On the Good Ship Lollipop

At our elementary school, third grade is a big deal for lots of reasons, but the Famous Americans report ranks right up there near the top. You might remember that Smunch became Jackie Robinson a couple of years ago. It was a huge deal, not just because he stutters, but he had to memorize a five-minute presentation, come in costume and have a certain number of props. It was stressful, both for him and me.

This year, Mam chose to be Shirley Temple Black. I'd never really thought of Shirley Temple as having contributed that much to American society, so it was fun to learn more about her. Not only was she a very, very famous little girl, but she did some interesting things as an adult too. She was a delegate to the U.N., she was an ambassador to Ghana, she was ambassador to Czechoslovakia and she was the first female chief of protocol in the United States. That's kinda cool.

Know what else is cool? The third grade teachers finally decided this year to turn this into a real third grade project. The kids wrote almost all of the presentation themselves, they didn't have to memorize anything, costumes were optional and props were mostly absent. So much more low key and so much less stressful for everyone involved...unless you're sick on the day of your presentation, as Mam was. Then it's kind of sad to lay your curly little tresses on the sofa all day.

But Mam got to perform on Wednesday instead of Monday...and that was just fine. We got to do a "dry run" on the curls and make sure they worked out. She had fun sleeping in foam curlers and she did a great job with her presentation, despite only just being well enough to be back. She made good eye contact, read slowly and clearly and had more poise than I've seen her have before.

This one is super hard-headed, but she's going to do whatever she wants to do with her life...whether you like it or not.

First Day 2012

It's hard to believe she's in third grade all of a sudden. And even harder yet to imagine that he's a fifth grader. Where has the time gone?

I don't know why I ask because I know exactly where much of it goes. The last weeks of summer were full of trips to nature camp for Mam, including her first overnight. Smunch and I played a full 36 holes of mini-golf in her absence...capped by Smunch successfully shooting for a free game (with my ball after shanking it with his own)at the 19th (which was really our 37th) hole.

And I took them both to the water slides in San Jose where we spent the better part of the day having a whole lot of fun and never visiting those towels that were saving us a space on the lawn.

We went for frozen yogurt...several times...we spent time with friends, we cleaned out the studio, which is now unrecognizable after the disaster the kids and their cousins made out there last month. I sold several outgrown kid toys...a sand and water table, a train table, the kiddie pool... I patched two punctured bike tires, replaced the entire innards of the master bathroom toilet, cut down the branches that were knocking down the back fence, and hemmed two pair of baseball pants that were a good six inches too long, but were required for Smunch's travel team. I bought a new vacuum cleaner...an event far more exciting to me than I really want to admit.

And now, the kids are back in school and their limited time at home is filled with homework, soccer practice, baseball practice, orthodontist appointments (now for both), speech therapy and the race to get finished with dinner before bedtime.

What does that mean? It means this year will be over before I know it and that a few minutes from now, I'll be sending Smunch off to his last year of elementary school (which is 6th grade in our district).

When my kids were little and people told me, "Oh, they grown so fast!" I knew what they meant, but I still felt like days moved by so terribly slowly.

It's only now that I'm really beginning to understand.

Jackie Robinson...only shorter and paler

It was a big day in the life of our dysfluent little baseball lover today. Third grade at our school includes a big Famous Americans unit. The culmination of this unit is for each student to pick a "famous American", then research that person and do a five-minute presentation for the class and parents. It's a VERY. BIG. DEAL. The kids come in costume, their presentation must be memorized and it has to include props.So, it's a very big deal for most kids. But you have to understand that this is my kid. The one who stutters...sometimes severely. When we started this project, his ability to speak was so poor that he struggled just to read the words from the page, even though his reading skills are just fine. His teacher wasn't initially so willing to cut him any slack with the time limit. So, I've been kinda stressed.

Generally speaking, I don't consider my kid disabled. I don't consider him "differently abled". He's just a kid who happens to stutter. And until now, it didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference to him.

I talked to his stuttering specialist and she's been seeing him twice as often since we started this project. I talked to the speech therapist at school who got the teacher to cave just a little...tell him he had no time limit and put him last in the day so she'd have more leeway on that.

We worked on memorizing places to use his "speech tools" in addition to memorizing all those words. We all worked hard. Smunch wasn't always thrilled with all the practicing. I wasn't thrilled either. We practiced while I worked out, we practiced in the car, we practiced with sound effects, with props, with projection, with a nice slow pace. We practiced and practiced. I think I had it almost as well memorized as he did.Today was the big day. And #42? He may have left out a line here and a word there, but he never needed prompting, he was one of the few kids you could understand. He was engaging and the kids laughed at his singing coffee can. Not once did they laugh at the way he spoke.I didn't cry. But it's not because he wasn't awesome.