It's been a couple of months since our last blog post (not that you'd have known it around here, time just flies when you're busy.) September was an excellent month. Tre started school at UCP (Unitarian Cooperative Preschool), which is a co-op preschool currently at the local Unitarian Universalist church (affectionately referred to as UU's). For those of you not familiar with a co-op school, they basically use time and effort donated by the parents of the children attending the school to off-set or reduce costs, allowing them to focus more on the students than on budgeting. It also works to create a greater sense of community, as the parents work together and teach each other's children in class. Tre's been thriving at UCP, and the fact is evident just in his attitude about school and the responses we've gotten from his teachers and the parents that have worked with him in class.
"Do I go to school today?"
"Why don't we go to school today?"
"Can I go to school tomorrow?"
To go along with the sense of a shared community that UCP fosters, they also have a number of social events, either to address administrative issues with the school or just to further the ties between the various parents and children. For instance, between mid-August and the beginning of November, we've had three potlucks and group outing already. It's a little different for those of us used to the public school system, where you never met another kid's parents unless you were friends with them, and the parents certainly didn't get together with your teachers on a regular basis to talk about things and plan out the agenda in the classroom. But, like I said, Tre's obviously thriving, and it's work we're all happy to do for him.
Another big event in September was Carol's (Bill's sister) wedding. She married Jay, her finance of several months now, up in Portland. The wedding was fairly low key, just friends and family, and unfortunately obligations and costs prevented us from taking the whole family up. However, Bill was able to take Siddha, so the Butter Bean got her first plane flight. Aside from a little of the normal grumpiness, she performed admirably, and she was a huge hit at the party after the wedding. She made the social rounds for hours, and Sara (Bill's other sister) commented she was the "hit of the party."
Towards the end of the month we wrapped up with the Annual Family Matters Picnic. The biggest thing I appreciate Family Matters for is their ability to create events that kids can relate to even outside their queer family's, but also an event that kids can relate to internally, since all the other kids there have queer family's too. I know a picnic or a BBQ isn't really anything special in and of itself, but being around other queer family's always allays some of my worries about sending my kids out into the world outside our home. Let me see if I can articulate it...I want a place where my kid feels don't feel different because they've got gay Dads. I also want my kids to experience normal things, but I don't want to have to deal with the potential issues of going to straight gatherings with my alternative family. Family Matter's picnic is the perfect combination. Normal activity (jumpers, face painting, bbq, and all that good stuff) with queer parents. Bill even got some footage of Tre and Nani going down the big slides.
Now that we're reaching the end of October, it feels like a profoundly full month. One thing to note about our blended family is that we've got a ton of birthdays in October. Don, me, Dan, Lisa, just to name a few. I think there's about four more as well. We've got more birthdays in October than we do in all the other months combined, I think. So a lot of this month flashed by in a series of birthday parties and events, like dinner and Dave and Buster's , dinner at the Dumpling Inn and desert at Tea-n-More (cute little tea shop on Clairemont Mesa Drive), and then a birthday trip to Bates Nut Farm. The farm is also a pumpkin patch, and they had a huge sort of fair like assembly of tents, games, arts and crafts, not to mention a straw labyrinth and pony rides, and pretty much fair food. They had a jumper slide there, and of course the kids wanted to ride it. I was surprised though, because Tre got to the top of the stairs, and then just waited for awhile instead of immediately coming down the slide. I figured out a few minutes later that it was because he was waiting for Nani, who's a much smaller child, to make her way up the line and get to the top, at which point they went down together. It sound a little cheesy, but I was really touched that he took that effort on his own.
Anybody who knows Tre also knows that he's not the most comfortable kid around animals. I'm not sure what the source is, but he'll just about run across the street to avoid walking next to a dog, and I'm pretty sure the cats are okay only because he has to live with them. So, I was pretty blown away when he immediately decided upon arriving that he wanted to ride the pony ride. Bigger animals == more comfortable? That I was not expecting. He was a trooper though, and didn't even get upset at all when we put him up there and strapped him in.
He went the whole time and had a blast. Who knew? We're pretty sure the way they were chained to the merry-go-round piece in the middle they may have seemed more like amusement park rides than animals.
Immediately after the BNF we followed up with another Family Matter's event, the indoor Halloween Carnival. Siddha was absolutely adorable in the lady bug costume that our friend Katy bought us, and as you can see, the Batman Tre took his cupcake making very seriously. Nani was also there, resplendent in Hobbit Gear. For all the reasons I described above I really enjoy these sorts of events, and the kids had a great time as well. It was a bit of a long day though, and pretty much every crashed after we got home.
Have I mentioned that for most of the weekends in October Torrey's been working at a family friend's costume shop? So not only have we been winging it short a Dad with a bunch of these events, but Torrey gets home beat from wrangling customers all day too. I have to admit, I'm really glad that one of us wants to stay home and take care of the kids. I can't imagine what we'd do if we got to the end of the day and all of us were wiped out from working full time jobs.
As a note, Tre went to no less than three pumpkin patches and two Halloween fairs/carnivals this month. The boy gets around, no doubt. And it helps that we've got a loving bunch of people surrounding us that all want to take our kids out and have fun with them.
As Siddha Bidda Butter Bean (our personal favorite pet name for the baby) gets older, Tre is starting to find her more and more interesting. It's obvious the feeling's mutual.
She spent about 20 minutes altogether, just watching Tre bounce around the room and laughing her head off. It's nice to see that Tre gets a kick out of entertaining her too. It bodes well for the fact that they'll be living together for at least the next 13 years.
We're preparing, as I write this, to head on over to the girls and take the kids trick or treating around their neighborhood, and then retire to their house and watch movies and hand out candy to the kids that come around. There's just not a lot of kids that come by our house, so it's become a bit of a traditional to go over to Lisa's. Tre's anxious to wear his Batman costume again, and we've got this adorable Godzilla costume for the baby, so look for pics to go up on our Flickr page pretty soon.
