It's been a couple days, so I should really post. But what should I say? I'm drawing a ginormous blank.
Ben started the supplemental day camp (two weeks in August after the six-week camp ended) this morning and had a fantastic time. The six-week camp had been preceded by a mandatory parent meeting—did I tell y'all about that?—in which The Handbook of Rules was distributed and The Questions of Nervous Parents were addressed. (My two favorite questions from that meeting: "Will there be a clown on the first day?" and "Is there someone to help hold the kids up so they don't fall into the toilet?") The six-week camp was also beset by swarms of hyperfertile yuppies. Most of the time, I go about my business blithely unaware of my quasi-non-fertility (or whatever it's called). But these women! With their raging uteri! Escorting their preschoolers to camp, toting toddlers in strollers, and pregnant or nursing a baby to boot. It's not a neighborhood that seemed to have a lot of three-child families. I mean, this is the city! There's no parking! How can people survive, trying to pack a suburban lifestyle into a congested urban area? Sheesh.
This two-week camp is at a different Chicago Park District facility, and there are 30 kids instead of 100. I was not beset by hordes of successful breeders, so that was nice. And there was no parent meeting, nope. Drop off your kid, fill out the emergency-contact form, and go. If Ben likes it just as much as the first camp, damn, I'll sign him up for the whole summer at this facility next year. They even have an outdoor pool. ("Swim day" at the first camp involved hoses putting about seven inches of water in three wading pools. And that's what the yuppies fight to get their kids into!)
Four weeks from tomorrow, kindergarten starts. And I will be liberated! For 5 hours and 45 minutes a day. I can't wait! And Ben? Wants school to start tomorrow.
See? Like I said up front. I got nothin'. I have a couple memes I want to fill out sometime, but not right now. One-time-only offer: What do you want me to write about next? I'm taking requests. (Can't swear I'll answer the requests, but I'm taking them.)
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7 comments:
More potty talk, please.
Potty talk, Ms. Feral? Can you be more specific?
JT, we didn't have to buy to buy a ton of stuff. My favorite? "Two packages LARGE safety pins." (There are 150 kids in each class, so I believe they pin nametags on coats, if not on the children themselves.)
Hmmm...how about places in Chicago NOT to go shopping at. I can tell you this...if my daughter ever wants to go to one of those 'American Girl' places and design herself a $200 doll, I'll tell her all those stores burned down. Swear.
Here we go: Stores to avoid in Chicago: American Girl Place. You can tell the child the store burned down, but on Michigan Avenue, she's going to see 87 girls carrying red shopping bags that clearly say "American Girl Place" right on them. (Maybe tell her that you hear it smells like farts and the smell clings? Or that there are scary ghosts? You've got to be creative when mongering fear, and you're gonna need to monger a lot of it.) You're also going to need to avoid that Build-a-Bear joint. I've never been, but I can't say it sounds any more appealing to me than American Girl Place. (Which, last I checked, does not play a constant soundtrack of Tom Petty. Now, that could improve it.) Really, that's it for my shopping anti-recommendations. Plus, do NOT attempt Michigan Avenue between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Not as a shopper, not as a pedestrian, not as a driver, not even as a bus or taxi passenger. It is dreadful. It's full of...people. People who think it's all terribly fun to shop and cross the street in massive crowds. People from out of town, from out of state. People who don't understand that I am always in a hurry, and that they are obstructing my progress. Oh, I just can't stand it.
Yay for Ben starting Kindergarten!!
And, um, there are 150 kids in his class or in the kindergarten class as a whole?
The list gets shorter when they go into first grade but the work gets harder. Peanut is not looking forward to first grade at all. He will be attending 1 of the 2 "super accessible" schools here in very urban Richmond and they had like, 15 kids in his Kindergarten class. In first grade he'll have around 25 or so.
Nut, that's 150 kids in his actual class, which is pod style—six teachers plus an aide, all in one giant, partly subdivided classroom that has no actual walls separating the areas. We're hoping it will be energizing rather than disastrous.
Ew. I'll hope with you then - for the energizing rather than disastrous outcome that is. Because it seems to not be too good of an idea.
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