preschool

many of the families from ava's preschool live in or around forest hill and like to hang out at j.p. murphy playground. this playground is newly remodeled and has always been a spic and span retreat from the more crowded playgrounds in golden gate park. unfortunately, as the state of california and city of san francisco budgets implode, the care and maintenance of our local playgrounds is definitely going downhill. at j.p. murphy the only real issue is that the sand from the two sand pits had been gradually redistributed to every available square inch of the playground.

earlier this week, isa's mom pointed out that this was pretty easy to fix and organized a playground clean-up. the kids did their part and a few awesome random strangers pitched in too, and an hour and a half, and one nasty blister on my thumb later, the playground looked great again. of course, it wasn't all work, there was a plenty of time for fun and games too.

today was ava's preschool's first annual "tour de parc race and flag day picnic". the racer's spanned a wide range of sizes and talents - from two-wheelers sans-training-wheels through trikes and skuuts. ava won the division in which she was the only real contestant. that would the the "most inappropriately dressed for a bike race" division.

ava rounded the course with ian, both of whom were totally oblivious to the whole concept of "race". ava was only interested in the fact that she would get a jelly bean at the half-way point, and ian was pretty much oblivious to his dad's joking taunts that he was getting "beaten by a girl".

what could be better for a little girl than an easter egg hunt? how about one with 20 of your favorite friends from school? oh - and throw in the best weather we've had since september too. that ought to do the trick.

somewhere right around now ava's first permanent memories are going to kick in. hopefully her brain is imprinting all the nice times she's having with all her little buddies (delilah, hannah, lindsay, ian, max and paulo) and not her first two pets dying . . .or me force feeding her whipped cream. ah well - time will tell!

more easter egg hunt pics

the curriculum at ava's preschool includes a weekly dance class. it's a tall order for a dance teacher - approximately 30 kids, ages two through five, but she does a great job. this week the kids put on a "recital". really this meant that the parents came to watch their normal dance class routine, but boy was it ever cute. i was trying to be an equal opportunity school photographer, and therefore wound up with not very great pictures of ava. she did great though. i'd been prepping her for days, telling her that she needed to do her dances with her class and not sit on mommy's lap . . . and that if she did this i would give her a lollipop. to my surprise, this delayed gratification bribery actually worked. she wandered over a few times to try to demand her lollipop in mid-show, but she happily went back and joined the show each time.

ava's preschool had a little valentine's day potluck lunch for the kids today. complete with heart shaped pizza and strawberry cream cheese sandwiches. the two-year-old class also baked cupcakes to take home for "mommy and daddy". however, when ava got home she insisted that one was for her, and the other was to be saved in the fridge for grandma. then she proceeded to eat hers "like a kitty".

last week, the weekly theme at ava's preschool was martin luther king. god bless her school - for they have an amazing "can do" attitude for their 2-year old class. if nearly-five-year old's can do it - hell - the little ones can follow along too.

one of their class projects for the week was to document their versions of "i have a dream", e.g. "what do you want to be when you grow up". the results were put up on the wall of the classroom and very much made me giggle. ava wanted to be a cat (no surprise), and max and hana had equally silly responses of chicken and hat, respectively. only lindsay and flora seemed to understand the question, and answered "a princess".

today i noticed another project from last week up on the board. the 2 year olds had painted a picture of a bus with purple paint, then stuck "faces" in the window. the faces came in two forms "yellow ovals" and "brown ovals". what would i give to have a tape recording of the narrative that went along with that project! (and what would they have done if somebody put all their brown ovals at the back??)

clearly, ava's outfits don't always make it through a whole day at school. when ava needs a change of clothes, her teachers pack up her dirty clothes in a zip lock back and put it in her cubby. the plastic bag is always labeled with her name, the date, and what exactly is on the clothes. i've never been totally clear what the point of this latter label was supposed to be. a clue to what level of bio-hazard is contained within? (i can imagine this might be important during potty training.) a hint as to what stain removal process you might want to try?

since ava isn't potty training just yet, her bags usually come labeled "water", "juice" or "food". today's was a little different though . . . ava's had a runny nose this week, and she's recently become aware of her nose running, and does not like it at all. and, of course, if she can't immediately find a grown-up with a tissue, she uses whatever comes to hand.

what's better than decorating cookies with one two year? why - two two year year olds, or three, and throw in a couple of three year olds . . . and hell, sure a four year old too! add some moms, some pretty red cocktails, and you have my latest "tradition" - the cookies and cosmos party!

ava, delilah, and more friends from school did a very nice job of decorating cookies. since i was running about making sure everybody had adequate supplies, ava was left once again to one of her "unsupervised" art projects. can you guess which cookie is ava's? yup - the one with about 1/2 inch high of icing, with several layers of sprinkles, a large glop of green goo and some little pink balls. mmmm . . . yummy?