Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The old N-P

A necessary preliminary:

I have three children and they will be referred to as such:

Peanut--female, almost seven

Bean--male, 4-and-a-half

Sprout--male, almost one.

Ta da! Introductions have been made in a most half-assed manner. I am Emily, and I hope to one day entertain you. But not today. Thank you.

A small piece of bark in my eye

We have fully invested ourselves in Rudolf Steiner's crazy ass shenanigans.

There's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Or, more precisely, there's a sentence that if you'd told me I'd be writing 7 years ago, I'd have fucking punched you in the face.

When our first was a baby my husband informed me that she would be attending a Waldorf school when she reached, you know, that age. It was said in such a way that implied that I had no say in the matter. It was preordained. It was...as it was written. His mom was a Waldorf teacher, he had gone to Waldorf school, look at how perfect he was, Peanut was totally going to be doing that shit too, shut up woman and keep making babies.

He paid dearly for his casual remark.

There were fights and much fuming and moping about. How dare anyone presume to tell me what my child Will Be Doing 6 years from now. And Waldorf! Fucking nuts! Totally crazy! I am totally not going to subject my perfect child to all that touchy-feely hippie bullshit! Kudos for you, mister Waldorf alumni. Congratu-fucking-lations. There will be no pagan maypole, no faceless cotton dolls, no pile of branches for her only toys. There will be no ban of synthetic fibers, no sing-song instructions, no fucking kumbaya. HANDS OFF MY GODDAMNED BABY.

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Peanut had her first day of first grade on Tuesday after two years of Waldorf Kindergarten and two of Waldorf Preschool. I know, I know. I'd punch myself in the face if I could. Sometimes, what with all the tie-dye in the morning, I wish I would. Once I was able to ease up I saw that this might be a good thing for her and for us. It's not for everybody. Good news is that I haven't had to sing Kumbaya yet. I'm sure it's coming.

We've been listening to a lot of Winnie-the-Pooh around the house lately. Bean got a CD set of Jim Broadbent reading The House At Pooh Corner in July and it's pretty much been on constantly since then. Peanut likes to try to do the different voices that he gives the characters as well as his English accent, and she's pretty damn good. One of the favourite stories is about Tigger getting stuck up in the tree with Roo and after Roo has jumped down into Christopher Robin's tunic Tigger stalls by saying that he can't at the moment because there's a small piece of bark in his eye. I watched Peanut shake hands for the first time with her new teacher, a gesture that she will repeat every day with a woman who will be with her for the next eight years and when Peanut looked at me from her classroom she had a funny look on her face, like, Jesus, mom, what's the matter with you? I wanted to tell her about the bark. It was giving me troubles.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Introductions

This is Take 2: Let's Try That Again, Shall We? I have been blogging about my family as Momily-San for a year, and I thought it was time for something different (see: I am boring and bored and also boring. Need something else to think about besides the Little Ones.)

So! This time! Still the topic might be child related. Might be food related. Might be living-in-Sonoma-County related. Might be house cleaning related. My new job as I see it: To always keep the three people who might ever read this on their toes.

Enjoy!