Farewell Snickers

Today is April Fools Day so when I picked up Jacob from preschool I asked his teacher if they had done anything fun to celebrate it. Nope. They did something else. Their classroom pet, Snickers the Guinea Pig, passed away Saturday night. Ms. Jennifer and her three children came up to school and buried him in a quiet spot Sunday afternoon.

During class today they read a story about a dog that gets old and his body is tired and he dies. Then the children gathered leave and little flowers from the school grounds nearby and took them and decorated his grave. Jacob was fine when I picked him up until I asked the question of his teacher and he was reminded of poor Snickers. He asked Jennifer to show him how to find it so he could show me.

We went out and he showed me and burst into sobs. Poor Jacob was so terribly sad. I did my best to give him hugs and reassure him it would be okay while juggling shoeless Ashlyn who wanted to attack the flowers on the grave and walk all over it. I wish there was something I could do to make it better. I know it's hard for kids. Ben still sobs over each fish he loses.

Good call by Ms. Jennifer not to do April Fools on a day like today. It would just be way too confusing.

Farewell Snickers

Today is April Fools Day so when I picked up Jacob from preschool I asked his teacher if they had done anything fun to celebrate it. Nope. They did something else. Their classroom pet, Snickers the Guinea Pig, passed away Saturday night. Ms. Jennifer and her three children came up to school and buried him in a quiet spot Sunday afternoon.

During class today they read a story about a dog that gets old and his body is tired and he dies. Then the children gathered leave and little flowers from the school grounds nearby and took them and decorated his grave. Jacob was fine when I picked him up until I asked the question of his teacher and he was reminded of poor Snickers. He asked Jennifer to show him how to find it so he could show me.

We went out and he showed me and burst into sobs. Poor Jacob was so terribly sad. I did my best to give him hugs and reassure him it would be okay while juggling shoeless Ashlyn who wanted to attack the flowers on the grave and walk all over it. I wish there was something I could do to make it better. I know it's hard for kids. Ben still sobs over each fish he loses.

Good call by Ms. Jennifer not to do April Fools on a day like today. It would just be way too confusing.

Decisions Made For Me

I can't even remember how many people have asked me if I will hold Maddie Mae back in school. The Fairfax County Public School deadline is Sept 30. School begins each year near Sept 7 or 8. Her birthday is Sept 15. This means that if I choose to send her "on time" to start kindergarten she will actually begin kindergarten as a 4 year old. All I can tell people is that we are a year away from the decision. I'll register her for class and make the call in August whether we go or withdraw and wait a year. Then we got this whole move across the globe thing coming up to throw a wrench into our lives. Today I researched the Singapore American School. Their deadline is Sept 1. The way they line things up when we arrive, Maddie will be ineligible for kindergarten that coming fall, she will have to go to pre-kindergarten. She'll go to preschool to finish up that year (assuming they have space to take her). Today I'm sort of bummed out about it. I feel like she is getting pushed back two years. All her friends here will go to school. When we return in three years she'll be a year behind her peer group. That sucks. Poor girl. I guess it's all in the mindset you have. I've always had her set to be the youngest of the group. Now she'll be the big kid. Well, she'll be the older kid. That girl will never be a big kid.

Busy, Busy Life

Lots to say. It's already late and I've been stressed from life combined with minimal sleep, but here's a quick update. Ben LOVES kindergarten. Okay. He actually loves the bus and snack time. He just endures the rest. If we're lucky, Brian will post about his first day getting on the bus. It was my job to meet him at the bus stop after school. It drives past us and turns around before it begins it's drop off route so the kids don't have to cross the street. It was so cute to see all the little tiny heads looking out the heavily tinted windows. All the little kindergartners heads just barely showed over the window ledge. I could pick out Ben by his glasses and his head followed me until the bus had past. When it returned five minutes later to deposit him in my care, the driver asked which kids me and the other mother wanted. We called their names onto the bus and lickety split, off came Anthony. Waiting, waiting, waiting. "Ben?" "Ben Zufelt, this is your stop," I called again. I climbed on the bus and he was stuck. Apparently, another girl stood up in the aisle thinking it was her stop, but she didn't sit down. Ben had a stressed out, worried look because he couldn't get off and she had no idea he needed to go past because he didn't say a word. Just waited. If that last minute hadn't occurred, the day probably would have been perfect. He recovered quickly enough though, by the time we had walked to the corner. Overall, the whole school situation has inspired a new sort of independence in him. It's a beautiful thing to see. Yesterday we bought Ben elbow and knee pads. Today I carefully observed his bike riding skills and then offered to take the training wheels off. I thought he'd say "no way" but he was totally into the idea. Off they went and we didn't have so much as a single spill. He did great with a quick tutorial of where to put the pedals to get a good start. When Brian came home he showed off his new skills and decided to go down the curb into the street. I gave a shabby explanation of how to do it (go fast, hold on tight and do it away from parked cars). I saw it all happen in slow motion. He went off the curb near parallel to it and crashed and burned hard. It was the end of a good day of biking. We're grateful for the elbow and knee pads now and when I gave him a good night snuggle, he told me his hands were all better and he was ready to ride after school tomorrow. At school today, the kids watched President Obama's speech to the elementary kids. Ben's unsolicited comments on it were that "it was sooo long and I didn't really understand anything." Sort of made me smile. I read it Monday night before it was given to review it and choose if I wanted to opt-out or not. Pretty neutral I figured. Just talked about working hard to be an asset to your country, but now looking through five year old eyes...yeah...it was boring and long. Cute kid. Today when I got Ben from the bus, he was chatting and was slow coming off the bus because he was telling someone something of the utmost importance, I'm sure. It was cute to see he'd become so much more comfortable in a fast 24 hours. When he climbed off the bus, the first thing I saw was a big, fat, swollen, bloody lip. Mother's first response? Who's picking on you? See, I have this fear that he'll be picked on, teased and beat up. I've always worried about it. He's the smallest of his age, he's young in his grade, he's quiet. Then he got glasses. I had glasses. To me, it sealed the deal. He was going to get bullied. People always made fun of me. I quickly snapped out of it, realizing that his fat lip was probably fine. Not likely he got punched by a nasty sixth grader on his second day of school when he was sheparded every step of his day and sheltered as a kindergartner. Turns out he was looking out the bus window when it went over a bump on the way home and it smashed his face into the metal window seal splitting his lip. Poor kid. After the bus, we had a playdate with Anthony, his little sister and their mom. The boys enjoyed zooming like crazy people on their bikes around some new orange cones. It was a good diversion and gave me the incentive I needed to stay outside and let the kids enjoy the perfect weather and wear themselves out. Maddie doesn't like boys anymore. I think the root cause has something to do with boys not letting her play dominoes in nursery class at church, but I'm not completely sure. In any case, Brian, Ben and Jacob are all boys so she doesn't like any of them anymore. Maybe this is why mothers and daughters are so bonded. There's no one else left but mom since all the boys are bad. There is no convincing this girl that boys are okay. Oh well, it will pay off when she's 16. Guess what? Maddie can read. Yep. She always is telling me, "It says, Mmmm Ahhhh ExxonMobil" if she's reading the sign at the gas station. "It says, Mmmm Ahhhh Princess Castle," for a picture of a castle or a toy. The Mmmm and the Ahhhh are what she deems to be the names of the letters that spell the words she proclaims to be written in front of her. I guess all words start with Mmmm Ahhhh. Jacob started walking last week. Both Ben and Maddie walked at 8 months. Last Monday, Jacob only had five more days until he hit the magic 9 month mark and Brian started talking to him about how he better pick up the pace and get walking or he would be the "slow kid" in the family. Well, even at his tender age, he must have understood, because the little man can walk. I declare that he walked on September 3, just two days shy of being "slow." Way to go, Big Boy! Of course I tried to record him with the camcorder for a long time and got zippo. He walks just fine for four to six steps if we're not involved. If we're there, he gets so stinking excited, he falls every time. Jacob also goes NUTS over climbing the stairs. If he sees the kids opening the gate, he goes as fast as he possibly can and sticks his head right in the crack as they get it open so he can climb them. It's becoming a bit of a problem. They can't go anywhere without me coming to hold Big Boy back. I've tried and tried to teach him how to go DOWN the stairs so we can ditch the whole gate phenomenon all together, but he's too wildly excited to concentrate and it just isn't safe still. I've been working my tail off to get ready for teaching Maddie's preschool. I have a weird obsession with having complete sets of things. I printed all the visual aids for every single lesson through May for both the regular lessons and the kindergarten portion (letters, numbers, color, shapes, etc.). Now I have to cut, bag, label and sort it all. I made some serious progress today. Maybe a waste of time, but it is such a life saver and makes a big difference in the amount of daily prep work I have to do to teach, so in the end, it will be well worth the work to get started. Our place in California still isn't rented, though we're getting hits now on our craigslist post. It will happen soon enough. We aren't exactly a Fortune 500 company, so when we run a credit check on potential tenants, we aren't allowed to see their credit score, but are given a 1-100 ranking that interprets where their credit score falls. We've done several to date. It's been our good luck that they have all been above 90. Great tenants. We had laughed once or twice wondering if the scale was really any good since we didn't get any variance. Well, Monday night we ran one that made me laugh. They scored a one. You read that right. One. My first question was if I read it right. Second question? What the heck to you have to screw up to get a ONE? I guess if you get evicted four months ago and are trying to move again already, it sort of looks fishy... Like I said. The place still isn't rented. Go figure, we didn't choose them. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this one, but I've agreed to host a political blog for all things affecting people living here from the neighborhoods on up to national news. It's been stressing me out, but hopefully it will all come together. I'm crossing my fingers and have a volunteer to help tutor me remotely. The sheer volume of information is overwhelming coming in from the two other people doing it. One gal spends countless hours finding articles and summarizing them for posting. The other gal is an editor and crosses the t's and dots the i's so we have everything in order. Then I have it set up to auto-post (thanks Erin). Now my job is to make the blog fancy with tabs and stuff. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Brian is busy too. Not to sure with what. Computers and painting mostly I think. He's finally getting to some things he's been meaning to do for a very long time. It seems to be satisfying to him and I'm glad. Having the nagging list for eternity gets old. The clock keeps ticking away and the alarms will ring soon. Oh yeah, I have rarely used an alarm since Ben was born. That's FIVE years, people. Now with Ben in school we have the whole schedule thing going on. I hate it. I hate hearing the nasty buzz. I forgot how I loathed that sound. Just hoping I don't pass out again when it goes off. That's what happened a few months ago. Anyway, alarms will start ringing in six short hours. Signing off for tonight.

Ben's Preschool Graduation

Here is our happy preschool graduate, diploma in hand. I don't know why his scowl seems to be permanently attached to his face whenever he knows we care about a picture or talking to another human being outside our immediate family, but that's just him and we love him anyway. And the whole clan (visiting guest student Maddie Mae included). These are the mothers that taught in our Joy School co-op preschool. It was such a fantastic group. Everyone was prepared, easy to work with, good with kids and super fun. Ben loved all his teachers.

Verity & Wade Cushing, Danita & Lindsey Grundvig, Tashia & Hugh MacArthur, Angie, Ben & Maddie Zufelt and Amy & Ella Jolley (missing Ella's mother Amy home on bedrest, so Grandma stood in)

Ben Isn't Coming to California

We leave tomorrow for California for my brothers wedding reception and temple sealing. We have been excited for weeks. Now that the day is finally here, Ben has just brought me some pretty bad news. He just said, "Sorry, Mom. I can't come to our trip because I have to stay home and practice our song." When I probed for more information, he explained that preschool graduation was to include the kids singing two of the songs they learned this year. He doesn't know the second verse to "I Got Joy" so he will need to stay behind and learn it so he will be ready to perform it at the graduation when we return.

Freedom!

I taught my last preschool lesson today. The year was fun filled with five great kids. I loved having a chance to teach them and am really surprised at how much progress they made this year in their abilities. Still though, right now I'm reveling in it all ending. I water colored my last painting. Printed my last alphabet tracing page. Changed the helper chart the last time. Thought about my last snack time. I am so relieved. I never have to do this again. Or maybe not never. Just not again until September with Maddie Mae. I'm going to enjoy the moment today though and tell myself NEVER again. :)

Everyone's Favorite Party Game

Can anyone guess what classic party game we are playing at preschool?

This week I taught preschool and we learned about the letter "N" for our kindergarten readiness module. I couldn't help but snicker a little bit. The letter N has some history in the Zufelt family. Apparently, Brian's brother Brett wanted to pick some party games for one of his birthday parties in his younger years. Instead of Red Light, Green Light, he chose to make up his own game. He made the letter N with boards on the floor and the game was to jump over the N. There are pictures documenting this great game.

I was quite excited to relive Brett's favorite party game at preschool and get some pictures to show him. The kids enjoyed the game. Each time they jumped over the N they had to tell me something (name of the letter, what sound it makes, a word that starts with N, etc.). They really had fun when they started getting silly and making a dog pile after they jumped over it. Thanks, Uncle Brett, for such a fantastic game idea.

Preschool Nativity Program

Ben and his buddies put on a nativity program. They practiced for a few weeks and did a great job. Ben was a shepard, which he wasn't totally excited about. We found out after some digging that his problem with it was that everyone else got to walk around a little bit in their jobs but he just stood most the time. It made me smile to hear his problems. He was so proud though after the program. He ran to me and gave me a huge hug and had a gigantic smile on his face. All the kids were cute. Hugh was my favorite. He was a little shy when he was playing the innkeeper. We did the play in Lindsey's basement and the kids wanted the inn to be in the bathroom. Hugh was in the bathroom, Mary and Joseph (Ella and Wade) came and knocked on the door to ask if there was room in the inn. Hugh wouldn't say anything and didn't step out of the bathroom at all. He just opened the door enough that he could barely see Mary and Joseph and shook his head "no" then quickly shut the door. It was so cute and funny.

Ben Teaches Preschool

Ben has been teaching preschool the last few days. He was inspired when he found several of our teaching materials from last year. He collected the kids sitting mats, calendar and flannel board. The calendar didn't have any numbers anymore, so Ben spent many hours of tedious work to make them. He cut out little squares in purple paper and had me make the numbers in dots so he could trace them. Then he cut and rolled all the tape rolls to attach the numbers. It took two days of work and he was deeply focused on it the whole time. Then he moved on to making a flannel board story. He colored the pictures he wanted, cut them out and glued on felt. He did such a great job.

Then he set-up shop in the living room just like I do when I teach preschool. He laid out all his "guys" on the mats and told them the flannel board stories after they did the calendar and he had a welcome for them. Some of the "guys" couldn't sit up on their own. He was a little worried about it, but worked it out himself. I was proud of him because often things like that can really get him distraught. He decided that if everyone that couldn't sit up by themselves would lay on their side they could still look at the teacher so it would be okay. It was so cute.

Preschool - Learning About the Body & A Photo Shoot Ruined!

Today for preschool we continued our unit on the Body. I took the kids to the library and got about 15 books with stories and pictures about the body. Some were cute, some had real pictures of bones, some talked about what fun things our bodies could do, some were silly poems. They were a hit. One book in particular I had was about bones. It had realistic drawings of skeletons, an actual picture of a skull with teeth and a vertebrae, x-rays of the pelvis and ribs. The kids were totally enthralled. For a good 15 minutes I had them hooked. We felt our own bones and each others, they liked the bumps on the back of each others spine, find their own hip bones and tried to count their own ribs. Glad they were all just 4 and 5 years old, because they all just pulled up their shirts to feel their ribs, boys and girls alike. I decided it was best to let it go rather than address modesty at that moment in time. I was also glad I could claim a pregnant belly and that my baby was hiding my ribs so I didn't have to share. Cute kids. We started the day with free play time outside where they could use their bodies to run and kick balls, twirl in circles, rake leaves and jump in the pile, feel the cool breeze on their skin and a few light sprinkles of rain on their skin. The colors were gorgeous and I had a great idea at the spur of the moment. Later in the lesson I had some pictures to compare their eyes to a camera. Instead of showing boring pictures, I'd grab our camera and take great pictures in the autumn leaves of the kids playing! Then throw the memory card into the laptop and they could get a slide show of themselves as the pictures as we talked about which was better, a camera or their eyes. Brilliant!! I got the camera and went to town taking tons of fun pictures, 109 to be exact. I was so excited and so were they. When we got to the slide show part of the lesson, I popped in the memory card and well, we had a really good lesson. Most the pictures were blurry, unfocused and it was hard to make out a good image on the faces. Last night we did a family photo shoot in the overcast, just before dusk hours in the leaves and Brian had adjusted the settings on the camera. I just expected it to be in auto mode and never checked. I'm so sad. The pictures could have been amazing! I have a few, but not that many great ones. Oh well. That will teach me to point and shoot without checking how the pictures are coming out.

One other funny thing...we played the game "I spy with my little eye" and everyone got a turn to be the clue giver. The hardest one took us a while. The starting clue was that it was bright. Okay, so we guess the lamps, any and everything shiny in the living room, the brightness on the ceiling, and everything else you could come up with. Hugh finally gave in that it was the light coming out of the lamp. Can you do that? I can't actually see light, I learned this in physics class, you can only observe it's results or something like that. I do remember there is no real light, just an absence of dark. So, I guess Hugh won the game. His was definitely the hardest to guess...an untouchable phenomena

Two Week Vacation Begins...Now

We just wrapped up preschool again today. I now get a two week break. I'm so excited. Teaching hasn't come with many breaks this fall. I've taught almost every other week for the last two months I think. I just know I've had a lot of days, but it will be totally worth it. We front loaded my schedule really heavily so I can have a wonderful three month break after the baby arrives. The ladies I do the preschool with are so good to me. Ben is really sad though, he sort of feels like we own the preschool or something. He loves having it here and will have a rough time with such a long break away from our house, but he'll survive. I can always talk up our next turn in two weeks, then in the middle of March. Anyway, hooray for me and my mini-break!

Preschool Halloween Party

Today was our preschool party and I taught the lesson. The kids were so fun. We did the pumpkin craft that I practiced with the kids last week and they all liked it, especially the eating part. We also made pumpkin garland. I thought the kids would be able to cut their own circles out of orange paper and didn't count on how long it would take to staple the pumpkins to their ribbon, but it still all worked out in the end. They had fun with the crafts and then the last 20 minutes was the very best part. The moms all arrived a few minutes early for pick up and we got the kids changed into their costumes. Each child brought six pieces of candy and got to pass them out. All the kids waited on the main floor while the chosen child carefully selected their door to hide behind. Then they would yell ready and the other kids (including Maddie Mae) would run up or down the stairs to knock on the door and yell trick-or-treat. They got to pass out the candy and then switch to go trick-or-treat at another door with another kid. They thought it was fantastic!! Overall, a pretty good day. I know my two kids thought it was super fun to trick-or-treat in the house. This is the happy bunch: Lindsey (Snow White), Ben (Dino the Dinosaur), Hugh (Darth Vader), Wade (Iron Man) and Ella (Minnie Mouse).

Glow in the Dark Preschool Today

Thanks to the youth group and Brian being involved with them, I had a super fun activity for the kids today at Joy School. Last night they played glow in the dark volleyball. They had well over a hundred little glow sticks that they taped to the net, the players, the ball, the outer limits of the court. They had a lot of them. When they were done with all these fantastic glow in the dark sticks Brian got to take home about one hundred for our kids to play with. Wanting to take full advantage of the glow sticks, but knowing we didn't need anywhere near a hundred at our house, I planned a lesson with them. When the kids were ready for our kindergarten prep portion of the lesson, we headed to the basement. Lights off. They were so confused. It was fun for me to pull out the glow sticks and help teach them how to make their shapes, simple letters and other fun things by using their imaginations and their glow sticks. They thought it was really, really fun and they giggled the whole time.