Perhaps I Should Have Said, "Soon-ish"

I know, I know, I'm lame. I promise blog posts and don't deliver. Guilty as charged, but I'm here now, aren't I?

Freya is now officially settled in at her new preschool. And despite the fact that it's costing us an arm and a leg (that's right, I'm a double amputee now) I'm pretty happy with it. Her teacher is from NYC, which warms my Yankee heart, and she doesn't let them get away with anything, which is awesome - not to mention perfect for Freya, who, as we all know, is inclined towards evil. (I'm not laying blame here, it's just who she is and we love her for it.)

The first few weeks Freya had a hard time making friends. She mostly hung out with her teachers and worked on her "homework." (A workbook I bought her in response to her complaint that "I'm not learning anything!") but now she has a long list of all of her friends and I've seen them on the playground. It's almost terrifyingly cute: five super-blond, very small, very smart little girls. They match: it's freaky. But totally awesome. She doesn't talk about them a lot; I think she still misses the one-on-one time with Matilda - after all, they had all summer together - but she also doesn't complain about not having any friends anymore, and even better, she doesn't feel the need to list the few friends that she does have; they're just par for the course now, and that's the way it should be.

Matilda is doing fine in second grade: she's adaptable. But so far the issues with her teacher are still unresolved. She did finally respond to my note by saying that she'd call when she had a chance, but so far nothing. I'll call next week if she doesn't call me first. We're getting into dangerous territory though. I don't know if you know this (okay, Mom, Dad, I know you know this) but I almost flunked out of third grade 'cause the homework was stupid. Last night Matilda's homework - while not quite as stupid as I remember the 100 problems I had to do 23 years ago - included one problem with two possible answers. Who writes this crap? I wrote a note. I had to! Come on, you're trying to teach a seven-year-old how to multiply and divide by two, right, and you're also teaching them - implicitly, granted - that each question has only ONE correct answer; and then you go and throw in a question that, if the directions are followed to the letter, has TWO correct answers? Not cool!

Just to be clear, I'm all for teaching kids that most questions worth asking have more than one possible answer, but let's be clear, too: that's not the take-away lesson in Matilda's second grade classroom, at least not from what I've seen so far.

I'll keep you updated, but the one thing I'm not willing to do, and have never been willing to do, is sit passively by and send my daughter(s) to public school without keeping an eye on what all they teach them up in there. It's apt to be, you know, crazy mainstream shit or something. The saga will continue...