Athletic Support

Bart must decide between soccer and baseball this spring. He's six, and it seems like you should be able to learn both, but no, soccer takes three days a week and baseball two--both on the same two weekdays, too. But not at the same time! Ooh, we could do both!

No.

I like soccer, because it's after school, as opposed to at dinner, and there's running around. Poptart likes baseball on the grounds that it's harder to learn and more important to learn young. (Not that you see him out there tossing the ball around with Bart, because a) he does not have time and b) there is too much critique involved and Bart does not enjoy it and therefore does not want to do it after the first ten minutes.)

I don't really care, although I do resent the idea that sports take place at dinner time at six. I mean, older, I know this is going to happen, but SIX? How are we going to protest that if we participate, and does he have any idea what it's going to be like sitting there at dinnertime with Gert and Beau and waiting for baseball to end? Oh, I'll pick him up, Poptart says, and I say yeah, right, and then we fight. But he probably will, mostly some of the time anyway, and I could go home and not stay and watch, thus probably scarring Bart for life because of my lack of interest. Poptart will show up for the last ten minutes and then tell Bart everything he did wrong. (Sports are going to be an issue for our family, it's just the way it's going to be. Probably the worst one we've got. There's the way any given child does it, and there's perfect: i.e. the way the child should do it. Wild, natural enthusiasm and immediate talent are all that will be acceptable. Poptart claims all men are like this and that being told what you are doing wrong is the only way to learn.)

OK, so the real point--I told Bart to talk to his father about which sport to play. The deadline for baseball is Thursday. Every time I bring it up to Poptart he bites my head off. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to talk about it.
Well, they've got one more night with baseball as a possibility. I want to not bring it up again to punish Poptart for being a jerk about it (Even though we're on day six of the parents Granola and I should probably concede that that makes him testy, in fact it was making me testy tonight, about which more later, but they leave tomorrow). But that would punish Bart too.

Of all things to be a nag about...baseball and soccer. As far as I'm concerned he could take the spring off and just play in the yard.


Grrrr.

The Benefit of Many Other Things to Think About

The parents Granola continue their visit. Gert is under the weather--or fooling us into thinking she is due to her desire to stay home with Grandma and Grandpa. Which one we think is happening depends entirely on how recently she's had ibuprofin, so I'm thinking she's really at least a little sick...

We applied to the local independent (read: private) school for Bart. One slot open for second grade, and we found out today that it's his if we want it--which puts the ball squarely into our court. On the one side, small classes, personal attention, classic education featuring actual facts, spelling, math practice, tests, a feeling of being able to let go massive amounts of focus on child's education and assume those are in the hands of professionals. Also, major financial commitment (remember we're planning to have four of these little educable creatures soon). leaving the community schools, putting an additional badge of privilege on a child in a pretty privileged community, plenty of pressure to succeed (although only through eighth grade), risking alienating some of our neighbors, no more happy mornings at sing-along on Wednesdays and having to pack lunch daily--oh, and no bus.

On the other side, most of our community. Teachers willing to let child follow interests. possibly less homework, busses, lunch service, community, free, community, did I say free?

I'd really like to pack him up and send him to this nice, friendly little school. They must work hard but the kids seem relaxed and happy. Our community is, in all honesty, so privileged that I'm not sure anything we can do could make it much worse--I mean, we are really pretty removed from a major chunk of reality. Exposure to most of the real world of poverty, desperation, hatred born of those things and otherwise, struggling to find work, food, medical care--it's going to come through travel and education at either school. All the kids--even the future Mei Zie--could be there together for at least a year or two. We would know the community, the kids, what's going on without putting a huge effort into it.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the tuition, though, and especially now. FInancial life feels very precarious. This is a big burden to add.

So although I'm about to go downstairs and fill out a form and put stamp on a check, I DO have other things on my mind!

Beau's Birthday!

He's two today, and we had a golden day of happy brothers and sisters, balloons, presents...the kind of day that makes my heart sing "Four! Four!" over and over again.

I am so ignoring the negatives of this. It isn't going to be easy. Four won't like us at first, she won't even speak our language--and she's going to have her own medical issues, whatever those are. I'll have to spend a lot of time with her. Beau, sweet as he is, isn't going to like that one bit and Gertie even less. It is NOT going to be like picking up precisely the Four we would have bourne and raised ourselves and picking up wherever she is age-wise.

And the senior Lolas--my parents--are going to think we are crazy-loco and say so, again and again and again.

But I want to do this, I do. I am sure there will be moments when we think "what were we thinking"--I have those moments about the kids we have--but can you imagine it as something you'd regret, for real? I mean, I guess so, if there's some really true disaster. Let us say for example that she has bird flu and we all die. That would be bad. I think even I can manage not to worry about that one, though.

Otherwise, in general, I find the things I regret are the things I don't do.

So, tomorrow's plan: Call five agencies. Two, in particular--one, really--I'm very excited about. They have both been granted pilot programs to help with all of the special needs adoptions from a particular region, and do exactly what I want--which is to match the family with the child, rather than expecting the family to do the matching. One seems to be a good agency with multiple interesting programs and waiting children, and the other two are local and do homestudies. I've been warned away from one, though, so I will have to be especially careful--because they are by far the most convenient option.

I really want that first agency--they're in NYC, too, so we could even meet them in a few weeks--to work out. I really, really do. I have been googling them really hard and have foung no warning signs...yet! But they may have thousands of people clamoring to sign up, for all I know.

Let me just add a thought I had about Bart today. If he weren't the kid he is--helpful, thoughtful, loving, golden--there is absolutely no way we would be doing this. None. Someday I hope to tell him that.