Life/family updates

[cahn]

-Sorry, second-child syndrome, I forgot to announce THE most important development in A's life this summer, which is that he is finally getting to play the trombone! He's wanted to play it for at least two years (I tried to get him to play French horn if he was going to play a brass instrument, but no, he likes the slide, which I have to admit is pretty cool)... first I had to look around for a teacher; then I found that there is a guy at church who plays trombone and he had a teacher rec; then that teacher talked to A and said he was too young. Now he is finally old enough, and he is really excited about it. And he is way better at it than I was at flute for that one ill-fated year I took band; I was amazed that he could produce an actual note at his first lesson! (It took me weeks to get anything like an actual note out of the flute, I feel like.) He's taken lessons for several months now and is now at the point where he can play simple songs, and the teacher told us to go to the music store and see what they had in terms of easy music. We found a Star Wars book, so A. is super excited about playing the Star Wars theme and played it for his friend who is super into Star Wars when he came for a playdate. (The high note in that one is hard for him to hit, but he can usually hit it once or twice per practice :) ) He didn't want to stop doing violin or stop doing violin in kid orchestra (I think he likes being good at it), so right now he's still doing that.
(For Phantom fans:
Me: At some point you could do your kid orchestra as a trombone instead of a violin.
A: I'm not sure if I want to. But anyway I definitely don't want to be the third trombone.
Me: Because the third trombone has to go?
A: Yes!)

-A's school is actually thriving! Some minor drama with math classes but nothing to the level of last year, thank goodness, and it all seems to be resolved now. He and the other fourth grader who didn't leave are with the 5th and 6th graders and they are loving getting to do all the big kid stuff, it's rather fun.

-We have learned there is a BUS that goes to and from E's high school (she is not going to the school closest to us, so for a while I thought there wasn't one, and it turns out if we lived any farther away than we do, there wouldn't be) -- it is not exactly a school bus, but rather a bus belonging to the regular public transit system (so they have to use a bus pass, etc.) but on a route co-opted to go to the high school and back only. This is the greatest thing ever. E sometimes needs to be awakened in the morning but otherwise gets herself ready, checks the transit app to see when the bus is coming, and walks the couple of blocks to the bus stop. And when cross country gets out in time does it in reverse (though this happens only a couple of times a week). She's only missed it in the morning twice, lol.

-E still complains about running but she's getting much better at it! She jokes about how she got fourth place among the ninth grade girls at the last meet... but it turns out there were only six ninth grade girls running in that meet, so, uh, this is not nearly as much of an accomplishment as it seems on first glance! (Not sure what everyone else was doing, as I'm pretty sure there are a lot more than that on the team... but my recollection from high school was that this is around the time when kids get slammed by tests, etc., so some of them have to work on their academics instead.) Anyway the last meet is this week.

-We did not manage to get E moved to AP CS (through some mistakes made by both her and me) and she doesn't have second semester math sorted either yet either. It works out OK -- it's not an entirely bad thing to have a class that is focused on projects and doesn't have tests. AP Physics 1 is getting harder for her. She has two parents who both got physics degrees and I guess I assumed that physics would be a snap for her, and the math part is, but the physical intuition part can be hard for her, which I guess in retrospect I shouldn't be surprised by. Still, at this level you can get pretty far by just knowing how to do the ten kinds of problems with force diagrams and conservation of energy (or are there even that many? Block without friction, block(s) with friction, a couple of different kinds of pulley problems, circular motion problems...) and D and I can certainly help her with that. (Unfortunately she says her teacher doesn't explain things well, and at least I can channel the way that my amazing high school physics teacher explained problems to us... always draw a free-body diagram! always calculate your net force! that will get you 80% of the way through right there!) But anyway both she and I are not particularly impressed with the actual academic content of high school so far (though she enjoys her math class).

-E is doing Mock Trial as her main non-math/non-math-club extracurricular (Math Club, of course, has her heart) and is loving it?? Every time she goes to practice she comes back super happy, it's really quite something. I think it has a lot to do with the very large overlap between the math club folks at her high school and the Mock Trial folks -- in fact, that was why she originally did it.

-E went to an all-girl math competition and had SUCH a good time. They had a day of social events for the girls before the competition itself and she just had so much fun! I got to see two of my friends I hadn't seen in forever, and meet their kids whom I hadn't met before, and I also had just an amazing time :D

-also I got to see two people from DW last month, which is not something that happens every day (or, in one of these cases, ever)!

-I had a couple of blissful years where I did not have to do ANYTHING for Christmas at church and now my break is over, I have been tasked with a bunch of stuff. Soooo yeah I may continue to not be super present on DW for a while. Unless I end up being super present on DW so I can procrastinate doing all the Christmas stuff, I suppose it could go either way...

Comments

[landofnowhere]

Yay for everything!

My mom used to be one of the organizers of that competition -- she stepped down because although she loved the parts that were organizing a giant party for math girls, she didn't actually enjoy the "running a math competition" side of things.

[cahn]

Ohhhhh that's so cool about your mom! The giant party for math girls thing is THE BEST, E just adored it so much and I am so grateful for all the organizers that have made this exist in the world. (and please tell your mom that!) E enjoyed the math competition part a lot too, of course! but I can see how that would be rather more stressful to organize in a lot of ways.