Before school started, I flew over to the States for my grandmother's 90th birthday and a whirlwind weekend in NYC. My battery did not last through the trip, but I did take a few hundred or so pictures, and particularly liked the two that top the collage. They just looked so New York to me.
The pictures on the bottom row stand as my Czech contrast. The first is the front of Hotel Pariz, downtown, and the second is a picture from way back in September on Caroline's first day of second grade.
She's having fun this semester, thanks in part to being back in her old classroom with her old teacher and all of her friends from first grade. Theoretically, that means she can concentrate on other, more important, bits of school. An interview with C about what those bits might be goes something like this:
Interested Parent: Learn anything new today?
C: Ummmm, nope.
IP: Nothing at all? How did Math go?*
C: Hm...I can't remember. Oh, I know! I learned how to boil rice in a bag today, so we don't have to steam it any more!**
* Every now and again we like to tax our brains with the odd problems in Caroline's 2nd grade math work book. The hardest are so cleverly illogical they've stumped even the professor in the family for a good ten minutes.
** C thinks we're crazy to eat sticky rice from a rice steamer and keeps trying to tempt me with tales from the cafeteria of goopy Czech rice covered in sauce. I may have to send her to South Carolina for some rice habilitation!
11 comments:
Then the IP / Kid conversations continue the way they start when Kid is 3? Is there no hope??? (Hypothetical, don't really want to know there isn't...)
Sure there's hope! Either skip the obvious question (offered up in a moment of noninventiveness) or use it as an opener to start a parley and then go on to something so ridiculous C at 7, J at 3 can't help but laugh over it and say at least something!
My girls just won't talk about school stuff until an inconvenient to me moment...like as we are dashing out the door, all of sudden they want to chat....
Lovely shots, and such a big girl now.
How amazing to have a grandmother of 90, and that you were able to be there for the celebration!
Oh yes. We have a variant of that conversation each day.
"What did you do today at school?"
*shrug*
"Anything interesting happen today at school?"
"Stuff."
O little Miss Caroline - you have grown up so much!
I always used to ask them what they had for lunch or who they sat next to. It was something that seemed to register and would always lead into a more general conversation. I also discovered that saying "Is there anything else I need to know?" brought all sorts of things to the surface. I still use that one with my teenagers.
Rice rehab--that just kills me!
I love tricky math problems--freaky, eh? I justhelped my BFF's daughter with one the other night over the phone. I'm an email away if you and C get stuck again!
Oh cor, look how C has advanced - a mere two steps away from adulthood. Glad to note the authenticity of the background. Alerted by your earlier posts and pix I sought out this random art-form in Prague but found you'd snaffled the best.
Professional experience forced me to re-phrase the eternal parent's question: "How was school today? - and 'all right' won't do." After a month or so I was rewarded by a wary look when hinting I was about to ask about school. Too draconian? Well, the gene skipped a generation and Bella now favours journalism "though not on the sort of dull magazines you worked on, granddad."
C looks so grown up!
I thought I was being clever by asking, "What was the best thing about today?" But Neal's answer is always the same: playing outside. And Leah's is always reading. Every now and again, though, if I don't say anything after their initial answers, one of them will say, "Oh! Mommy! And guess what else happened today...." And then I will be treated to an account of building the biggest nest of straw the playground has ever known, or the funny thing Stacy did in the hall on the way to the lunchroom, or how much Mrs. Holland loves dogs. Those are good rides home.
Did you get a chance to see Jen, Marq and Amira in NYC at all? You were only 3 1/2 hours from us! Next time...
Isn't it funny how kids go blank about school? I think it's just a kind of parallel universe to them. I heard a story once about a woman who was the head teacher at her own children's school, and sometimes the youngest would say something like 'Mummy, guess what Mrs A said in assembly today...' momentarily fogetting Mrs A was in fact her own mother!
I find I like rice in almost every form, gloopy, sticky, brown and chewy...
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