Study Hall, v. 2009

All the junior high students around here are issued their own laptops by the school. They carry them around during the school day and do the bulk of their work on them. Lab reports, book reports, and essays are all written on the laptops and then emailed to the teacher, who emails them back the corrections and their grade. Bear has even learned to make Powerpoint-style slide show presentations, which is a far cry from the handwritten index card & poster board prop speeches I used to put together in junior high.

Some of their textbooks are even loaded onto the computers (leading me to wonder why her backback still manages to weigh seventy billion pounds). It's all quite mind-blowingly Jetson-ish to someone who went to school twenty years ago in the Age of Paper Textbooks and Number Two Pencils, and who laboriously typed even her college papers on a Brother Selectric Typewriter with the optional super-cool white-out ribbon.

During study hall, they are allowed to "play" on their computers if their schoolwork is done. This means that I occasionally receive emails like this from Bear while she's at school:

"Hi, Mom!"
"I messed up these pictures of myself!
Love, Bear"
Well, thank goodness she told me. I would never have known.

And, really? This is what I'm paying taxes for?

Easter Bunny: One Prepared Dude

Scene: yesterday, in the minivan, in which I attempt to mess with my kid.

Me: Hey, Bug, we still haven't gotten out the Easter baskets. What do you think Easter Bunny would do if you didn't leave your basket out? Do you think he wouldn't leave any candy?

Bug: No, I assume he would provide a container for me.


Now I ask you, what nine-year-old talks like that? "Provide a container"? Are you kidding me?

That Sound You Just Heard? My Heart Breaking.

This morning I found a crumpled announcement in Bear's backpack for a Writer's Reception after school today. Students from the local college would be leading a workshop to introduce a school-wide writing contest and give the junior high kids pointers.

Bear is a capital-W Writer. She writes constantly and prolifically, never going anywhere without a notebook. An entire shelf in her closet is dedicated to her writing notebooks, her lists of story ideas, and character sketches. She's been known to leap off the couch in the middle of a movie to go jot down a sudden story idea.

I waved the piece of paper at her and asked if she'd seen it.

Bear: Yes.

Me: Well, are you going?

Bear (hesitant): I don't know.

Me: Why?

Bear: Welllll...I'm not sure if anyone I know will be going.

Me: Who cares? This is about writing! Just think of all the great pointers you could pick up.

Bear: Yeah...

Me: Are you going to enter the contest?

Bear: Um...

Daddy Shortbread: Oh, come on. If there were an after-school program where they were handing out free money, would you first wait to find out if any of your friends would be there?

Bear (dead serious): Yes.

And there you have it. We have officially entered the phase of Peer Pressure. It kills me that she would suppress her own interests lest she not appear cool. But I also remember being that age, and I do remember how truly important it seemed not to stand out from the herd, even though the perspective of time has shown me just how ridiculous that was. All I can do is continue to support and encourage her interests at home and hope that eventually, please God, she will realize that peer approval is nothing if you're not true to yourself.

Backstage at the Dance Recital

The giant garment bag full o' costumes is a given. I also take a ginormous black bag containing the following:

1. dance shoes (duh)
2. hairspray, hairspray, hairspray
3. bobby pins and elastics
4. hair nets for ballet buns
5. makeup for touchups
6. hairbrush
7. water bottles (I'd put vodka in mine, but I'm afraid I'd accidentally give it to one of the girls)
8. extra tights
9. safety pins
10. jellybeans (obviously)
11. Cheez-its
12. Twizzlers
13. Goldfish (crackers, not fish)
14. iPods
15. DS
16. camera

AND... (drumroll, please)...

17. inhaler (for my asthma from all the goddamn hairspray)

Crazy With a Side of Hairspray

This week is Dance Recital Week in our house. You may also know it as The Week in Which We Eat A Whole Lotta McDonald's. Or perhaps The Week In Which Mommy Peers Into the Abyss. It's all kinds of crazy, with a lot of focus on sequins, hairspray, and tights.

My main job is keeping the girls' costumes, hairpieces, and bobby pins organized backstage. It's not glamorous, but it's key. Kind of like the guy that buys the pens Obama uses to sign bills into law.

But the bottom line, and the thing that takes the starch out of my complaining is this: my girls LOVE to dance. They love it, and I love watching them light up from the inside when they do it. I love that they're not afraid to walk out onto the stage and dance their hearts out in front of a packed house. I see the self-confidence dance has given them, and the pride on their faces as they walk offstage and hustle over to me to change into the next costume. So while keeping them in leotards/shoes/lessons might be pricey, the hairspray may be suffocatingly fumey, and ironing costumes makes me want to throw heavy objects (like, say, an iron) through plate-glass windows, I'll continue to do my part for just as long as they love to dance.

Here's a peek at a few of this year's numbers taken at last night's dress rehearsal. The photos aren't fantastic, since I had to creatively crop and blur to keep from showing other people's kids, but you'll get the idea.

Bear dancing classical ballet:

Bug dancing classical ballet:
Bug doing jazz:
Bear, looking frighteningly teenagerish, and dancing tap:
Bug, lyric ballet:

Bear, jazz:

We've got two more shows to go, if we don't OD on hairspray fumes first.

Questionable Parenting Decisions

We've all made them, right? Help a girl out here. Lie if you have to.

A week or so ago I let Bear, who is 12, see a PG-13 movie at a sleepover. "Knowing" with Nicolas Cage, to be exact. I haven't let her see many PG-13s yet, so I did the conscientious mom thing and checked online to see why it had the PG-13 rating. It looked suspenseful, with some action movie style violence, and some language (nothing she doesn't hear around here when Mom cuts herself chopping onions). I was mostly concerned about sexual content, and I didn't see any mention of that, so I gave permission.

IT SCARED THE EVER-LOVING SHIT OUT OF HER.

Oops.

She later confessed that she watched half of the movie with her hands over her eyes, and the other half with her hands over her ears when it got loud. Despite this, she swore up and down when she got home that she loved it and that it was "the best movie ever." She described the plot in excruciating detail over and over again, popping out from unpacking her overnight bag to say, "Oh, yeah, there was also this part where...." I took this to mean that, though she'd been scared, it was more of the Pleasantly Freaked Out variety than the Emotionally Scarred for Life variety.

Silly me.

Fast forward to a few nights past, when the plot points and images had had awhile to marinate in her overactive imagination. I woke from a dead sleep with an awareness that something was off. Groggy from sleep, I wasn't able to place a finger on what was wrong until I started to sit up and heard a small voice behind me say,

"Hi, Mom. I thought I'd just lay with you guys for awhile."

I turned to see Bear lying on top of the covers between Daddy Shortbread and me. She had a Webkinz (well-known protectors against evil?) clutched to her chest. I walked her back to her room, and she seemed content to climb into her own bed with a kiss on the cheek and assurances that everything was fine. I'd been back in bed for about twenty seconds when I heard her footfalls again in the hall.

She thought she'd sleep on the couch. Was that OK? Yes. Go to sleep.

(two minutes later): No, the couch was even freakier. She was going to get a drink. Fine. You don't need to tell me. Just go to bed.

(two minutes later): Of course, it was still pretty dark in her room, and there was a strong possibility that there were floating faces in her closet. No faces in the closet, Bear. Here, I'll get you a nightlight.

(45 seconds later): Did I know that sometimes nightlights make weird shadows? Some of them look a lot like faces. Bear. You're killing me. You really are. Please, for the love of God, go to bed. I wil take personal responsibility for any and all floating faces.

***************************************

The next day, as I was driving her to dance rehearsal, we passed the movie theater.

Bear: Oh, Mom, look! "Knowing" is still playing! I really want you to go see that with me. It was the best movie ever.

She was completely baffled when I told her that there was no way AT ALL ever even if she gave me a million skillion dollars that I would take her to see that movie again.