Oy.

At gym class today the teacher had the kids sit in a circle and practice three positions: "pike," "tuck," and "straddle."  Then she would name a position and go around giving a sticker to every kid who made the correct position.

Hanni wasn't doing too well.  Occasionally she would make the correct position briefly, but by the time the teacher looked at her she was squirming or pouting or otherwise being a 3-year-old.  I thought she just wasn't getting it, what the teacher wanted.  Until she crawled into my lap and said in her clear little voice, "This isn't very interesting."

Dinner

I've decided the hardest part of single parenthood is dinner.

Single people are lazy and spoiled about meals.  We don't have to consult anyone else's preferences or sense of propriety.  Fried egg sandwich eaten in front of the computer at 5:00 p.m.?  Random things dipped in hummus eaten in front of a movie at 8:30 p.m.?  That same kind of burrito from that same burrito place again?  No problem. 

Now suddenly I have to plan healthy and interesting dinners for an impressionable young person.  I think I might also be obliged to teach her to eat sitting at a table, I'm not sure, I'll have to check my contract.

Every night I think, I have to plan dinner again?  Didn't I just plan dinner yesterday?

I did pretty well last night on the spur of the moment: artichokes, yellow cherry tomatoes, chicken legs from the deli counter.  My 3 year old can go through an entire large artichoke and then lobby for part of mine.  (Not a chance, kid!)

Now what the hell am I going to do for dinner tonight?

The Unschooling Has Already Begun

(I mean "unschooling" in the original sense, where learning doesn't have to mimic school.)

My kid loves explanations, so I explain everything.  My kid loves words, so I use big words all the time.  This morning she learned the words "parallel" and "pentagon" just in the natural course of play.  By the time she's six, this kid is going to have a bigger vocabulary than the first-grade teacher.  And while it's unlikely that she'll know "more" (i.e. more total) than the teacher, she is certain to know a lot of stuff that the teacher doesn't -- or worse, that the teacher is mistaken about. 

So tell me again why I should send my kid to school?

The Talk (no, not that one)

Hanni: What's a gun?

Mama: Hmm. Where did you hear about guns?

Hanni: At preschool.

Mama: Was a kid talking about guns?

Hanni: No, a teacher.

Mama: What did she say?

Hanni: I don't know. [Pause.] She said guns are bad.

Mama: Well, there are different kinds of guns. A gun shoots things out
of it really fast. There are water guns that you can use to squirt
water, and those are fun. And then there are things called glue guns
and staple guns. Those are used for projects. But there's another
kind of gun that shoots bullets, and those can hurt people.

[Long pause.]

Hanni: What are they for? The bullet kind?