Oh Deer

The other day I was taking Bodhi around the block late at night. When we rounded the 3rd corner we came across a buck who was scratching his teenage antlers on a very small lollipop (manicured!) tree which was really no taller than he was.  We stopped and stared at it for quite a while enjoying this little encounter with wild-life.  Bodhi didn't seem to wonder what we were doing and he was nice and quiet with me. I was thinking about something my friend had told me about a shooting at a BART station a couple of days before and out of the blue a guy came rushing past me. He totally startled me and I jumped. He sort-of muttered something, questioning whether he had scared me. I said "yes, you did" and then I proceeded to tell him about the deer while he whisked up the hill. Of course his fast movement scared the deer away. The guy barely glanced to see what I was talking about but I don't think the concept of wild-life really registered with him. Bodhi and I carried on and the guy was way ahead of us on the block. Then he suddenly came to a stand-still in awe. He had seen the deer. He could hardly believe his eyes. Then he wanted to talk to me! He wanted to know where it lived, where it came from etc etc. He said he hadn't seen one since he was a kid. Perhaps if he just slowed down he might get to see things. . . .

Unexpected Milestone

Today was Ami's first day riding the bus this school year. It seems to take forever to get permission to ride the bus. In the mean time we have been enjoying riding the Radish to and from school. All September Ami asked me (not incessantly but almost) about the bus and whether he could ride it. Finally the word came from on high that Amiel was permitted on the bus starting last Friday. He and I decided (before I told him that he could ride the bus that day- was that fair?) that he would stay at home for the day as he was still getting over his cold and I figured that he could do with a little break from school. So today was the first day back on number 20 with Ms Erin. Getting to the bus stop with Dad was no problem. We have an eager bus-rider.

For some reason I wondered whether he would remember to take the bus home from school. I did a lot of calling around to let his teacher and the school know that I was expecting him to take the bus home. I also phoned the transportation department to check in with them about his ETA at the bus stop. They said 3:21. That seemed pretty exact. I set my watch to head up to the stop at around 3:10. I decided to send Martin and told him to ask the bus driver if she would let him off the bus if there were no adults waiting for him at the stop. Last year if there was no-one waiting for him they would take him back to the school. I wanted to know what the ramifications were if we were late on pick-up. I didn't have to wait long for the answer to my question because about a minute after I had asked Martin to inquire, Amiel walked in the door. He walked home by himself from the bus stop!! He looked a little surprised but quite pleased with himself. Martin and I just could not stop chuckling. I guess he can do it but I plan on meeting him at the stop in the future!!

Dandelion Nursery School

The torment that I went through deciding where Mimi would go to preschool ended after spending an hour and a half at Dandelion Nursery School.  It probably could have ended within about 10 minutes...
She spent a day at public preschool (and thought that it was pretty grand) and was hesitant about trying something else out. I don't blame her. I like sticking with things and not trying new things all the time too. She told me public preschool was her favourite. She didn't want to try something new. However, I told her that I would be with her for the entire time while she was seeing what Dandelion was all about.  We went for a "new kids" introduction to Dandelion for 1.5 hours and after that Mimi said. "Mumma, THAT was my favourite!"  When we were trying to leave she said " Mum, Mum, Mumma Mum, can I just spend 5 more. . . . hours in the kitchen?" She was so delighted with all the wonderful things to play with and the fun friends and the total freedom to play with anything she wanted. I kept trying to whisk her around to show her all the possibilities for fun. She was so engaged in anything she put her hands on, - marble run, blocks, creative play in the kitchen and dress-up areas, etc etc etc. We made the decision that this would be the place for the Meems.
Mimi goes three mornings a week from 9-12 and I can also extend her day by 2 hours at an additional cost if I need some extra time. We can also drop in on extra days if there are any other kids missing on Wednesdays and Fridays when we are not scheduled to be at Dandelion.

She has adapted marvelously well. Some of the other "first year" kids are very hesitant and find it difficult to leave their parents (the parents find it hard to leave sometimes too. . . ). Mimi just marches in and gets busy playing. She is making lots of friends and is finding it quite easy to manage all the new relationships. She has most recently made it "in" with the "big" girls (who were at Dandelion last year). There is one girl who has taken a big liking to Mimi mostly because her older sister has a friend named Mimi and she wanted her own Mimi too!! Her name is Juliet but everyone call her Ju-ju! Maybe Mimi wants her very own friend named Ju-ju too!!
There is a parent who is a "Music Together" teacher and when she has her participation day she does music with the kids. Apparently Mimi is very involved in it and loves it. I would expect nothing less!!

Meems on her first day at Dandelion 

 

 

Mimi said something very cute the other day. She was expressing to me that she wanted to go to Dandelion at night (which is something that really doesn't happen).  When I pressed her for details as to what that would entail she said that she wanted to "go there in the evening and have prayers for each other and then play!"I think she wants a mash-up of Dandelion and CDSP Community night! Not a bad idea!!!

Dandelion is a Parent Participation/Co-op so we have 2 hired teachers and every day there are 4 parents making the day go smoothly. The space is beautiful and large with both indoor and outdoor place space and there are about 25 kids every day. It never feels crowded or out of control. The great thing is that it is a community of like-minded parents who want to have an active involvement in their child's experience. I have been on duty for two days now and I am getting to know the kids and other parents.

I have been using our Xtracycle a lot and I have mostly been riding there in the mornings.. . . the hill back up to our house is a tad daunting.. .  more about the Xtracycle in another post. .

not really wanting her picture taken. .

Some things about September, seeing as it is over today

As I attempt to bring everyone up to date, please excuse the rather random assortment of information in the next few posts. . .

Well, Martin successfully managed to get my computer fixed -for FREE!! Now I have no excuse as to why I cannot post. . . I was so pleased to have my computer back with its brand new screen. Thanks to the encouragement of Julia and also a guy in a computer fix-it shop, I encouraged Martin to see if he could work his magic and  return the computer to the Mac Store even though it is 3.5 years old and quite beyond its warrantee. He said himself- "I am Martin Elfert, I can return a half licked lollipop"!! We are both mightily pleased at the outcome.

September has been really wonderful here in Berkeley. We have been enjoying days that have been a bit too hot for me at times. I seek shelter inside as I can't stand the idea of getting too hot. Unfortunately the kids have colds which has meant that for the past week we haven't gone swimming. We did go to Lake Anza Wednesday and they did immerse themselves very happily.

We went with our friends Sylvia and her girls Alexandra and Johanna. It is amazing to see what a year will do to a baby! Johanna is 15 months old now and is really keeping up with the big kids in her own way. She is super cute!
Sylvia has been ordained to the transitional deaconate and is now the head of the ministry for Families and Children at St. Gregory's of Nissa in San Francisco. It is a great job for her and they are very lucky to have her. She is full of awesome ideas. Gran Farmer would be so happy to see her breaking down the age barriers in parishes.


Bish-

We have already been out of town since coming back here. We went on the Parish retreat of All Souls where Martin is doing his field placement again this year. It was at Bishop's Ranch - an Episcopal Camp, Retreat and Conference Center. It was a wonderful retreat from Berkeley and it was great to see its structure and programming as compared to Sorrento Centre! We camped in our tent and borrowed another tent for the kids! The kids loved the pool and the activities the parish had for the younger set!
Martin was one of 5 seminarians/priests leading work-shops on different forms of prayer. I lead an ABM workshop that 20+ people came to. Crazy! I have offered to give an ABM class at All Souls and many people were really interested in that possibility. I have yet to hammer out the details with the parish but i have some ideas brewing about what sort of format it will take. I am seeing it as a great opportunity to develop a course for use at Sorrento in the years to come!! The Angel Band (the parish's bluegrass band to which I belong) was busy jamming at the camp too which was very fun - although it was more apparent to me than ever that all the songs are the same. . . .

the beautiful chapel at Bishop's ranch

 In Other News....
I was invited by my friend Amy (who is doing the ABM training with me and who lives in Oakland) if I would like to observe her son Cypress' ABM lesson with our master teacher Marcy. I was so pleased to be asked and to get to spend a little time with Amy. The lesson was AWESOME and makes me all the more interested in doing this work.

Grade One

Ami started Grade One on the day after Labour Day (or he started First Grade on the day after Labor Day!). When was arrived at Washington on our Xtracycle we were a little bit late and we encountered Ms Mimi as she was taking her class into the school. Ami was feeling a bit hesitant about the whole experience - arriving late (the other kids started on the Wednesday before), not knowing who his teacher was going to be. . .
Ms Mimi was very warm and welcoming to him and he was his usual "shy-at-first-greeting" self. Then she said "Ms Laurance is waiting for you"! He was so darling in his reaction. Under his breath I could hear him say "Just who I wanted!" He was full of smiles then.
Ms Laurance is the beautiful and elegant, always nice teacher who's room is next door to Ms Mimi's so the school routine really hasn't changed at all!
His first days and weeks were a little rocky as he was figuring out the dynamics of his class, the rules of the room, the expectations of the teacher etc. He wasn't so sure that he liked school all that much. Now things are looking up and he is quite happy with school and Ms Laurance.
In Grade One the students sit at little designated tables with other children (Ami sits with 3 other kids). Ms Laurance is very big into giving incentive rewards for homework done and other accomplishments. She is very successful with this! I am having trouble with the concept that homework would be required for grade one. It is very difficult to get him to do it and I hate being the person making him do something that I don't believe in. Grrrr. He says that he doesn't like math so I have been working on helping him to understand how important math is to being an engineer. I think his problem is that he finds what they are doing in math boring. . . .
Ami really likes the science teacher who comes to their class on Wednesdays. I haven't heard much about what they learn - all I've heard is that it is great!

Ami's reading is impressive. At the beginning of the year we were given a list of words that Grade Ones are supposed to practice so that will be able to read (sight reading- not figuring out the individual words) 75/80 words. Well Ami can already read them all. It makes me wonder if boredom will set in in school. . .
Ami stayed home from school today as he was feeling a little under the weather. He did agree to do some school work with me over the course of the day. It was quite fun really. If I had a curriculum I think we could probably do homeschooling but we would need a big group of other home schooled friends to play with. That wouldn't be so hard or so bad!!

Katie and I have decided to make sure that we do all the things we want to do in the Bay Area before graduation in May. To that end I think I will be taking Ami out of school maybe even one day a week to enrich our experience here.

Trip From BC to Berk

Well, it was a marathon.
Martin and I left Sorrento BC at 9 AM on Labour Day Saturday and set out for Vancouver. The drive was very nice and it was lovely to get to spend time together (alone) on the first leg of our big road trip. I learned from the last time that I traveled from the interior to the coast to check in regularly with the traffic report on News 1130. We knew that we had a really big day in front of us with our plans to drive right into Point Grey to pick up the kids at the Elfert's place. However our heart sank when we heard that the lineups at the borders were 3.5 hours at Peace Arch, 3+ hours at Pacific Truck Crossing and 1-2 hours in the valley. We determined that it would be best for us to do some double-backing so that we wouldn't have to wait for such an excruciatingly long time at the border. We arrived at the Elfert's at around 2:30 and by the time we packed all our earthly goods in the car... it was close to 4. I checked the traffic online and found that the wait at Peace Arch was 5-10 minutes and that the valley crossings were closer to 1-2 hours now. I guess everyone had the same idea as we had had!
Indeed there was no wait at the border at all and we breezed through and all our papers were in order. First stress alleviated. . . .

We drove south to a place called Marysville, north of Everett, where we stopped for dinner. We like to go to places that aren't big chains and we saw some signs for "Boondockers Cafe" along the highway that looked somewhat interesting. I imagined it would be an American-fare place but when we arrived and saw the menu and the proprietors we realized that we did much better than we had imagined. The lovely east-indian family who ran the place had indian food on the menu as a "special". We were delighted! The kids loved it and ate well. The hosts were impressed by our children's adventurous taste and we loved the low key atmosphere and ability to put on jammies and brush teeth before "bed". They gave the kids bubble-gum ice-cream for dessert! At the restaurant I was able to phone La Quinta in Portland to make a reservation for the night. We didn't reserve a hotel room in advance or even earlier in the day as we had no idea about how far we would be able to make it, or if we would have any issues at the border.
The kids slept well while we motored along and we made it to Portland by midnight.

In the morning we had breakfast in their breakfast room. It was pretty crappy but oh so convenient and it is really nice to be able to have pets in the hotel.

The Sunday is a bit of a blur for me now but we left at 9 AM and arrived at 11PM in Berkeley. We stopped for lunch around Medford (?) at a disappointing restaurant that didn't have any sort of fresh veggies unless it was a salad. . . . no such thing as carrot sticks or anything. I imagine all the food there comes on a big truck- pre-cut, pre-sliced, pre-cooked? We had a nice play at a local park We managed to go to the same restaurant for dinner in Redding as we had gone to on the way up to Canada in May. The Black Bear Diner. It is a little local chain- California and maybe into Oregon? The kids really like it because they have the option of getting breakfast for dinner!!!
We stopped at a drive-in cappuccino bar on our way out of town. It felt so civilized to order a really inexpensive and yet yummy coffee without getting out of our car.
One of the spectacular sights we saw was the sunset outside of Redding CA with the black 3D silhouettes of trees, layers of hills and incredibly orange skies.
I think that this night might have been Mimi's first time seeing stars. She was astounded to see them in the night sky out the windows of the car. "Mum, Look! Stars!!!"
We arrived back in Berk at 11, approaching from a different trajectory than usual-via Walnut Creek. Everyone was glad to be back home.

I am sorry to say that I have no pictures of any part of our trip... :(

where to start...

Best laid plans to rival Caitlin's blogging regimen seem to have been left by the side of the road... Perhaps it's because I have been fighting a number of things since getting back to Berkeley.

First, FLEAS. We arrived home from our marathon travel from BC (more on that in another post) to find our house totally infested with fleas. I have never ever seen anything so disgusting and disturbing. The poor cat was so unhappy and Bodhi followed suit within seconds of arrival...
clean-up/infestation removal has included various eco-friendly measures (excessive vacuuming, cleaning, carefully removing reams of fleas from pets and killing them individually) as well as the less eco-friendly measures such as chemically treating our house with Flea Fog. We had to remove ourselves and pets from the premises for 3-4 hours. Luckily that meant that we went up to have some quality time at Tilden Park- the kids and I picked black-berries and played with Ami's new walkie-talkies while Martin did his meditation homework! Then we got to go out for sushi at our favourite place "Jo-shu-ya". Now we are depending on Advantage (which was ridiculously expensive at the vet's) to work its magic but it means that our four footed friends are still bearing the brunt of the flea fight and I still feel them crawling on me whether or not they really are. . . .

Second, my computer, in connection with my feline roommate, seemed to understand my wishes that I would spend less time on it. Maggie managed to knock over a full glass of water on my keyboard which rendered it useless... I spent quite a few days figuring out how to type messages to people without using m, n, b, l, a or the space bar. It was a challenge that I was glad to see the end of. Thanks to a classmate of Martin I now have a cute wireless keyboard with a wireless mouse. I thought it might help with the clutter on my desk some how. It hasn't.

Third, I had do finish a transcription of a lecture by Anat Baniel from my last training. Always interesting, always time-consuming.

Fourth, my computer is full. I can't load all my pictures on it and i feel like blog posts should always have pictures (1000 words after all).

Fifth, my computer only has 1/2 a screen now. The right hand side has completely busted. It just doesn't invite me to spend any pleasure time at my desk. Martin is planning a trip to the Mac store tomorrow to see what he can do to get them to stand behind their product. It is only 3.5 years old. :(

Sixth, I was feeling daunted but now I've fixed that by starting to write so here goes. . . .