Ada et al
adventures of the notorious Yoohoo

Ada and I had a busy day, trying to assuage the loneliness of Mamiche being in California for Bay to Breakers.

We woke up & went to Ada’s school Cambridge-Ellis for their spring yardsale, so Ada got a tattoo, face painting, digging for buried treasure in the sandbox, running around with friends from school (Kenneth, Jaana, Valenne, Helen) … she was having a blast, while Mamala got political dirt from the Board of Directors meeting from Kevin (Kenneth’s dad). Who knew preschools were so political?

We headed home and she napped, and we ran an errand before heading back out to Cambridge Common, where we ran into Sofia, one of Ada’s friends from school. Those two had a blast climbing, swinging, and distance-jumping into the sand, while her nanny and I lamented in broken English / Spanish the political and environmental state of the world.

Then Ada and I went to Full Moon Cafe, which has an indoor play space for kids. She got involved in some kind of toy-catapulting game with other kids that involved much raucous laughter and things going splat. Kind of like dart night at a bar but for the preschool set.

On our way home I reviewed the day and asked her what was her favorite part. “Camb–” she started to say, then paused: “Actually, everything.”

French Class

Vendredi dernier, la classe de français a fait un parcours dans la Sala. Il fallait d’abord passer entre les plots sur la pointe des pieds, puis faire une galipette sur le matelas, et sauter de chiffre en chiffre. Fatiguant !

Mardi, nous avons fait nous-mêmes notre propre gouter : nous avons coupe des bananes en rondelles, puis nous les avons mélangées dans du yaourt au lait de coco parfumé à la vanille. Miam !

Mercredi, nous avons fabriqué nos propres papillons : nous avons d’abord peint des papiers que nous avons ensuite pliés en formes de papillons. En effet, les papillons de la classe de français sont sortis de leurs chrysalides. Nous en avons cinq et nous avons choisi de les appeler : Eve, Melissa, Flora, Arc-en-ciel et Fleur.

Et enfin, jeudi, nous avons rejoint Laura Evans dans la cour de récréation pour voir ce qu’elle tricotait pour les arbres. Nous sommes restés dehors pour l’Assemblée, pour laquelle nous avions sélectionné une de nos chansons préférées : « Les petits poissons ».

Two of the older and bigger kids in Ada's class, Isabelle and Sofia. Ada meets Sofia and her nanny at the library sometimes! Sofia encourages her to read these sparkly fairy early-eader books that Mamala can't stand.

Last Friday, the French class went to La Sala to do gymnastics. We first had to go through the colored blocks on tiptoe, then we had to do a somersault on a mattress, and finally we had to jump from number to number. Tiring!  

On Tuesday, we made our own snack: we sliced bananas and mixed them with coconut milk-yogurt flavored with vanilla. Yum!

On Wednesday, we made our own butterflies. We first painted some pieces of paper that we then folded in the shape of butterflies. Indeed, the French class’s butterflies have come out of their chrysalises. We have five butterflies and have chosen to name them: Eve, Melissa, Flora, Rainbow and Flower.

Lastly, on Thursday, we joined Laura Evans on the playground to watch her knit something for the trees. We stayed outside for Assembly, for which we had opted to sing one of our favorite songs: “Les petits poisssons”.

~Ève et Mélissa

“It feels like all the time I wanna eat watermelon and hug you!” — Ada, Saturday May 12

It’s been hitting 80 this weekend. Yesterday we had our first barbecue of the summer at Michele & Nancy’s. The watermelon was juicy! The corn was sweet! The strawberries smelled fabulous! And Aunt Shelley’s cooking was, as ever, delightful.

Today (Mother’s Day) was Lilac Sunday at Arnold Arboretum. Ada and I met Cyn, Zach, Julian, and — most importantly — Jaiden — to look at catfish, smell flowers (not much of that happened), climb trees, scooter about, and do a certain amount of gentle early-summer, not-yet-wardrobed-correctly, sweltering. Yes, Ada *is* in her jammies. We neglected to bring a change of clothing to Michele & Nancy’s last night, and once it got hot the jammies were cooler than yesterday’s clothes.

When we got home we made lemonade and then some raspberry- and blueberry-flavored lemonade-based popsicles. (Chopsticks in shotglasses. What could go wrong?) Dinner (featuring more watermelon) and then we went running around at Caterpillar Park in Belmont.

Oh, summer!

French Class

Vendredi de la semaine dernière, la classe de français a joué au parachute, l’un de ses jeux favoris dans la Sala. On le secoue, on le met en haut, en bas, et parfois on se cache dessous. C’est rigolo!

Mardi, Mélissa nous a appris une nouvelle recette : les « choco- bananes ». On coupe de la guimauve en petits morceaux. On coupe les bananes en deux, et on y place les morceaux de guimauve ainsi que des pépites de chocolat. On les met au fout pendant quelques instants le temps que ça fonde. Et on se régale pour le gouter!

Mercredi, nous avons fait de la peinture sur les pots de fleur pour nos mamans, et jeudi nous y avons planté des fleurs. Mais chut ! C’est une surprise en vue de la fête des mères dimanche.

On Friday of last week, the French class played with one of its favorite games in La Sala, the parachute. You shake it, you put it up, down, and sometimes you go hide underneath. It’s funny!

On Tuesday, Melissa taught us a new recipe: the “choco-bananas”.You first cut marshmallows into small pieces. You cut the bananas in half length- wise, and place the marshmallow pieces as well as chocolate chips on top of it. You put it in the oven for a few moments while it melts.And you enjoy it for snack!

On Wednesday, we painted on flower pots, to which we added flowers on Thursday. But shhh!!! It’s a surprise for Mothers’ Day on Sunday.

~Ève et Mélissa

These days, Ada pops out of bed (OUR bed — because she invariably comes creeping into it in the middle of the night) and runs back to her bedroom to get dressed. (This is because we instituted a rule that we get dressed first thing — because otherwise if she plays around in her jammies it is IMPOSSIBLE to get her dressed to get out the door.)

After she gets dressed, she comes trotting back into our room to tell us what she’s wearing.

“Look, mama!”

Groggy us: “Yes?”

“Look at what I’m wearing. White shirt with sparkly dog.” She gestures. “Dinosaur underwear.” (She pulls down her pants to demonstrate.) “Brown pants with circles. And blue socks with dinosaurs.” At this point she expects commendation and praise of some sort.

Sometimes she has on a special outfit, with googles, hats, scarves, etc. Other times she will point out special details in the clothing — presumably why she picked out that particular item?

…. Anyway this is pretty funny to us. It’s been going on for at least a few weeks.

Then, after we drag ourselves out of bed, start prepping caffeine, and so forth, Ada will play around the house. Eventually she asks for breakfast. And breakfast ALWAYS means a “scene”. She specifies: “I want oatmeal, with a scene!”

A scene means, we have to sculpt the oatmeal into a shape, festoon it with various raisins, nuts, yogurt bits, etc., and concoct a story. “This is a baseball diamond, and the almonds are the bases, and the yogurt dab is a pitcher’s mound.”

Islands and volcanoes and beach scenes are commonplace.

Today Ada requested a cat-related scene, so to Mamiche’s disgust, Mamala crafted a cat litter box (guess what the raisins were) — a cat-shaped vitamin was the actual cat.

Ada and I were hanging out at the Cambridge Common playground, when we noticed a bit of a commotion outside on the common proper. We went outside, and it was a hot air balloon being inflated! Everyone else in the playground figured it out too and it was as if a giant vacuum had sucked all the kids out of the playground onto the common.

Anyway, Ada wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to go on it — the fan blowing it up was REALLY loud, and once it was inflated, the gouts of flame being thrown into the balloon to heat up the air were ALSO really loud. But I explained that this was a lifelong dream of mine, no pressure! She thought about it for a while and eventually noted that “Ginger” (her stuffed horse) has been up in a hot air balloon “31 times”. This is pretty common for Ada these days, by the way: If she’s feeling uncertain or anxious, or is steeling her nerves to try something new, she’ll tell us that “Ginger” does it.

So we had our 5-minute ride — it was tethered. I held on to Ada the whole time, although she told me she wasn’t nervous and “I don’t even need you to hold on to me.” When I asked her how she was feeling about the ride, she said, “I’m just watching those kids over there playing soccer.”

We came down smoothly, and went to eat pizza (thank you groupon) and came back in time to see them folding up the balloon into a tiny sack!

Statistics and hot air balloon facts:
* They do about 80 “tether” events a year plus another few score untethered balloon ride events. These are charity fundraisers.
* The balloon weighed about 178 pounds out of the factory, 5 years ago; probably weighs slightly more than 180 now because of dust, humidity, etc.
* Volume when inflated is 188,000 cubic feet of air (or was it 166,000?)
* There has to be about a hundred-degree difference in temperature to get it lofting.
* They don’t release the air to bring it down; it cools off enough in the 3-5 minutes in the air to come down on its own. And they blast the flames a bit coming down to control the descent.

Jamaica Plain has a lot of fun festivals, organized mostly by Spontaneous Celebrations. In spring the “Wake Up the Earth!” festival starts with a parade, and then a festival with music, acrobatics, etc., on the parks over the Orange Line (the “Southwest Corridor”, a name I have a lot of trouble remembering).

Today Ada walked ALL OVER JP — up and down Centre Street, from St. Johns to City Feed on Centre, up to Curtis Hall, then with the parade all the way down to Jackson Square, then up Lamartine to the Southwest Corridor park. We hung with Jaiden, Ruby, Jaana, Valenne (and their assorted grown-ups) and saw so many other friends old and new.

Ada slid down the hill on a cardboard slide (a bunch of times), popped two balloons, made a yarn pompom, watched a play about climate change, played with hula hoops, rode Ruby’s “strider” bike, rode Valenne’s scooter, watched a kid break-dancing on a youth stage, listened to a lot of music and danced to some of it, watched trapeze artist, talked with big kids about their stilts (there are lots of circus arts around JP for some reason), decorated a star-shaped wand, ate some watermelon, played under giant puppet skirts, and log-rolled down a hill, not once but a bunch of times, and across the hill a bunch of times too. I mostly just walked, and sat, and every now and then carried her, but she WORE ME OUT.

Photos so far are just from my camera phone, but maybe some other parents will have some later on.

We now have the 2012-2013 calendar from Ada’s new school, the Common School. Amherst is getting closer and closer!

August 2012
27 (Mon) New Faculty Orientation
28-31 Staff Mtgs and Class prep
30 (Thu) New Parent Orientation 7:00 pm

September 2012
3 (Mon) Labor Day
4 (Tue) Whole School Opening Picnic 5:30 pm
(Rain date Sept 5)
5 (Wed) School Opens
Full day for P2, E1, E2
Orientation schedule for N and P1
Older After School Program begins
10 (Mon) Extended Day (11:45 – 3:00) begins N/P1
Younger After School Program begins

October 2012
8 (Mon) No School – Columbus Day
9 (Tue) No School – Staff Professional Day
20 (Sat) Carnival
26 (Fri) Halloween Parade and Sing

November 2012
1 (Thu) No School – Parent Conferences
2 (Fri) No School – Parent Conferences
4 (Sun) Family Work Day 9:00 – 2:00
21 (Wed) Thanksgiving Recess begins at 11:45
No After School Program

December 2012
21 (Fri) 11:45 dismissal
Last day of school in 2012

January 2013
7 (Mon) School re-opens
21 (Mon) No School – MLK Day

February 2013
15 (Fri) No School – Staff Professional Day
18 – 22 No School – Vacation Week

March 2013
15 (Fri) No School – Staff Professional Day
28 (Thu) No School – Parent Conferences
29 (Fri) No School – Parent Conferences

April 2013
10/11 E2 Play
15 – 18 No School – Vacation Week
28 (Sun) Family Work Day 9:00 – 2:00

May 2013
3 (Fri) May Day/Grandparent Visiting Day
4 (Sat) Annual Auction Celebration
27 (Mon) No School – Memorial Day

June 2013
11 (Tues) E2 Graduation
12 (Wed) Last day of school
11:45 dismissal – No After School Program
13/14 Teacher Meetings
24 (Mon) Mini-camp begins

July 2013
1 – 26 Summerfun

Cette semaine, la classe de français a profité de jouir notre saison préférée, « Le Printemps ». On a trouvé une grande surprise á notre retour dans la classe, nos chenilles sont rentrés dans leurs cocons! Pendant la réunion, sur le jour Orange, on les a construit une très jolie maisons pour la transformation en Papillon.

Thomas and Lucas from Ada's glass, with their "grand-friend" (one of their nannies).

Le lendemain, on a construit des chenilles avec des matériaux recyclés que Melissa nous avait donné.

En Jeudi nos Grand parents nous avons visité. On a préparé des cartes géantes, et Eve a fait un gâteau de pommes qui était si délicieux. On a prit le gouter ensemble, et en suite Eve et Melissa nous ont raconté nos histoires préférées. On était si contents de les avoir comme invités, nous avons hâte de les revoir l’année prochaine.

This week, the French class spent some time enjoying our favorite season. “Spring”. When we came back from the weekend, we had a lovely surprise. Our Caterpillar friends are in their cocoons, all five of them. On the Orange day, we built them a House out so they can be more comfortable, and turn into beautiful butterflies.

On the Yellow day we made our own caterpillars out of recycled paper towel tubes, Melissa put out lots of fun materials for us to decorate with.

La chenille

On the Green day, we were so excited to have our grand friends with us. We decorated giant cards and made a delicious apple cake for them. We had a special snack together and then Eve and Melissa read two of our favorite books to them. We were so happy they came to visit and can’t wait until they can come back next year. We are also very happy to have Eve back; we missed her so much.

~Ève et Mélissa

Julie (Manga) came for Ada’s grandfriends day! Thank you Julie! It was wonderful to have you there.

Ada saw her first 3D movie this Thursday, at the Museum of Science — a sweet little piece of environmental propaganda, told from an animated turtle’s view. It even included Greenpeace anti-whalers!

Anyway, here’s Ada in her glasses. Photo quality is for crap, of course, since it is from my phone in a darkened theater. But it’s enough to get the gist.