are ahead for Brentwood.

So I'm feeling oddly optomistic tonight, which is rare for me. Fall is coming, and things are looking up.

Back into a routine

First off, I'll admit that summer went by way too fast. So many things went undone - my closet didn't get cleaned out, the baseboards didn't get washed, Schlitterbahn didn't get visited.

But I am so glad that school is back in session. As my husband will tell you, I'm a creature of habit and routine. Take me out of my little rut for too long and I fall apart and get cranky. B could have stayed at the beach another week, but I needed to get home to my own house and my own bed and my own shower and my own stuff. Plus I needed to get the kids back into their routines; I firmly believe kids need a set, predictable routine in their lives.

Campbell had been sleeping really well in the months before our trip, but it all fell apart while we were at the beach. One night I had to nurse him back to sleep four times. I didn't want to let him cry it out because I didn't want to wake up the whole house, so I fostered bad habits by getting him up and nursing him. Our first night home was miserable. He woke up at 4:00, but I didn't get him out of bed. I just patted him and gave him back his blanket, and he was NOT happy about it. It took an hour for him to go back to sleep, and I lost track of the number of times I went in to settle him down. But last night he went back to his old routine of sleeping until 5:00, nursing and going back to sleep until 7:15. I finally feel like I'm getting over my sleep deprivation.

Routine helps with the kids, too. We'd been lax about bedtimes during the summer because we didn't need to be anywhere until 9:00, when I took Lily to preschool. But now we need to get back to our dinner, bath, stories, bed schedule, and I couldn't be happier. I like having a plan to follow every evening. The girls are happier because they're getting more sleep at night. Which means they're easier to deal with during the day - except for Lily yesterday.

I'm also getting back into my daytime routine. I take Lily to school and then come home and straighten up the house while Campbell noodles around. When he goes down for his nap, I get work done - without having to entertain a bored, floppy Ella. Getting work done during the day means less work after the kids go to bed, which makes B happy.

A few more days, and I'll have every little bit of my day accounted for, and I'll be so happy.

Ella G., first grader

Today I took Ella to school for the first day of first grade. Such a difference from the first day of kindergarten last year - I didn't shed a single tear. I didn't even feel sad. We hadn't gotten word on which teacher she was going to have, so I went to school prepared to become one of "those" mothers if she wasn't with the teacher we had requested. When I saw the student list and found out that she is with our preferred teacher, all the fight went out of me and I just felt so relieved. Yay. I didn't need to have a hissy fit all over the office on the first day of school.

Once we got to her classroom, Ella and I stowed away all of her supplies and found her seat. She is sitting across from a classmate from last year and behind our buddy Luke. Plus her favorite girls from kindergarten are in her class, too. Life is good.

Last night Ella was upset about the unfairness of not getting buried in the sand at the beach while we were there, so she had retreated under my bed - her favorite hiding place. I sent Lily in to the living room for story time with daddy and stretched out on the floor next to my bed to talk Ella out. One of the things we talked about was how she has changed since her first day of kindergarten. Here's our list:

She's lost two baby teeth and has one grown-up tooth

She can read
She can write in cursive (sort of)

She can add AND subtract

She can tell time - but only when the big hand is on the 12

She can ride her two-wheeler without training wheels

Her legs are longer

She can roller skate

She can climb higher in the magnolia tree

She has a baby brother (I had to remind her that when she started kindergarten, Campbell hadn't been born yet)

Here's a picture from the first day of kindergarten, just so you can see how much she's changed.

And in the interest of fairness, here's a picture of Lily on her first day of preschool. (I have GOT to stop letting them watch America's Next Top Model!) She's at the same wonderful little preschool, but now she's in the "four-year-old" classroom. She was so excited she could hardly bear it. She picked out her new dress all by herself and was desperate to wear it. I had to hide it so that she couldn't smuggle it into a suitcase for our trip to the beach. Ella opted to wear a dress she's had for a while, but she did pick out a "second day" outfit for tomorrow.