8.19.2004

Tizzy

I've been not posting much because things have been busy. As previously noted, crazy-busy. Don't know why, and can't recall the details. Too busy.

Poor Seymour came home from his bike trip with a horrible cold, and so spent his landmark 35th birthday in bed. I am a deplorable wife because I didn't do anything special to celebrate his birthday, or get him any presents--because, as he said, he just went on a big old biking trip, and got himself a new full-suspension ride. What could I possibly do after that?

Iz lost her second tooth on Sunday. This time she didn't swallow it, and
instead carried it around like a talisman all day until she put it under her
pillow at night (using the lovely French porcelain tooth box Aunt Hootie gave
her and which Leelo does everything in his power to steal whenever possible).
The Tooth Fairy brought her a whole dollar, which she delightedly spent on a
bottle of soda.

She is having an okay time at school. She loves her friends and recess time,
but is still mostly lost in class. She sees no point in paying attention to things she doesn't comprehend, and so amuses herself by sharpening her pencils all day instead of doing her classwork. I have resorted to bribing her--if the maestra tells me our girl was a good listener, she gets a book or a trip to the library.

I am spending a lot of time translating her school- and homework for her, but boy does my Spanish suck. I am leaning heavily on online translators, my Spanish/English dictionary, and Google image search for verification.

We are going to get a Spanish tutor for her one day per week until she figures everything out, as again she is the only student in her class without a working grasp of the language. I feel kind of silly about this, as students get tossed into other-language classrooms all the time without much in the way of support, but it can't hurt either.

I don't want her to get so angry that she shuts down and off about anything en Espanol. We expected this part to suck, and it does. It's not all bad, as she comes home with new phrases and vocabulario every day, and gets very excited about sharing them with us. Plus much of what they're doing is retread work for her--letters and numbers, etc. The fact that it's in Spanish makes no difference much of the time. I still think we are doing the right thing, and can't imagine what she would have done in kindergarten.

In the meantime we're to read to her in Spanish at least 20 minutes per day. If reading Green Eggs and Ham makes your head split or spin, try reading about Juan Ramon and his Huevos Verdes con Jamon. Just thinking about that book makes my forehead throb.

Iz's best proclamation of late: "I hate stupid gravity! I can almost fly, but gravity keeps pulling me down. I wish the earth was smaller so its gravity wasn't so strong." She has also been demanding that I tell her which fishes live at which depths in the ocean and why, and will not accept my word that epoxy is stronger than glue (although when Rook backed me up today she seemed more convinced). Because her maestra will not speak in or listen to English, I wonder if she'll ever know how Iz's brain really works.

Leelo is doing really well cognitively and socially. He just did a runaround, telling his dad "I want to play with the chess pieces!" because his evil mommy stuck them out of reach on the top shelf in our bedroom. He has been playing much more interactively, and been very actively seeking out people he enjoys. Good sign.

I took the kids to the park Monday afternoon to play with their friends. Ep had a big bag of cheesy puffs that Leelo was just desperate to chow on. So I told him that he had to go over and ask Ep for some. He did, perfectly! At first he only mumbled something about cheesy puffs, but when Ep withheld the booty and said "Leelo, what do you want?", he said clear as day, "Ep, I want cheesy puffs." Woo!

Physically and emotionally, things are a bit rougher. He is still sick. Still! It's been almost two weeks, but his pediatrician is unimpressed. It's just a cold. It doesn't affect his therapy all that much, except on days like today where something about his illness kept him (and Seymour, and me) up most of the night. We are all wrecked.

Which reminds me, if you ever need to know exactly what I'm thinking, all you have to do is deprive me of my beloved sleep. When I get really sketchy, I don't have time to react to what I'm saying until it's out of my mouth. And while some of you might be thinking "and that is different from your usual bluntness how?", trust me, it gets worse.

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