Monster Hive

I actually wrote but didn't post this about three months ago, if the dates aren't making sense.

J started kindergarten last month.  I'm pretty sure you read about it in the Times?  From day one, she LOVED it.  Mrs. S is her hero/goddess/best teacher ever. In a fit of pique, J told me that she loved Mrs. S more than she loved me. I didn't believe her, so it didn't upset me, but I don't remember     worshiping my teachers the way J worships Mrs. S.  Mrs. S is pretty terrific but still...wow.

I walk her to school in the morning since we live too close for the bus.  It's been good for both of us.  She gets fresh air and my undivided attention.  I get the sweaty walk uphill toward home after I drop her off.  Every day we notice things that we've driven past a million times and never paid attention to.  Like...one of our neighbors has a pink hose!  Another has a "fossil" of a leaf printed on a stepping stone.  And one has eight cats, with their own dollhouse on the porch.  These are big deals when you're five five and a half.

At the end of her second week of kindergarten, J announced that she could read the word "the."  After G and I made appropriately impressed comments, she said, "Not bad for only eight days of school, huh?"  She's since added "my," "and," "was," "can" and a few more I'm forgetting.  She also has to write her name with a capital J and the rest of the letters lowercase.  This, she tells me, is "kindergarten style," and she does it very reluctantly.  It's not easy, she wants us to know, but she's also never bored at school.  So there's that.

We've also begun soccer and ballet, with much less enthusiastic results.  J just won't really participate.  She's playing soccer because G really believes in team sports.  I do, too, though perhaps not quite as vigorously, or at such a young age.  She likes practice, but not the games.  While the other kids are earnestly kicking the ball into the wrong goal, she kind of floats along at her own pace.  This drives G bonkers and embarrasses him.  I am frustrated, not by her lackadaisical-ness but by her refusal to even allow herself to have fun. The other parents murmur their sympathy, but I can feel their relief that their kid isn't like that.  

J's learning ballet because she saw the local production of "The Velveteen Rabbit" last year and really wanted to be in this year's ballet.  Every year the teacher choreographs her own ballet and each student has a part.  They perform at a real theater, and all the kids at all the schools attend. So I signed her up.  The teacher is very disciplined, and J is...whatever the opposite of disciplined is. She says she loves it, but it's hard to tell from the effort she puts in.  We're trying, and it's getting better, but...

How much to push? She's only five.  And the soccer was our choice, not hers. I don't want to force her to do things she doesn't like, but I hate to let her quit. Soccer's almost over, but there's still next fall to consider. G is going to make her play something.  There doesn't seem to be a Hang Upside Down from the Jungle Gym League, or a My Little Ponies Take a Bath Team, or anything else she actually enjoys playing.  And the odds of her being very good at any sport are genetically limited.  She does have a new game she plays at recess called "Monster Hive."  She's unshakably sure that she doesn't mean "Monster High."   The object of the game is "to turn the monsters into bees and then you are afraid of them because there are bees but there is no such thing as monsters."

Well, duh,