The Small Family     

Ha ha, before anyone think that we are welcoming a new baby, that is most assuredly not the case. Let me lead off this week by announcing that Auntie Lisa and Uncle Chris welcomed their new baby son, Cason Alexander Boyadjian-Duval, to the world right on his due date: December 2. And I spent much of the day fretting nervously, as Lisa had a very long labor (she actually surpassed the length of mine, which is no small feat), and by the end of the day I was really beginning to worry about her. But all is well, and Mom and baby are both healthy, happy, and at home now. The new Boyadjian-Duval weighed in at 7 lbs 10.8 oz and was 20 inches long--and he has a full head of adorable dark hair! I’m not sure how his proud parents would feel about me posting his picture on a public website, so I shall refrain, but take my word for it: He is cute, cute, cute!! We can’t wait to meet him!

The other exciting news this week is that I believe we have likely found our preschool. I do have one or two more to check out, but we found one that we really love, so I have a feeling that will probably be our pick. We spent Thursday and Friday visiting three preschools, actually. (Grandma Diane, though definitely not in tip-top shape yet, was feeling well enough to watch Theo for an hour each day for us so we could go to two of them--and we were allowed to bring Theo to the third.)

You may recall that we visited a Montessori school a few weeks ago--Maria Montessori Charter Academy. The preschool is part of a K-8 charter school, so we were very interested in it because it opens up a free schooling option for Theo that is not necessarily our local public school. (Our local public school isn’t bad, but it’s not terrific, either--I don’t think many CA public schools are. So we’ll definitely be looking at all the options when K-8 time comes.) However, there is one big problem with the Maria Montessori Academy: The only schedule option available is five days a week for five hours each day. Yikes!! I wasn’t sure I was ready to have Theo in school for that much time each week at such a young age. (We also didn’t care for the director…though I’d like to think maybe he was just having a bad day when we met him.)  Anyway, there were many things I liked about Maria Montessori Academy, but there were also things I didn’t care for--the long school day/week being the major one.

And so we continued our search. This week we visited Sunflower Preschool and Wishing Well Preschool--both independent preschools that do not follow the Montessori method. And then we also visited Rocklin Montessori--a small independent Montessori preschool.

Chris really liked Sunflower because it reminded him of where he went to preschool--and he had a very good preschool experience. To me, though, it was utterly overwhelming. It was in a small, converted house, so all the kids racing around in there doing various things was just too chaotic for me--I was really rattled. We both really liked the director and the teacher, though, so we didn’t rule it out. And, as I said, Chris was very comfortable with it, even though I wasn't.

Next was Wishing Well. The room was much more wide open and spacious, so it didn’t feel so claustrophobic to me. Again, we really liked the director and teacher. And they had a neat “farm” aspect where the kids get to help tend the school’s goat, bunny, and chickens--I thought that was very cool. That’s the one Theo got to visit, and he was delighted with the classroom environment and the outdoor area.

But the directors of both preschools seemed to somewhat brush off academic topics. They both said they cover basic letters and phonics, as well as basic counting, but that “the three-year-olds don’t really get it, so we don’t push it.” And though I was glad to hear they don’t push anything (because why push a three-year-old??), I wasn’t crazy about the idea that three-year-olds “don’t really get it.” Some don’t, of course, but some do…and, in fact, Theo does. So we were hoping to find a preschool that didn’t push kids to perform academically at such a young age, but that did offer academics to the kids who were ready for it and interested in it. I wasn’t sure such a beast existed--the Maria Montessori Academy seemed to fit the bill there, but it had the drawbacks I mentioned, and it seemed like it might be a very serious environment. We wanted a happy medium--someplace where academics are available but not pushed, and someplace where the environment is pleasant and social and happy.

Enter Rocklin Montessori! It’s in a converted house, like Sunflower and Wishing Well, so it has that “homey” feel that Chris really likes. We liked the teachers we met a lot. The child-rearing philosophy (that is, positive discipline) is very similar to what we use here at home. And the learning opportunities are there, but they don’t seem to be pushed on the kids. The school has various rooms for different types of learning--a language arts room with a separate reading corner, a craft area, a life skills area, a math/numbers/counting room, etc. And in each room, the activities are arranged from left to right, with the activities on the left being the simplest, progressing to the most difficult on the right. During their free time (which is a reasonably good chunk of the day), the children can choose what sort of activity they want to do, and if they need assistance, the teacher helps them. Many of the starting activities are quite simple and don’t require assistance, but as they choose more difficult activities, the teachers are there to guide them in learning how to accomplish their task.

What I really liked was the main teacher’s explanation of the more challenging activities, which are designed for children around the age of 5. She told us that if a child chooses an activity that may be too difficult for him, they will never tell the child, “Oh, that’s too hard for you,” or “Why don’t you choose an easier one?” Instead, they’ll sit down and go over the lesson with the child, and if the activity is indeed to hard for the child to perform, he can put it back and select something else--but the teacher leaves that decision up to the child because, as she put it, “We don’t believe in ever telling a child he can’t accomplish something.” I couldn’t agree more. There are people who think we give Theo a little too much freedom, I think, but a large part of why we do that is because Chris and I firmly believe that he learns from mistakes or failures, just as he learns from successes. So we may watch him try something, knowing he probably can’t accomplish it, but instead of telling him not to do it or that he won't be able to, we let him make that choice. (This, of course, goes out the window if he’s trying to do something that could be harmful! But under normal circumstances, we believe very strongly in letting him explore and try lots of things.)

This Montessori school also lets you customize how many days a week your child attends, which is a really nice bonus. Sunflower and Wishing Well are both two days a week, which barely seems like enough time to even get your feet wet! I think, if we ultimately decide on Rocklin Montessori, that we’ll probably try three days a week with Theo. It’s just three hours each morning, so I think a MWF schedule would probably be just about perfect for a 3-1/2-year-old. As Chris commented, “This place is so cool he’s probably not going to want to leave!”

They also have a big outdoor area, and 45 minutes of each day are devoted to outdoor play and activities, weather permitting. There’s a community garden the kids tend, a wonderful playhouse, a small playground, picnic tables, and a big fenced field of wildflowers that they mow into mazes for the kids to play in during the spring months. Really, it looks so cool that I want to play there!

The other nice thing is that they run a two-month summer program, three mornings a week. Although we had planned to start Theo in August or September, the head teacher said that the summer program is often a good place to start, as there are fewer kids there. It usually caps at about eight children, and she said it’s a good way for the new students to get comfortable with the school before fall preschool starts. (Their maximum enrollment is 24 students with 4 teachers, but still--8 new friends is probably a lot easier to get used to at first than 24 new friends!) So we may indeed start Theo over the summer and see how it goes.

As I said, I have a couple more options to explore, but this school just fits our criteria on so many levels and seems like a really good fit for Theo’s personality. Feels good to have found someplace that we’re both really comfortable with!

As usual, it rained this weekend. Over the past five or six weeks, it has rained every weekend except one. Blah. This is a real pain when you have an energetic kid who could stand to blow off some steam! So, to combat, the stuck-in-the-house doldrums, on Saturday we headed down to the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley. Chris and I both went there as children, but neither of us had been in 25 years. Unfortunately, we arrived near Theo’s lunchtime and naptime, so he played for a little while but then got quite fussy. So, we cut our visit short, picked up some sandwiches to eat in the car (because he fell asleep within minutes of getting in his car seat), and headed home. But it wasn’t a wasted visit--the admission was free because we’re members of a science museum in Sacramento, and now we know that it’s a good place to take Theo for a future visit…hopefully before his naptime next time!

Sunday morning, my friend Amber came over to take our holiday pictures, and I think we had success! We were able to look them over through our Wii videogame system, and although they don’t come out as sharp on the Wii as they really are, we could see them well enough to see that she got quite a few good shots. Which is a small miracle, given that Theo was in a terrible mood. There were many tantrums and much cursing (yes, he’s still at that--it’s a long, slow process to break that naughty habit), and we finally called it a day when he repeatedly yelled the S-word to an innocent passerby while we were taking pictures at the park. (Thank goodness the woman just looked shocked for a minute and then burst out laughing. I told her “shit” means “have a nice day” in toddler-speak.) Sigh…that’s my boy…. ;-)

Thankfully, Theo didn’t pull out the S-word when Caitlin (age 4) and Caleb (9 mos.) came to visit on Friday with their parents, Jason and Maria. We had a good visit with them, and Theo and Caitlin did really well together. (Caleb just crawled around and looked cute all the time!) We ordered congealed Thai food for dinner, and Jason and Maria brought us an apple pie for dessert. Yum! (And no, the Thai food wasn’t supposed to be congealed. I think the restaurant had some of it ready, but not all of it--and by the time it was all ready, the early dishes had started to congeal. But it was passable…. And the pie was delicious! I’m not sure whether Jason and Maria knew that apple happens to be Chris’s favorite pie flavor, but they did good!)

And so ends our week. After Amber finishes processing our pictures, we’ll put the best one(s) on a card and get cracking on our Christmas letter. That should keep me busy and out of trouble for a bit, eh?!

Hope you’re all enjoying this first week of December! And Buffalo folks, good luck digging out of all that snow. ;-)