You guys. Ike-a-saurus is almost five years old. Can you believe this? I can't believe this. And I know people say things like that all the time... "Wow! The time really flies!" and "It's unbelievable how fast kids grow!" but this is like a whole different thing. I'm not sure I can explain it. Just look into my eyes. See all of those feelings swirling around in there? Yeah.

He could start Kindergarten in the fall.

Like, actual school.

His fifth birthday is the DAY BEFORE school starts, though, so we've been debating whether he should start or not. He's still so tiny - 28 pounds! Maybe waiting a year is a better idea. But then his pre-school teacher was all, "Send him! Send him! He loves school and does great with his peers and knows all his letters!" So I thought, OK. Maybe we should do it. Maybe we should send him.

BUT THEN I started worrying about things like middle school. Will he really want to be the smallest kid with no chance of a mustache in the 8th grade? Or would it be better if he was the smallest kid with the most complete mustache? If he starts school now, then he will get to be in middle school for a year with his sister. If we wait a year, they'll never share space in middle school. Does that matter? Do they care?

And then after thinking all of that I had a panic attack and had to watch some Anthony Bourdain to calm down.

The thing is, with this kid, I have never thought about the future. Can a mother admit that? I hate to admit that. I have always been so scared for him that I've never thought farther ahead than the end of the week, the end of the month, maybe the end of the year, but not even that until very recently. It's always been one step forward, celebrate. One more step forward, celebrate. So now, all of these thoughts and worries not just about next year, but how this decision might affect things in years to come is especially overwhelming. My husband still can't bear to think that far ahead. We have been stunted in our imaginations by fear and worry, and now that I'm trying to break away from that I am just... overwhelmed.

It should be easy, right? Start school in the fall. If it doesn't seem like it's going to work, pull him out and try again in a year. Or, don't start school in the fall. Stay in pre-school, make volcanoes, think about Kinder at a later date. But instead of being easy, the decision just weighs on me like I'm deciding the fate of the world.

What if we send him next year and he gets RSV and ends up in the hospital? What if some big kid knocks into him and crushes his windpipe? Would it be better to wait a year because he'll be bigger and have more strength and more immunities built up? He's already been in pre-school a year, so one would hope these immunities are already building. And I know kids are not exactly likely to go around crushing each other's windpipes.

But what if we wait and he starts school and becomes bored and restless and hates it?

What if we don't wait and he's not ready emotionally and can't sit still in the third grade for those goddamned tests and that reflects on him as a student and then affects the rest of his school career?

Plus, don't we owe him another year of just fooling around? After everything he's been through, shouldn't his prize be one more year without having to walk silently through the halls and sit in a desk? I thought maybe so, but then a friend of mine pointed out that maybe for him, allowing him to join the masses and be one of the crowd is exactly what he does want and need. Maybe he's the kind of kid who thrives on desks and lines and journals and we don't know this yet.

Sigh.

I took him to Kinder camp today where the prospective students get to hear some stories in the library and take a tour of the school and then have a nice snack. It's a little redundant for him because he knows the school and the library already, but still, I figured it would be nice for us to go. I could silently size up the other kids, watch his interactions, and it would help me figure things out. Well. He wasn't too keen to let go of my hand and sit with the kids during story time. He was very excited to say hi to his sister's former Kinder teacher, though. And he very much enjoyed the snacks. We could have stayed for a playground get together afterwards, except that I burst into tears and we left early.

So.

Not super helpful.

The kid is resilient. I know that. He will go where he is put and he will comply when things are asked of him and that is what will happen no matter what. But after spending so many of these five years feeling like I haven't had much of a choice about his future - how we've just been hanging on to the crashing waves and being happy to catch a few breaths of fresh air - now that an entire, important, choice is resting in my hands.... I can't figure it out. This is something I can screw up on my own, with nothing and no one to blame but myself. This is a decision that will follow him throughout his years in school. Will he be 18 when he starts college? Or 17? Will he be the first in his class to drive or the last? Will he care about any of these things? Or will they haunt him? Or will they make him puff out his chest?

This is a good problem to have. I know that. It's a problem I never let myself worry about until now. So, ultimately, I'm incredibly thankful to be this wound up about Kindergarten. Incredibly. And yet, I still agonize over it.

At some point a decision will have to be made. He is totally into the idea of Kindergarten, so maybe I should trust him to let me know what he wants.

Maybe I should stop overthinking it.

Maybe it's time to watch more Anthony Bourdain and take some deep breaths.

Coughing, fever, ear infection, paleness, worry, neb treatments, more neb treatments, ER, oral steroids, CRAZY TOWN, antibiotics, antibiotics, doctor, doctor, doctor, more neb treatments, milkshakes.

Ike-a-saurus, he of the non-stop talking and joking and asking of questions, has pneumonia. Actually, we found out today after visiting the pulmonologist, it is pneumonia in one lung, and atelectasis in the other lung, all compounded by a reactive airway (which is a fancy way of saying asthma). No wonder the poor child has been huffing and puffing.

Thankfully, we are now on day nine of Omnicef, day four of Bactrim, day four of Orapred, and day, I don't know, one billion? of xoponex neb treatments, so things have (knock on wood) turned a corner. He is bouncing off the walls. Literally. I AM SPIDERMAN WHO ARE YOU I LOVE YOU MOMMY WHEN IS IT TIME FOR A NEB I FEEL SO EXCITED ALL THE TIME WHAT'S ON TV CAN I HAVE A MILKSHAKE? The Orapred really helped get the little guy back into an easy breathing situation, which has been such a relief to see over the past 36 hours. Totally worth the insane chatter and crazy squirrel eyes.

So, really, the pneumonia and atelectasis weren't great at all, but the breathing problems and not great o2 sats were more a cause of the reactive airway/asthma kicking in because his lungs were irritated. Or at least that's what the pediatrician said and the pulmonologist confirmed.

Interesting.

Now we test out an albuterol inhaler and we decide whether a daily maintenance steroid puffer is something we want to start in the fall before school (be it pre-school or Kinder, we still haven't decided). 

Everyone always asks if, as a former preemie, Ike-a-saurus has asthma and I always say no. But I guess that's because saying, "he only has acute asthmatic symptoms when he has a respiratory virus" is way too complicated.

The hope is that if we decide to do the maintenance puffer then he'll be able to make it through the winter, in a germy environment, without having any colds settle into his lungs. That seems too good to be true, though I honestly worry about being on longterm steroids, even if they are inhaled. He's already so tiny.

Oh, well. I know this is the most boring blog post ever, but it helps me to write it all out. Now I feel like I've emptied my brain a bit and I can concentrate on other things... like drinking more coffee. Or, I don't know, passing out face first onto the couch.

At least we had no overnight stays in the hospital AND, when the pulmo looked us up in the system it had been two YEARS since we last visited. Those are things to be very happy about, even in the midst of drama. Now we just have to get this boy bigger and taller so that he can outgrow his reactive airway.

I'm working on it. Don't worry about that.

Did I already say whew? Whew again!

Ike-a-saurus and I were at the pediatrician's office today, and saw a doctor we don't usually see. He's an older gentleman, and is someone my other kiddos have seen occasionally. I know him, but not well - and he knows us, but not well.

The doctor looked through Ike's chart, checked him over, prescribed some medicine for a respiratory infection, made some small talk about Ike's vocabulary and former preemie-ness, and then said, "It's amazing what medical science can do now, isn't it?" I nodded, kind of half paying attention while I gathered up our things. 

He handed me the prescription, gave Ike some stickers, turned to leave the exam room and then stopped abruptly in the doorway. The doctor looked me right in the eye, smiled warmly, and said, "You've done well by that boy." Then he walked through the doorway, shutting the door behind him. I just kind of sat there, stunned, feeling ridiculous at the tears suddenly welling.

Sometimes it's nice, though, you know? To have someone you don't really know acknowledge how difficult things have been, and also acknowledge that you're on the other side now. (I mean, I hope we're on the other side. This gnarly almost-pneumonia/nebs-every-4-hours respiratory virus is shaking my confidence a bit.)

So many stories you hear about doctors have to do with their bad bedside manner, and how they treat their patients as disgnoses instead of people.  But not all doctors are like this. In fact, in my experience, most of them are not. Some even go farther than just rote kindness. They genuinely care.

Anyway, today's doctor visit was a surprising, touching moment in an otherwise mundane and moderately stressful day. I hope everyone gets a moment like that here and there. It was really nice.

The couch has seen better days
but then so have I.
And, yet, we both face this Monday
sagging with relief
at the quiet that fills the house
once more.

*** 

My hand whips through the crowd of gnats
a scythe sending them scattering to the wind.
But then, just like Robert Patrick,
(the T-1000 Terminator)
they reform,
a buzzing, floating, angry mass
And in the end my scythe is worthless;
my lip gloss, ruined.

***

If a leaf could bear my weight
and I could balance there
surveying the world
perhaps I, too, would offer myself as a sacrifice
to the whipping wind
and not even mind as it carried me away

***

Sometimes when your hair falls down your neck
from a terribly placed ponytail 
and the breeze gives you a tickle
it's not so hard to take an extra two minutes to smell the flowers
as they say
because today the flowers are not metaphorical
they are right at your feet
swaying in the same breeze that tickles your neck
and you wonder
how many people did it take?
how many animals?
how much stardust of lives past
to make these flowers and to make this wind,
these things that stop you for a moment
on this gauzy Monday morning,
making you take an extra breath or two
before you stumble upstairs to the shower
to begin your day 

In Texas right now, it's testing season. Children from 3rd grade through high school are subjected to hours of bubbling in answers on standardized tests. In elementary schools the walls of hallways and classrooms are required to be stripped of all work, and bulletin boards hang empty. Everything from drawings to starred essays to maps are taken down. The walls are laid completely bare. Specials (PE, music, art) are canceled during testing. Some schools allow children to bring in books to read when their tests are complete, some schools don't. Basically, our schoolchildren are on academic lockdown. The school year up until this point has been about whether or not the kids can accurately answer test questions. And often, the teachers - rather than concentrating on teaching concepts and connections - are forced to concentrate on teaching children not how to discover answers on their own, but how to properly answer questions so that their tests will earn high enough scores.

When my son was in the third grade he was chastised for adding dialogue into a paragraph about a fun day he'd had. "It sounds like you're making up a story. Just tell details about that day. That's what you need for the test."

Are you kidding me?

And so this is what school in Texas has become. A sickening dance where talented teachers try to impart an education upon their students when the state - and thus funding - demands that they teach children how to robotically answer questions during high-stress, high-stakes hours and days in April.

It is a travesty. It is a disaster. It is a disgrace.

And maybe that sounds like hyperbole, but I don't think it is. In fact, a lot of people know it's not hyperbole, and we are struggling to figure out what we can do about this. Because Texas is not alone in this hideous trend, not by a long shot. Do we "opt out" of testing? Refuse to let our children take these tests? Well, we can try, but what does this accomplish? It doesn't change curriculum. It doesn't change how the teachers are forced to teach throughout the year. It doesn't change what our children learn in the classroom. But it does skew the metrics, which in turn punishes the school. It's not the school's fault these tests are so awful. It's not the fault of our teachers', either. It's the fault of our legislators. 

It's so easy for lawmakers to legislate these tests - looking for an easy way to get metrics on whether or not schools and administrators and teachers and children are "successful." But what they're missing is that a standardized test cannot measure the full extent of a child's education. Ever.

On Sunday I was at the International Reading Association Conference, and was lucky enough to hear Walter Dean Myers and Katherine Paterson speak. The entire ballroom was nearly full with librarians and teachers who rushed the front of the room with cameras and iPhones and managed to delay the beginning of the session with their fangirl/fanboy enthusiasm. It was one of those moments where you sit to the side and do your Julia Roberts laugh because the moment is so surreal and wonderful. (And never fear, I took pictures, too. They just turned out super crappy - though I have a nice closeup of the chopsticks in the lady's bun who was sitting in front of me.)

At one point, Walter Dean Myers starting talking about the difficulties in being the current National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Children aren't reading, he said. And they aren't being read to. He flat out stated, "It is a national disgrace. The children in this country are being failed by education, and by the country. We must talk about it, not ignore it." And this next quote... this is the one that stopped me cold. He said, "Equal opportunity doesn't mean a darn thing if you aren't equal."

What he meant by this was that children who have no books, who are incarcerated, who are homeless, who are abused, who do not have the simple luxuries of breakfast and shoes that fit - they do not walk into a classroom on equal footing with other children. He talked about what makes up a child's education. Certainly, it's the classroom, but it's also just walking down the street. It's the child's experience with his or her parents or lack thereof. It's his or her experience with safety on the streets. It's his or her firsthand knowledge of hunger, of violence, of need, of basic necessities. These experiences make up a child's education just as much as what happens in a schoolroom.

When a teacher has to spend so much time teaching children how to take a test, she has limited time to teach other things. And one point Mr. Myers made was that while teachers are able to tell students, "Read so you can live; read so you can grow up and have a better life," children believe it's true for somebody, but not necessarily for themselves. They see how it might work, but have no examples for how it might work for them.

But when a teacher has the time and the resources to sit with children and read aloud to them, the kids are finally given an opportunity to see how these statements are true. They see real examples of how the world opens up. They see kids who overcome obstacles. They see kids with the same skin color, the same tribulations, the same clothes, the same feelings, and they see them breaking through to the other side.

Children are being failed because they don't have books at home, and they have prescribed books at school. They are being failed because they are not being read to at home OR at school on a regular basis.

This is when Katherine Paterson jumped in and said, "How can you believe that books are wonderful if you don't know how wonderful they are?" And what she was referring to is how can children believe their teachers when their teachers tell them that reading will expand their horizons and teach them innumerable things and open doors for years to come - if these students never have a chance to hear what books have to offer? You can put a book in a fifth grader's hand, and you can tell him or her it's about a shipwreck or basketball or a dragon or whatever, but that's as far as you get. When you sit with a class and read out loud about the shipwreck or basketball or dragon, the children immediately become part of the story.

Ms. Paterson's eyes got very bright and she curled her hand into a fist and she told the teachers and librarians, "This is the rebellion you can take up - reading out loud instead of teaching kids how to scribble marks on tests." I thought the roof would come tumbling down from the response she got.

Teachers want to teach. They love their students and want to grow them into the adults that will propel our country and our world into the best possible future. They want this. They are desperate to do this. But they are hamstrung. Sure they can buck the system here and there, but if it means the test scores go down in their school then a litany of repercussions take over.

So... do parents care about testing? Most of them loathe it. It stresses out our kids, it requires handouts and boring work starting in the youngest grades. Do teachers care about testing? They HATE it.

What does this mean, then? It means lawmakers are so obsessed with metrics and "accountability" they have forgotten what schools are for.

Schools.
Are. 
For. 
Learning.

Can you imagine what would happen if, in Texas alone, the billion dollars that goes to the testing corporation went directly to the schools instead? Can you imagine what children would learn and experience if their schools had the actual resources to teach them? And I don't just mean teaching them to read and write and add and subtract, but teaching them how to think critically, and how to interact in the world, and how to draw conclusions from whole concepts that cross over from reading to writing to adding and subtracting and social studies and physics and everything combined and in between.

"But how would we measure success?" the lawmakers might ask. "How will we know if the teachers and administrators are doing their jobs?" "How will we know that the students know the fundamentals?"

How?

You will know when the world doesn't implode in 30 years. You will know by the leaps in science and engineering. You will know by the future works of art and literature. You will know by the cures for cancer and world hunger. You will know by lowering rates of incarceration. You will know by the plummeting rates of drop-outs and teen pregnancy. You will know by future diplomatic successes. By new inventions. By the protection of our own goddamned species.

Those metrics might not easily be taken now, I grant you that. But taking a ten-year-old, ripping his creative work off the classroom walls, sitting him in a desk for four hours, telling him he can't have music class today, forcing him to answer endless arrays of questions - the metrics that result from this? The only thing they measure is how successfully you can break a child, and then how well you can train him. Is that what education is? 

Katherine Paterson is right. It IS time for a rebellion. Walter Dean Myers is right. Children's educations span so much more than what is inside a school room.

"Children who are being given up on understand that they are being given up on," he said.

And while this may sound dramatic to those of us whose main testing hardship is getting up early enough to fix pancakes on testing mornings, for children in different circumstances, it's so much more than that. School for these children is a safe haven. Yes, in the United States of America there are children who only eat when meals are provided at school. The only time they are read to or hugged or hear "I love you" or are given a book is when their teacher does these things. Don't you think these teachers - shoot, our country as a whole - can better serve these children by not concentrating nearly all of the curricula on standardized testing? Children do not have standardized living arrangements. They do not have standardized worldviews. The do not have standardized life experiences. 

Katherine Paterson told the room that "when you are safe and happy you can learn." Schools are sanctuaries for many, many children. This means they are sanctuaries for the future of our country. 

And what are we doing about that? How are preserving and supporting and protecting these sanctuaries?

We're slashing budgets. We're ripping artwork off the walls. We're firing librarians, and when we're not firing them, we're teaching them how to be test administrators. We're undermining teachers. We're asking them to buy their own classroom supplies. We're giving them ultimatums that don't solve any problems.

This is a disgrace. It's a failure. And it is going to haunt our future if we can't figure out what to do about it.

I'm not sleeping well. This probably has something to do with a 4-year-old who insists on climbing into bed with me and my husband every night, and then twisting in violent, gymnastic pinwheels as he chatters in his sleep.

In order to fight the sleepiness that plagues me, I've been trying to set aside some time for meditating. If this meditating turns into a 20-minute power nap, then even better. The incredibly frustrating problem is that I can't calm my mind. I can't meditate. I've been trying to choose a word to fixate on - something I can repeat in my head as I lay down and close my eyes. No other thoughts, just this one word repeated over and over until I feel renewed and reenergized.

This is what happens:

[me laying in a quiet room with my eyes closed]

Calm
Calm
Calm
How could that manuscript get rejected like that? Everything is the worst.
Calm
Calm
What if I write a whole new book using a different character's point of view?
Calm
No, that is a terrible idea
Calm
What if I write a picture book about terrible ideas?
Calm
Calm
Can Ike-a-saurus really be almost old enough for Kindergarten? This can't be right.
Calm
What was that noise?
Calm
Calm
Man, the dog really smells today. What is going on over there?
Maybe I should switch words. I don't feel very calm.
Quiet
Quiet
My shirt is probably so wrinkled now.
But really, do I care?
Quiet
I need to get my ring fixed. Why haven't I done that yet?
Quiet
Quiet
Seriously, how could that manuscript have been rejected like that.
Uuuuugh.
Quiet
Maybe there is something wrong with my hormones
Am I having a hormonal problem?
A hormone storm!
I should go to the doctor.
But, ugh. The doctor.
Quiet
Quiet
Quiet
Oh, shit! I have a meeting tonight.
Quiet
Does the babysitter remember? Surely she does.
Quiet
Hopefully she does
Quiet
I should text her
Ugh, now I have to drive in traffic tonight
Quiet
Quiet
When was the last time I wrote a blog post?
Is that smell me?
Quiet
I should eat lunch
Maybe I should concentrate on the name of a publisher
Quiet
Quiet
Then I can use voodoo magic to avoid rejection
Quiet
Quiet
Maybe I really will outline a companion book from a different character's POV.
Then I can have two books no one wants!
Quiet
Quiet
Or maybe I will just write a sestina about rejection 
Quiet
Because that isn't dorky at all
Quiet
Quiet
Oh, screw this, I need some coffee.