Come to School With Me Day

Eva's school allowed parents to attend a half day session with their child last week to get a better idea of what goes on at a Montessori school.  Obviously, I jumped on the chance to spend 3 hours watching missy-miss in action and I have to say I was completely blown away by the whole event.  I have never seen children so calm and focused on their work, yet sociable and considerate towards each other.  I waited for it, I knew it was going to happen sooner or later-- the ear-piercing scream followed by tears that inevitably comes when one child takes another one's snack or pushes someone or cuts in line for the water fountain... yet it never happened.  Not once did I hear even the slightest bit of "bad" noise.  The room was, dare I say, serene for the first 2 1/2 hours and then only became noisy as the kids got some pre-lunch wiggles out by dancing to a few songs.

Eva worked on a number of things and I can see now that I really need to stop babying her.  The puzzles she worked on I normally would have helped her with at home, assuming she couldn't do them solo.  I was wrong.  She blew threw things I never would have picked out for her.  My favorite thing to watch was a "water work" activity.  She took a tray out with a number of items on it, filled a cylinder with water and dropped the items in one by one, sorting them out afterwards by which ones floated and which ones sank.  After she was done she thought for a moment and told me that heavy ones sink (easy enough for an almost 4 year old to figure out, right?) but then the kicker- she followed up by saying the shape mattered as well.  That some things may be light, but they'd could still sink if they are "straight or smooth."  Maybe I'm one of the those crazy moms who believes their child is a genius but I'm enjoying it nonetheless!

The session ended with a kids versus parents quiz on classical composers.  The teacher would say things like, "I was born in 1732 to Austrian parents and I later developed Alzheimer's, making it harder for me to continue composing.  Who am I?"  And the freaking kids knew them all!  Bach, Beethoven, Gerswhin, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Copland, Mozart.... the list went on and on.  They beat the parents 11 to 1 (note: I'd like to add that the lone point for Team Parents was scored by yours truly) This month they are moving on to thallophytes- I'll give you a minute to Google... ;-)  

All in all it was a wonderful experience; I see now what Eva does every day and I couldn't be happier.  She's coming up on her first full year at Minnesota Renaissance School in just a few weeks and we plan on keeping her there for years to come. 

Note: I didn't take too many photos, since the point of the day was to interact with Eva and not be that annoying photog mom, but here are a few of her making a paper flower and doing a bit of counting work.

Final product, no help from Mom- I was pretty impressed

Sleep Positions

This may be the best description of the numerous sleep positions Eva has managed to assume that I've ever seen.  Brilliant!  Click to enlarge for a closer look.  Her fav?  #4- "H is for Hell" lol

Leap Year

I missed it!  So sorry, but we are sans internet at our place right now... so I'm feeling a little crippled.  But here is what I meant to post:


Today is February 29th, kind of cool if you ask me.  I like things that are rare so I decided to look up the definition of leap year and here's what I found:

"A leap year (or intercalary or bissextile year) is a year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, a calendar that had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year."

Ugh, I feel so lowly now, all the other years are just "common"- ha

Also, today is the end of the blog challenge!  While I didn't get a new post up every single day, I was able to post over 29 times, so I'll count it as a win.  Thanks for checking in so often, we're almost up to 10,000 views.  I'll have to think of something super special for then!

I Judge...

I try not to be a judgemental person, I really do, but there are some things that just bug me to no end.  My #1 peeve right now?

People with too many children.

I know, I know... this seems too general and horribly judgmental, but it's been on my mind a lot lately.  Ever since our day at the Mall of America and seeing hoards of poorly behaved kids running around I've had this burning desire to grab their parents and yell, "did you really need THAT many?!"

What's too many you ask?  To me, 3 is too many.  Children shouldn't out number their parents; it's a recipe for disaster.  Now I don't mean to say that people should never, ever have many children (as I sit here right now I can think of a co-worker, a friend from my childhood and a girl I went to high school with who all have 3+ kids and they seem to be doing amazing jobs) but, for the most part, the families I see with many children are chaotic, frantic, disjointed balls of mess.  I don't believe parenting is an innate skill, procreation may be, but actual positive parenting does not just happen.  It is learned, honed, practiced and perfected over the years and it is a rare women (or man) who can literally go for years on very little sleep with multiple babies and not lose their mind to some extent.  I know I couldn't.  I feel the biggest factor in successful parenting is patience, and it's hard to be patient with so many kids to attend to.

And we haven't even touched on the social implications of more people being born than our earth can sustain.  In the U.S. alone the population is projected to increase to 392 million by 2050 - more than a 50% increase from the 1990 population size.

I know I'm bias as I come from a family of almost exclusively only children on both my mom and dad's side and we're 99.9% sure Eva is going to be an only child, but I just wish more people went for quality over quantity.  Newsflash people, if you're having a difficult or stressful time of being a mom to just one, adding number 2 and 3 into the mix is NOT going to make your life easier.  You should work on improving the quality of life for your first born because, like I've said before, I'm sure junior would appreciate a sane and happy mommy over a(nother) sibling.  Children are not accessories and you do not garner any awe or respect from me by being physically able to pop out multiple kids.  You do so by being an attentive, doting, hands-on parent who raises well rounded, well adjusted and well behaved children.

If you break into a cold sweat at the thought of going out in public alone with your children, you probably have too many.

Crappy Blog

I've never done a plug for the blog of someone I don't actually know, but this blog - http://crappypictures.com/ - is the funniest, most accurate blog about parenting that I've come across in a long while so I figured I'd share with you all.

It's work safe, so no worries :-)

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Minnesota Public Radio put on a free, family friendly event called Rock the Cradle at the Minneapolis Institute of Art today and we took the chance to head down there after church.  It was a very busy place- and I literally screamed like a banshee at a lady who tried to steal our parking spot- but it was wonderful to see Eva's face as we went through the exhibits.  In addition to the normal art there was a lot of live music and dancing, but Eva actually enjoyed the art and quiet of the exhibit halls better, which I was not expecting.  We plan on going back on a normal day sometime soon to have more time to look at the art.

Biggest surprise of the day?  Eva correctly identifying Jesus in a sculpture of the passion.  I don't think she's ever seen a graphic representation of Jesus' death, and we don't even have Jesus on the cross that's in the front of our church, so I wasn't really expecting her to know it, but she did.  I have to start giving her more credit I suppose. 

Coolest car ever

Watching the music show

Tattoo time

This is the one that she knew was Jesus...
and then she stared at it for a good few minutes, not saying anything- pretty intense

Had to take a photo of this one... this is a woman. Ha!

Prepping to jump aaaand...

mid-air!

Buffalo Wild Wings

Yup, we're those parents.  The ones who have their preschooler out with them at Buffalo Wild Wings to watch a UFC until so late that she falls asleep in our arms.  It's pretty redneck/white trash/ghetto if you ask me but hey, we can't be perfect all the time ;-)

At least she's not one of the annoying or fussy kids who makes a scene, that would just not do.