lake superior ice stacking

Here's a fantasy field trip: the stacking of ice plates along Lake Superior.

circle time

Circle time at Red Cottage comes in late morning, after the kids have had a good cycle of work time, a humming, busy-busy time full of mats and polishing and pieces coming apart and together and time to watch and rethink with hands.

This is an opportunity for quiet, for community, for singing and stories. I love circle time for its communion with narrative, but I also love the reading corner with its sweetest-size kids chair (making the Ikea Poang on my wishlist--when we move, I'd love one for me too!) and its little cabal of books.

12 february

There are days in Minnesota where you step outside, and you can feel the wet of your lungs crackling in your chest, the cold you've been fighting has turned brick-like in your nose, and your eyes begin to make tinkling sounds like windchimes because the tears have frozen there.

This is, of course, not too cold for a Minnesotan to get outside and play, of course. The school has a policy that involves the number five, and I can't remember if it's negative five or five above, but either way, this is the barometer for outdoor activity.

I tell you, my Southern preschoolhood would have shattered at the very idea of being outside in such temperatures! This was, after all, the city that closed school at a snowflake and plowed the streets with scrapers strapped to the fronts of garbage trucks. We lived in a valley of sloped mountains, so any flakes caused absolute thrills to streak through the school.

We are made of tougher stuff. This my girl, below, who joined Kai and her labyrinth-making for a glimmer of a moment (but my son Finnegan is chugging right along behind her, the green twins--he's wearing what he calls his "turtle jacket") but was more fascinated by the pine needle formations and licking a clump of snow than any kind of group activity. She is indeed a unique bird, and she'd love that I'm calling her that as she's fascinated with nests and eggs and such.

10 february

This is Julianne, and I have to say, she's one of those people who I could not imagine where I'd be on my parenting journey without. When I first met her in September, the new teacher taking over the toddler program where my youngest would attend, I was fairly skeptical. Julianne is the definition of "best practices." She's got a wealth of experiences and she knows exactly how things should work and how they work right for her and these 18-36-month-olds. She was firm about children walking into the building by themselves, about their not having pacifiers or bottles, etc. I thought, "Oh dear. My Finnegan is awfully stuck in his ways, and I haven't the foggiest how he'll deal with no so easily said."

Turns out pretty smoothly. He wasn't in love with the transition--after all, he'd had Mommy to himself for so long--but after a week or two, he was in the rhythm and drop-off for him was miles easier than it was for my older girl, who'd had a year and a half of being handed off to assistants who would carry her to a window and wave. She couldn't fathom this sudden drop into school.

But this isn't about my daughter or my son. It's about Julianne, who decided Finn was "spinning his wheels," as they put it, in the toddler room, which meant it was time to transition him into that gem in the center of the Montessori crown--the Children's House, also known as preschool (through kindergarten, or ages 3-6). He still hasn't turned three yet, but this isn't the point. He did well at first, but something shifted, some tectonic plate slipped, and he began to sink into these crying--wailing!--jags that would last the entirety of the morning. I'd brace myself at pick-up and hear him and his banshee cries downstairs and my heart would shatter. I'm not sure what it was exactly, but we had some strange things happen in that time--we went to Chicago for my husband's work trip, and then I had some more-dramatic-than-I-anticipated surgery and he ended up missing a few weeks of school because it didn't seem quite the best to have Grandma deal with his writhing fuss.

There was a moment, though, when the turn began to appear to be a pattern, and I stood at the top of the stairs and listened to Finn cry after walking him downstairs and trying to ease him into work for the day. He was crying and Kai was telling him that he must stop crying and Julianne came to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and told me that it was OK, that he was indeed ready to be down there, but sometimes these things were so hard. I said I was afraid he didn't have any coping mechanisms, that he couldn't self-soothe, and she said, "But crying is his coping mechanism. He just needs to make a lot of noise." And she told me it would change and it took a long time and a lot of patience from all the adults who loved him involved, but these days, drop-off is fairly smooth, and I will never, ever forget the patience and guidance showed by myself and Kai, who had never had a kiddo from the toddler program graduate into the Children's House because, well, there had never been a toddler program until this year.

And for the record, there are more children than just DJ in the program, but the other littles were marching up and down the steps and squabbling in the reading corner (the assistant then read books to them, which made my heart all melty watching them and I had to resist scooping all of them up into my arms and swallowing them whole). The light is tricky too. There will be more glimpses, but for now, here's a few from the zen-like queendom that is Julianne's Toddler Program.

9 february

I've been invited into my children's classrooms to take photographs of the new building. They've moved twice during the two years my daughter has attended this school, once to a church's Sunday school rooms to accommodate an expansion, and this second time to their "permanent home," the former cottages of VASA Home. Another parent is in the process of updating the website, and I'm enjoying the opportunity to sneak into the classroom and observe just what it is my two little ones do while they're away from me. I can say this for certain: I've already become a more patient, observant, steady parent because of it.

PS: Finn is doing some polishing work in the last photo. Be still, my mama-heart.