whew. christmas is in less than a week. did anyone know that? i didn't. talk about flying by the seat of my pants. the last few weeks have been interesting. ava appears to be getting better, fewer headaches, etc. though those rings under her eyes wax and wane, and the random chemical burns that appear to be reactions to every sort of soap out there--other than bar soap and dr bronner's are disconcerting. if she uses liquid soap (the sort in every public bathroom everywhere) and as of today shaving cream (school project, i know no more than that), her hands basically burn--she looks like she is wearing red gloves. the only thing that helps is a petroleum-based product like vaseline, chapstick, aquaphor, etc. she has gone to bed with socks on her hands with pounds of goo covering her skin. it is a combination of the cold air and whatever irritant is in those things. it has happened every winter, but never with this frequency. all i can say is that at least she has a mother with skin so dry it cracks and bleeds from november to march, and i can totally understand and sympathize.

after thanksgiving, we went to stars on ice--pretty fun--tune into nbc on jan 4 or 5 (not totally sure) and you just might catch ava shoveling popcorn into her mouth as some famous skater surprises us by standing directly behind us and introducing our section as the skating club of lake placid section--the local talent etc etc. i have to say, i so hate being on film, and literally the entire arena was turned toward us, spotlight and all. all i could do was turn my head so at least they got my profile and not any more. and i was just praying that he would not put a microphone to my upturned face.

but between that and the US Junior Nationals competition, plus the start of ski season, and everything else that Lake Placid does, i found myself thinking, though we live in the middle of nowhere, and it is very hard to find some resources that are plentiful elsewhere in regular america, and we do have to make some odd adjustments to extreme weather (at least at the bottom end of the thermometer), and there is a weird locals vs elitist outsiders antagonism that pops up in the news (fortunately not as acute in lake placid where the outsiders and their cash are valued highly and catered to relentlessly by the local businesses), it is just simply not like living in any old random small rural town somewhere in the middle of nowhere, precisely because of the resources--mostly sporting--that exist here, thanks to the olympics, obviously, but also due to the mountains and the lakes that draw people here. i made note of this to ava the other day--and interestingly, she got it. i said, in many places that are as isolated as this one is, there is literally nothing to do--but here, we have event after event after event, plus a mountain, plus a gargantual ice-skating facility where you get to be coached by olympians, and so on. even the humble lake placid center for the arts manages to draw national acts, and where else do you get to see people walking down the street with "australia" or "russia" or "germany" on the back of their national team addidas jacket? in winter AND summer?

speaking of her capacity to ponder and grasp abstractions like that, the other day she was falling asleep, and she asked "mommy, what comes after 6th grade?" and i answered, "well, seventh grade" -- and she then said "no, i know. but where do I GO after 6th grade? where is maeve going?" (maeve is a 6th grader at st agnes). st agnes goes to 6th grade, and then that is pretty much it--there are options for high school, but few for the interim middle school years. most kids go to the public school after that. there is one local private school, and of course there are a lot of people who homeschool, but not many from st agnes. so it has been something that i certainly have pondered, but the last thing i expect was for ava to start worrying about this before she had even managed to get through 1/2 of kindergarten. but, that is ava in a nutshell. I. MUST. KNOW. WHAT. IS. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.

so, of course, when her teacher had to leave this week to go on maternity leave 1 week earlier than planned, this has sent ava into orbit. no one in her class is weathering this change well -- i have heard from nearly every mother that there are nightly tears over the loss of mrs mccormick as well as profound fears regarding the new teacher. which are totally understandable. first of all, mrs mccormick has no equal--she is the warmest, most loving teacher i have ever met, and all of the kids fell in love with her, including carter. she did become a mother figure to them, and it is a very tough thing to be the person called upon the fill her shoes. it is an act i would never want to follow. and the new teacher is perfectly nice, etc. but she is about as different from mrs mccormick that you could have gotten, and this is making it even harder on the kids i think. the new principle is wonderful and committed and has the kid's best interests at heart, and he is kind and understanding etc., but i think he might have miscalculated 1. the kid's attachment to mrs mccormick, 2. how they might react to someone with a vastly different personality, and 3. how incredibly scary this is for the average kindergartener. there was very little time for the kids to get used to the new teacher--and that fact alone was upsetting. i think adults often forget how difficult it is for kids to adapt quickly, and now we have the christmas break -- which is a convenient switching point from an educators point of view, but rather difficult from a kid's point of view--it is hard enough to upend your schedule for a week or so and return to the daily grind of school, but next to impossible to when the teacher is completely unfamiliar.

i knew this was coming the day i read the letter to the parents in august, and i have been dreading it. there has not been a winter where ava has not gone through severe separation anxiety, and now this is making it 100x worse, and then, to top it off, i am also going to have a baby, which is surely causing extra anxiety.

but nothing to do about it but move forward. i am sure mrs wenzler (the substitute) is struggling too (which i noted to ava), so hopefully we can all make it work.

ava would give anything for me to say "sure you can stay home" -- but as much as i would like to, she does get to school and finds a comfort zone--she has the kids -- all of them--through 6th grade-- and the other adults that are familiar, and i know she will be ok. the school itself is comforting to her. which is a very lucky thing.

and we certainly have become a presence there. the christmas bazaar was the week after thanksgiving, and this was the first year where i could really pitch in and help. what an exhausting day! the kids loved it, though they very nearly bought the items that i had brought in to donate to the toy table. i am not sure i made a dent in our overall collection, because we did come home with a lot of new "treasures" -- but that's ok. carter loves his swim mask and he wears it to watch tv. i believe it is some sort of super-rescue mask thing. but it is a riot to come into the living room to find him curled up in the chair watching tv through a scuba mask.

santa made an appearance at the bazaar, and carter was terrified of him. he eventually went up to him but did not chat (which i consider a good thing--i am convincd this santa routine is a set-up to screw parents into christmas failure because they did not know what their kid whispered to santa). as for ava, she stood back (this being the 2nd santa she had seen recently) and pulled me down to her so she could whisper: "mommy? this is not really the real santa is it? this one is just playing dress-up, right?" i could not help but smile--i said "you are right. this one is here for the litttle little kids, who don't know that-so don't say anything to carter, ok?" "is the real santa in the north pole?" "yes, of course he is--he is so busy this time of year, he has no time to make appearances!" "but mom--how does he get the playmobil toys and the lego toys? does he make those too?" "well, he has elves that go out and do his shopping for him." (would that it were so!). --leave it to ava to wonder how, if santa makes his own toys, he manages to get ahold of mass-produced name-brand items...the conversation went on like this for a while, where i was finally able to portray santaas more of the saint he once started out as, and thus a bit more on the hocus-pocus alacazam teeny tiny magical elf that is out there celebrating jesus's birthday by giving presents to the spirit of god in each of us side of things, vs. the coca-cola santa replica in front of us.

at least that way, when santa is finally outed, his status as more of a good spirit and less of a huge man will still have a bit of truth to it.

speaking of jesus, carter saw a picture of jesus in the church the other night when ava's school held their christmas concert, and he asked me who it was. i told him it was jesus. he said "NO MOM! it is GOD! you FORGOT!" i did not belabor the point. if he can get it at 3, i am not messing with any further explanations.

and then ava was in the skating club of lake placid skating show, where she finally got a taste of performing in front of an audience, all dressed up with her hair done and a fancy skate dress on, etc. suffice it to say, she liked it. a lot. then she got to be an ice sweeper for the US Junior Nationals -- a skating competition for the best skaters under 14 or so in the country. An ice sweeper gets to go out and pick up all of the stuffed animals and flowers and other random things (rubber chickens..) thrown onto the ice by the fans. she had to wear a dress that was sleeveless and made of some riculously thin material, and she froze to death, but she LOVED it. whenever the announcer remarked on the sweepers ("lets have a big hand for our hard-working sweepers") she beamed. and she took it very seriously. she knew it was her job and that being asked back was contingent upon doing it well. to quote an audience member "did you see that little teeny tiny sweeper charging out there?" -- that was ava--absolutely determined to do it right.

all i can say is that i wish the kids could do their activities (skiing, skating, etc) in the morning, and go to school from 12 to 6. if there ever were an ideal schedule for ava, that is it.