I’m not very comfortable with placing labels on children that may change as they become older. Race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender (sometimes), biological vs. adopted (or placed/surrendered) – those are things that cannot change. Gender…well, maybe. But things like a religion, social class (and for the most part I’m talking about the US here) – those can and sometimes do change as a child grows up and becomes more independent.

We have always tried to expose School Girl to different religions as she’s been growing up. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Wicca, Islam, and Christianity so far. Right now, we’re working on talking to her about her friends’ religions and that we aren’t religious at all; which is perfectly appropriate for a 7-year-old. Of course, her “God” is a giant elephant with a lollipop in his mouth…

I should say that I couldn’t see all the fuss about the “Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone” that was displayed not far from us last November and December. So perhaps I’m not as sensitive as some.

I have to admit, Field Day has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Our school never had anything like that when I was growing up – come to think of it, the concept of physical education for anybody younger than 4th grade has been a bit…puzzling to me as well. But anyway. I do know that at some schools, Field Day is just that – a big track and field contest, complete with sprints, hurdles, field events (yes, it means exactly what you think it means), etc. At our school, Field Day meant a morning full of loosely organized games involving running the kids until the point of exhaustion. The plastic egg carry through an obstacle course, parachute games, tag, ball tag (no, not dodgeball – tagging a person carrying a ball to the other side) – games like that. Oh yes, and the Tug-o-War. Girls rule. Especially when they outnumber the boys by 1/3 of the class.

School Girl did…okay. She’s got the gift of physical coordination, but she doesn’t really enjoy it. Especially in 85F heat – she’s never been good on a hot day, and by the end of 2.5 hours she was really fading. Lunch came about 1/2 hour too late…

And after lunch, they had a Reading Day. Which she enjoyed much more, I hear.

Our reading and talking about different things in the book has led to some difficult conversations, at least for me. It talks about adoption in the most basic and general way. It also talks a little bit about miscarriage and infertility – again, in a very basic, generic way. School Girl had a lot of questions. Most of them I couldn’t answer; they had to do with why M decided to place her, why she and S didn’t raise her themselves, even what happened right after she was born. I don’t know any of those answers; she’ll have to ask M herself for those.

She also asked if she could have a brother or sister. As in, if Evil Dad and I were going to give her a brother or sister. Funny how the words “You’re not too old” are both easier and more painful to take coming from somebody so close to you. I haven’t had the heart to mention that part of our conversations to Evil Dad just yet.

The best part so far was when she declared that sex was weird. It makes me relieved that I have a few more years yet…We also talked about maybe not sharing what we’re talking about with her buddies at school, as it’s a parents’ job to talk to their own kids about sex. So we’ll see how far that goes.

True, 4 weeks is too young for immunizations; IIRC, the first round of vaccines are around 2 months of age or so (then again, I was suffering from sleep deprivation at the time, so my memories are a teeny bit fuzzy). However, any adults (parents, grandparents, older siblings, other caregivers) should really be vaccinated if they aren’t already. Really. So that something like this won’t happen to somebody you know – or to your family.

It was an absolutely beautiful book about dealing with the loss of a pet. I loved it because the narrator, a young boy, wasn’t told not to be sad or miss his cat Barney. I also loved it because it didn’t presuppose in the existence of an afterlife; we don’t know, and I don’t feel that we can know, whether or not an afterlife exists. The book comes right out and says that, for which I’m very grateful. I also loved the way the boy’s parents didn’t talk down to him or try to gloss over what had happened. Just a beautiful book, dealing with an incredibly difficult subject.

Evil Dad and I have been talking about that book this weekend. I’ve already told a couple of people why, and I wish I could tell you why, but I can’t bring myself to do that right now. Best to hang in there with the whole self-delusional thing…