Monday, May 11, 2009

MOTDs and Shoes

Lately, I've been dreading picking Zozer up from school. It's not that I don't want to see her...I really do and my heart still flips over when she sees me, lights up, and comes barrelling across the playground to hug me.

It's that I dread hearing what she's done wrong today. The Misbehavior of the Day (MOTD), so to speak. It's usually one of several things:
  1. Pushing to get out the door to the playground, so she can be first on the swings. This might be reasonably unnoticed if she weren't pushing the teachers out of the way.
  2. Running away from the teacher, down the hall, to heaven knows where. So now, every morning, from the backseat, we go down the litany of pre-school mis-doings: "I will not push the teachers to get to the swings. I will not run away. I will say please and thank you." And so on. Through the various assorted past MOTDs.
  3. Telling the teacher, "Ms. Marya, you're poopy!" and just generally screaming, "Poopy! Poopy! Poopy!" A lot. To the point where she and her little buddy Jed were both given the choice of either shutting up or going to the potty to continue their poopy tirade. They chose the potty. One in each, with the door closed, and yet Ms. Maria* could still hear them yelling, "Poopy!" Not sure of the fascination with it, I tried it the other day once I was alone in the car driving to work. Damn it, it is funny. You try it and see if you don't laugh.
  4. Talking too much at naptime. Instead of, you know, napping. She was so disruptive to the other students that her cot was moved waaaay across the room, from the block area to over by the potties. After three days of exile, she was contrite and ready to apologize. "Mommy, I won't talk any more. Can I please sleep in the block area again?" I told her to tell her teachers, and she did, and they gave her a shot and she's been quiet ever since. So that one worked.

Today I showed up and Ms. Kendra saw me and said, "Oh! I have to tell you..." My stomach sank. Holy Mother of God, what did she do today?

With that, the child in question saw me and came catapulting across the playground. "Mommy!" I braced myself, physically for her tackle and mentally for learning the MOTD.

"Um, well, if you look at her shoes you'll see she's actually wearing two right shoes. She and Sydney have the same shoes, and they got switched. At naptime, we throw all the shoes into a basket, so in case of an emergency we can grab the basket and run. I guess we didn't pay close enough attention after nap today, and Sydney put on the two left shoes and Zoe put on the two right shoes. Sydney's mom called when they got home and gave us the heads-up."

It was hilarious. I kept expecting her to veer sharply to one side when she ran, but the two right shoes didn't seem to bother her a bit. Apparently, two left shoes don't bother Sydney, either.

Easy solution: take her to school wearing the two right shoes tomorrow, and Sydney will return wearing the two left, and the teachers will make the swap. I inspected the shoes...they appear to be pretty evenly worn, which means we must have got them at approximately the same time.

Mental note: next time, label her shoes. And don't always assume that when the teacher says, "Oh, I need to tell you..." that it's going to be a bad thing.

*Yes, she does have a Ms. Maria and a Ms. Marya in her classroom. To adults, they are pronounced slightly differently. To Zoe, they are Ms. Mu-REE-uh and Ms. MAAAAAR-ee-uh. That first part goes on for a bit before she finishes up with the ee-uh.

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