This is the latest work of art that Madeline has brought home from preschool. Her art teacher explained that it was an exercise in depicting facial features, and while I can believe that, I am not sure what to think of all the red paint. Anyone think she has a future as a surrealist?
Madeline wasn't a bald baby, but she didn't actually have a quantity of hair worth considering until she was at least two years old, and enough to coax into pigtails until a month shy of her third birthday. Those pigtails lasted about two hours, and haven't been seen since.
Despite seeming to devote hours of her day to adorning herself like royalty (if royalty likes cheap plastic costume jewelry, that is), Madeline doesn't care much about her hair. She likes it plain, and preferably with her bangs obscuring 20% of her vision, thank you very much.
So, last Wednesday when a little girl with pink, blue, and purple accented hair all pulled back from her face ran out of her classroom at noon, it never occurred to me that it was my child. I barely glanced at small person hovering by my side, and for a very long thirty seconds, continued to look expectantly at the door. But lo and behold, I realized that the rainbow-hued creature beside me was Madeline! Even some of the other parents waiting for the noon pick-up started fussing over my kid's transformation from a sheep dog into a poodle!
As it turns out, it was a dress-up day at preschool, and in addition to costumes for the little girls and boys, one of Madeline's classmates parents came and read Fancy Nancy (a fave of ours, and worth checking out if only for the mega-fabulous illustrations), and another supplied two of her Thai maids who are incredibly talented at styling fidgety-prechooler-hair. Madeline adores one of those ladies, and I'm trying not to feel slighted that she won't let me, her own hard-working and always-devoted mom, fix her hair. At least she allows me to do her laundry :)
Hee.
Last Friday, Madeline made her bowling debut. We met up with one of my friends and her daughter E at the local bowling alley. I must say that this bowling alley was a far cry from the dark and dusty one where my mom used to play five pin every Wednesday when I was little. This alley was sparkling and full of natural light. There was no one else there when we arrived at eleven in the morning.
The employee at the desk set us up at Lane 1, made sure that the gutter guards were up, and mentioned that the lightest balls that they had weighed six pounds. Alas, weight was the least important criteria for Madeline and E when it came to choosing their bowling balls. Colour was key. The only balls that came in acceptable shades of pink and purple were seven and nine pounds, respectively.
The little bowlers could not be persuaded that blue and green balls were a more reasonable choice, so my friend and I found ourselves called into service for every frame, helping the girls push the ball down the lane with enough momentum to reach the pins. Neither of the girls broke one hundred, but they seemed to have a fun time at the bowling alley. The way that their balls would magically return to the rack at the end of the lane was totally fascinating. And believe it or not, neither of the girls were even tempted run up the empty lanes!
I will admit to have a secret fantasy about Madeline becoming a successful pro golfer when she's older, but maybe bowling will be her thing instead ...
Madeline came home from school yesterday with a heavier than normal backpack. Last night, she gave me this sparkling valentine, and a heart-shaped cookie with green frosting and sprinkles to her dad. Those other two sugar cookies she had in her pack, well, those ones must have been for her as she wolfed them down before dinner ...
Yesterday, Madeline and two of her buddies were racing around the playground at the large international school that we live near, each child holding a long twig in one hand. They amused themselves this way for a good half-hour. For awhile, I forgot that I was in the suburbs of Bangkok instead of watching the preschool class at Hogwarts ...
A couple of days ago, I sat down for a twenty-minute chat with Madeline's preschool teacher. It was the second parent-teacher interview that I've been to, and it was a treat to learn about what Madeline enjoys participating in, what her class has been doing, and how she's coming along with social skills. Madeline is usually more interested in talking about what I've made for lunch at home than what she did at school that morning, you see! At the very end of the interview, her teacher brought up an issue that she said she was going to discuss with all of the parents of the little girls in her class.
And what was the issue that was infiltrating the clutch of little three and four year-old girls? Well, they've started to go up to each other and say "I'm not your friend today. I'm only <insert name of schoolmate here>'s friend!" and "You can't sit here! Only <insert name of schoolmate> can sit by me!"
I don't know how big a deal to make out of this, and I'm not sure that Madeline's teacher does, either. Sometime, on the car ride home from preschool, she'd announce, "I was not friends with <insert name of school chum here> today. She played with <insert name>" and I began to wonder how a three year-old girl defines friendship. Is it an enduring thing, or does it exist very much in-the-moment? Is it mutually-exclusive, were A can't be friends with B if B is friends with C? And are all friendships restored the next day at school after everyone has had a good night's sleep?
It makes me really sad that these lovely little girls in Madeline's class are talking to each other like that. It's a little ... junior high, no?
Last night, Madeline was using a brand-new bar of homemade soap to wash the layers of school yard sand off of her. "Look Mama! It has nuts in it!" she exclaimed, showing me the bar of soap.
"Actually, those are poppy seeds," I gently corrected, indicating the little black specks that were interspersed with oatmeal flakes in the bar.
Madeline's excited response: "Seeds? Then we can plant them and grow more soap!"
Well, we're getting on a plane tomorrow for our very first Christmas vacation, so I don't have much to say today other than I hope hope hope that all of Madeline's jeans still fit. She hasn't worn a single pair here in Bangkok.
Instead, take a peek at the cool Christmas art stuff she's been working on in preschool. I adore the gold antiqued frame. Why wasn't I doing any faux antiquing when I was three?
Notice the brown bear on the card. Still everything bears ...
The ornaments are prominently displayed on our tree. The reindeer one is my favourite. The circle one is really cool - her class wrapped painted cardboard rounds with gold and silver cord. And yeah, there's a polar bear ...
Madeline's swimming classes wrapped up for the term this afternoon, and while I am glad that no I longer have to spend those thirty minutes poolside with the Thailand sun beating down on me, I'm going to miss watching her transformation into a little sea otter. The little girl I took to the pool back at the beginning of September was afraid to get her face wet and now she's independently aquatically mobile for distances of eight feet or less.
I cannot rave about Madeline's swim class and instructor enough! I loved that she was in a small class - until the last week of November, it was just her and two of her friends from preschool. Her instructor could give each of them a decent amount of individual attention/instruction. I love that her instructor somehow teaches swimming skills by not really teaching per se ... going hunting for starfish in the deep end instead of learning to blow bubbles and float, or running away from alligators instead of merely kicking with a flutter board. Madeline must think it's thirty minutes of water games!
Today at the end of class, everyone received their progress reports. I was really touched that Madeline's instructor took the time to put his arm around each of the little girls and boys and explain each line of their progress report to them, even through they're all three years old and not particularly literate. Madeline's report had a tidy row of check marks, and she's invited to start in the next level in January. She'll be a better swimmer than I am, in, oh, about six months :)
I don't think that there is a baby book in existence anywhere that has a space where a parent can fill in an entry for "baby's first scar". I guess it's not a milestone that everyone would want to record for posterity. In this photo, I can see the nearly-healed little wound on Madeline's chin. She and Chris were playing in our den nearly two weeks ago, and she fell, and her previously-flawless little chin hit and rubbed against the laminate floor. Neither Chris nor I expected such a wound from that accident, but there was lots of blood and it was scary for us all, even though it was the equivalent of a skinned knee.
I look at how it's healing, and think that it will be Madeline's first scar.
