"Just Ella"

As we drove to a school fundraiser the other night, the following conversation took place:

Ella:" Mom, I don't want to be Bonaldo anymore."
Me: "Okay, what do you want your last name to be?"
Ella: "No, I just want to be Ella."

This sort of conversation pretty much sums her up. As I've talked about endlessly on this blog, Ella B (excuse me, I mean "Just Ella") is a free spirit with a big personality. She knows exactly what she wants and doesn't want and isn't going to submit to any societal expectations, even when it comes to last names.

I saw her three-year-old personality in full force when we arrived at the restaurant for the fundraiser. She took her usual fifteen minutes to warm up to the crowd of teachers and students excitedly talking to her and telling her that they know me. She was not impressed by my apparent fame in the least. However, before I even realized it, she had shed her sweatshirt and was running around the restaurant in her super girl costume pretending to fly. She played a few rounds of hide and seek with a friend of mine, and downed an ice cream cone like it was her job. People were in awe of her: smile as wide as her face, tangled hair streaming behind her as she ran. She was captivating, mostly because she was doing whatever she wanted without worrying about what anyone thought (including the wait staff).

This display seemed incredibly appropriate given the event we were attending. As I said, it was a fundraiser for my school, but I didn't mention that it was for our PLAHD club, the gay-straight alliance that helps raise awareness and support for the LGBTQ community at our school. The club is not only for kids who are gay, but for anyone who supports the notion that we all deserve to live our lives free from discrimination, hate, and inequality based on sexual orientation, gender identity, etc.

It felt rather poignant, then, to see my daughter, entirely unaware of the fundraiser's purpose, running through a restaurant wearing a Halloween costume in March, being 100% herself just as all three-year-olds are. It got me thinking about when that all changes. At what point does it stop being okay to be ourselves? Sure, there are plenty of kids (these PLAHD club members to name a few) who refuse to let society stop them from being themselves, but we view them as kids who are making a decision to be individuals, and to some extent, making that decision may marginalize them. When will that happen to Ella? When will she have to stop and decide whether she's going to be herself or conform to some expectation of her culture or society? And what will she choose to do if being herself means being marginalized? Will she be confident enough to stay "Just Ella" if others decide they don't like what "Just Ella" stands for?

I mulled over these ideas as we enjoyed our sandwiches and fries, and some time after my friend left, Ella asked, "Where'd he go, Mommy?"  I told her he had to go home to, "have dinner with his husband." As soon as I said the words, I cringed at what her reaction would be. I assumed she would say something like, "Mommy, that's so silly! Boys don't have husbands!"

But she didn't say anything. She just kept on eating her ice cream cone as if I hadn't said anything funny at all. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if she grew up in a world where despite all the tough decisions she'll have to make about which parts of herself to let the world see, she won't have to worry about that one? Wouldn't it be great if being an openly gay teenager wasn't a brave decision?

I don't know how the world will view homosexuality in ten years. I hope that today is the beginning of something really positive, but I know there are still so many people out there who don't want a kid like Ella to be herself if being herself means offending their values. I'd like to think there is room in the world for a free spirit like Ella, but I just don't know. In the meantime, I hope "Just Ella" can find a way to keep wearing that super girl costume long after it doesn't fit. I hope she never lets it go.

Young Grasshopper

So, this was a big week for Miss B as she graduated from the Beetle class into the Grasshopper class. She is now in "junior preschool," which, I guess, is like "junior high school," but without all the braces and awkward French kissing (hopefully). The truth is her school created this pre- preschool group this week mostly, I think, because there are several preschool age kids who are developmentally ready for preschool learning, but haven't mastered the whole potty training thing. Sad trumpet music. Ella is one of those kids. It's frustrating because I really think she belongs in the next classroom, but she's holding herself back with this whole pooping in the potty thing. So, this is like preschool prep school, I guess. They're taking the year off to figure out what they really want to do with the rest of their lives. Something like that.

Anyway, I was a little nervous about the transition from the relaxed Miss Meghan and Miss Christina to the more professional Miss Cheryl. Even on the first day, Cheryl told me that Ella had given her a hard time about taking off her playtime dress during snack. Oh, you mean the dress that she always wears, all day, every day while she's at school? The dress no one has ever told her to take off before? Yeah. This is going to be interesting.

Mike thinks it will be good, that she needs someone who is a bit stricter in her life, to reign in those wild child tendencies. I'm excited that they've starting teaching them how to hold a pencil and write their names. In the past week she's become obsessed with letters, and since Friday, she's already written "A, E, l, and p" on her own. Well, the "p" was really a backwards "a," but I think that still counts.

At this rate, the girl's going to be reading and writing before she's wearing underwear.

I now present to you, Ella writing her name for the first time:

My muse

 Yesterday in Creative Writing I asked my students to write a poem in the style of Gertrude Stein. If you know anything about Stein, then you know what a difficult task this is. If you don't know anything about her, then, well, you aren't really missing much. The overall point was to write a poem that was experimental in form and word choice and didn't follow the usual conventions of what we think a "poem" is supposed to be.I asked them to write about someone or something that seems indescribable. They grew increasingly frustrated, so I decided to write a poem about the person in my life who cannot really be defined by words alone, Miss Ella B. I think you'll see that even though this poem doesn't technically make sense, it sums up Ella B quite well.

Ella B Let her be and be and b

Ella B let her be and be and believe and live and buzz yellow wind

Let her swift run electricity

Carbonated lightning

Let her be of a squeal squawk run

Let her be zipper clang and scream of trumpets blaring

Ella B Ella B Ella B be be beat thump crash and swish splash

Be bathtub and belly down and up and down and up

Let her be a heat in winter a ship dives deeper

A wild thunderclap will be her and b and b and b

Believe and Live and Ella B

Llamas and Frogs

I know I've said it before, but we absolutely love Ella's daycare. Yesterday, she got to touch both a llama and a frog! The llama is actually housebroken and just walked right into the classroom. Fearless Nelly over here walked right up to him and gave him a little pet. She said his fur was soft and that he kept doing this (insert image of her head butting me). Then she got to play with the class frogs outside of their habitat. She sat on the floor with the frog in her hand and Shauna was able to snap this glee-filled picture. Just after it was taken, the frog hopped up and hit her in the mouth. Ella keeps telling me how the frog "kissed" her and was jumping "crazy everywhere." I asked her if he turned into a prince and she said, "No, he's just a frog." Better luck next time Beezer.Sounds like a pretty awesome day at school. I'm pretty jealous.

Hope your day is filled with llamas and frogs, or whatever else makes you happy!

Ode to Surreybrook

Here's my question for you: Am I the only one whose kid cries when it is time to leave daycare?

I'm not sure how much I've said about our daycare in the past, but essentially we love it. From the moment we first walked in when Ella was just a lump in my belly, we loved it. The bright colors, open floor plan, ample playground, everything. Sometimes you just know and when we walked into this place we just knew, ya know?

Six months later when I actually had to leave Ella there for the first time I was petrified. Not because I didn't think Ella would want to stay, but because I thought I might get back and find her teachers holding her in the parking lot with outstretched arms telling me to leave the premises and never come back. Up to that point, I'd been spending my days nursing and walking around the block for hours at a time. I knew her teachers wouldn't be able to do either of those things, so how would they get her to stop crying? Then we met the magical Miss Amanda and it was love at first sight. Somehow Amanda taught her how to take a nap (in a crib no less!) and learn how to enjoy life outside of someone's arms. They actually taught her how to be on a schedule and undid most of the bad habits I'd instilled.

These days she balances her time between the bumblebee and beetle rooms and regularly talks about Miss Shauna and Miss Marcia and how much she loves them. Cut to today when I went to pick her up. She was sitting gingerly at the table waiting for one of her teachers to pass out the foam dough. She gave me a quick glance and a "hi mom" before turning her attention back to what was really important. When given a choice between foam or mommy, this girl chooses foam. I tried to coax her gently, but she was having none of it. As I pulled her out of her chair she began to cry. Miss Meghan tried to appease her with a special treat, but to no avail. As I latched her unwilling body into her car seat, she just kept repeating "want Shauna, want Shauna." She didn't stop crying until we were halfway home and, I suppose, realized her protests were futile.

Once she got over the devastation, we had a lovely evening of tickling, chasing, laughing, and other silliness. I guess she realized that while I am no foam, I'm still pretty awesome.

So I guess thanks Surreybrook for making my kid so happy she wants nothing to do with me.

A+/ F-

So, last week Ella B got her first A. Actually, it was an A+, but who's counting, right? When I got to daycare, Miss Marcia showed me Ella's daily info sheet and it had a little sticker on it. She said that Ella earned it by helping to clean up after lunch. So cute.

The funniest part was that when I handed the sheet to Ella (she loves to read her report each day- ya know, to keep track of her pooping schedule and what not), she sat down and looked at the sticker for a long time, very pleased with herself. After a few minutes, another little girl came over to check it out and pointed at the sticker. Well, Miss Ella B did not appreciate this and nearly decked poor little Kate. Okay, she pinched her, but it was an aggressive pinch. I told Ella that wasn't nice and she very reluctantly went over to Kate and patted her on the chest, a toddler version of an apology, I guess.

So, her report card for the day should read:

Cleaning up A+
Playing nice F-

The problem is that still averages out to a failing grade, unless of course I give her the gentleman's 50, and I also add in her daily cuteness grade of one million times infinity. Yeah, I think I'll do that.

Growing Up

On Wednesday, my kids graduated. No, not my Ella B. My other kids. The ones I am not biologically related to, but the ones I spent 50 minutes with, 5 days a week, for the past 5 months. It may not seem like enough time to get so attached to a group, but somehow this year I did. This happens sometimes, where you end up with this magical little group that just seems to click, where everyone supports and befriends everyone else despite their different social groups outside the classroom. On any given day, they might not have looked like the "it" group that every teacher desires. They were generally unmotivated, hated to write, and often didn't hand in their work. They tried their best to get me off topic everyday, and relished the moments when they succeeded. Some barely squeaked by and I cheered extra hard for them on graduation day, knowing how lucky we were to have made it there.

Yet, despite all of this, something flourished in that little room. An energy, a vibe, something cheesy like that which made us all look forward to period 6. When they talked they were honest, invested, jovial, and sometimes even serious. They supported each other and teased each other and called each other out on everything. They laughed, a lot, and they made me laugh, too, and we became a tiny family, if only for a few months.

It's raining now as I write this and they have graduated, moved on, and I'm feeling sad in a way I never have before in the seven years that I have said goodbye to my seniors, and I'm trying to figure out why. I think that part of it is that these are a special group of kids, but I think another part of it has to do with Beezer.

This is my first year of teaching as a mother and I thought it was going to be the most miserable year of my life. How would I ever juggle working and being a mom? When would I sleep? When would I grade those stacks of paper? And now it is suddenly the end of June and I realize that it wasn't so bad. I got used to not sleeping, I became a more efficient grader, and I stopped sweating all the small stuff. I realize now that these kids give me a lot of the same things Beezer does: frustration, laughter, pride, whimsy. They helped me to make it through this year more than they could possibly imagine. And so, perhaps as I watched them receive their diplomas, I felt a twinge of what's to come, of all the moments when Beezer will be a little more independent, will move a little further away from me, and a little closer to herself, and it is beautiful and exhilarating, and also, really, really hard.

I know that we have many years with Beezer before we have to think about high school graduation, but these kids reminded me that she will be grown one day and I will have to let her go. At least I get to practice it for a few more years with someone else's children before it is my little girl standing up on that platform, flying off to do bigger and better things.

To everyone who has already had to watch their babies go, give me the strength to do it gracefully.

Date Night

Once in a while every mom and dad deserve a date night. Unfortunatley for my husband that meant heading out last night to the senior prom. For me it was a win/win. A chance to get dressed up and go to a fancy hotel for a free meal, and be able to spend a nice night with my kids before they graduate. For Michael, it was standing around in a hot room and taking pictures of me with random high school kids he doesn't know. Oh well, he was a good sport about it anyway. Normally, Christina and I would go together, but as she is awaiting the birth of her child literally any second (it will be tomorrow, Chris, I can feel it!) she refused to attend. I told her that a little bumping and grinding on the dance floor might shake that baby loose, but alas, she would not listen to me.

So, we asked Ella's favorite teacher from daycare, Miss Amanda, to babysit. This is a big deal since it is our first time leaving her with a real babysitter (by real of course I mean someone you have to pay) rather than her Nene and Pop Pop. I was really not nervous at all and excited to have a reason to put on nail polish and Spanx. Mike stayed for most of the night and then headed home. I stayed with my friend Wendy and we didn't get home until 2 am! I haven't done that in years, and it felt good to just pass out with my makeup on and a fun night behind me.

Of course, it was back to reality at 5:30 when Beezer woke up and wanted to cuddle up with me and her bottle and watch Wow! Wow! Wubbzy. So, I'm hurtin' a little today, but still glad we went and had a baby free night.

BTW, how cute is my prom date?

PS- Yes this is the same dress that I wore to Kevin and Laura's wedding and Chad and Holly's wedding. Ya know what- if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

A hope for the future

Today's post is a little bit more serious. Okay, it is a lot more serious, but it is something that is on my mind. Yesterday at my school someone painted the word "fag" on the rock reserved for students to paint messages in support of their teams and clubs. The rock had been painted with rainbow colors in support of The Day of Silence and someone decided to deface it out of hatred, fear, and self-loathing. Luckily, we have some very brave students at our school who were willing to stand next to that rock today holding up signs that said, "Stop the hate," and my personal favorite, "You wanted a fag on this rock, well here I am." I'm writing about this on my baby blog because this has got me thinking about Ella B's future. Is she going to grow up in a world where people throw words like that at each other, or will homophobia be as foreign to her as cellphones that aren't smart? Will bullying be worse or better? Will she feel comfortable with who she is, both at home and at school? Will she grow up to be as brave and confident as those students who stood by the rock today? And what can I do to make that happen? I'm not sure, but I'm going to start with this, a message to the future Ella B:

My beautiful little girl, please know that you are amazing and strong and that you are already everything you were ever meant to be. I will love you no matter who you love or who you grow up to be and all I want is for you to feel proud and comfortable in your own skin and to help other people feel good about themselves, too. You are perfect just the way you are because, "you were born this way."

Thanks for listening and please remember that our kids learn how to love and to hate from us first.