A Tree Grows in Austin

Please stand clear of the closing doors.

It's been killing you, hasn't it? The suspense. The waiting and wondering, keeping you distracted during the day and reaching for your Ambien CR at night.

How did the trip go?

I was worried. Crouton was worried. Friends were worried (I think even Grandma was worried but she didn't allow it to overshadow her relief at our return). It was risky, going back so soon after landing in the Land of Longhorns. I expected a few tears with a side of angst, a subtle yet nagging desire to maybe just not come back.

Surprise, surprise, it wasn't so bad.

In fact, it was pretty easy breezy (not to be confused with my signature dish, cheesy mac n peasy, the only way to get Cheeky to eat veggies). Cheeky was a dream within a dream on the flight and we were delighted to find Grandma gleefully waiting for us at JFK. We loaded into the car, parked ourselves in some obligatory traffic and headed for celebrity row.

Once ensconced chez Grandma, we set plans in motion. I alerted the troops, called, texted, emailed friends. Come see us! Better yet, I'll ditch the kid and come see you! A couple of Cheeky-starved retirees make excellent and accommodating babysitters.

Cheeky was delighted to be in the old stomping grounds. She even opted out of a trip to the country for an action-packed city week. Didn't hurt that our arrival coincided with the start of fashion week, a surprise source of fun and princess regalia:

Isn't this the best balloon "animal" you've ever seen? Don't show Disney. They might sue.

Despite the sad reality of our first NY day being September 11, we had a good time. I enjoyed a run along the river, we ate, drank, shopped, frolicked. The weather was cool and comfortable. The takeout was spectacular - Vietnamese, Indian, upscale Szechuan. Hell, even the rotisserie chicken from D'Ag tasted pretty good. YUM-O!

One day, we even made the bold choice to pull a Quantum Leap and have a playdate in the old 'hood. We hopped a train and were at our stop in minutes. Neat - we didn't even have to get into a car!

We were a few minutes early, so we headed back to 6H to wait for our friends. The door to our apartment swung open and.....here's the weird part: it was just an apartment. It no longer seemed like home. Sure, it was our furniture and Cheeky's toddler bed (for an excellent tear-jerker on this subject, click here) and those pants I left behind, but it turns out Crouton was right. It didn't feel like home because my family didn't live there anymore. Go figure.

Our friends called. We walked out to meet them. And that was that.

It was great to catch up, to go to the old park, the playground, the ice cream truck.  The girls were BFFs, the weather cooperated and all was good. We headed back to Grandma's feeling satisfied, a little tired, but really just okay. With the whole situation.

The rest of the week went by in a blur of activity - some fun, some not so much (note to self: Statue of Liberty - never a good idea.) We finished out the week feeling good. I had grown-up dinners, lunches and coffees with friends, Cheeky had the unfettered attention of two devoted grandparents and two cats, and we managed to lessen the amount of time we'd be living in our soulless apartment.

NYC even managed to pull some crap that made me glad I don't still live there. I particularly enjoyed:

• Yelling, "EEEEEW vomit!," at Grandma as she backed up to take a photo, narrowly avoiding stepping in a pile.
• Garbage. Everywhere.

  

• Having to holler, "Watch out! Baby rat!" as I walked home from dinner with a friend.
• Herald Square. (if you look closely, you'll see Macy's right there next to the Soothsayers)
• Pinkberry. Really? $7 for frozen yogurt? Overrated.
• $99 dinner for two. While watching Port Authority buses thunder by. Ambiance costs extra I guess. 
• Dog urine, the smell of dog urine and dog urine loving dog owners who allow their dogs to piss on everything - piles of garbage, bike tires, parked cars. If you stand still long enough, watch out!

So thanks NY (and of course our fearless hosts) for all of that - and for the good stuff, too. The trip actually gave me a little sense of closure. A sense that it's okay to walk away and let the door close - to glance back, to even visit - but mostly to move forward.

Loosey duck duck goosey.

When we first decided to move to Austin, finding a school - the right school - was a Big Scary Unknown. Cheeky, who is 4, was due to continue at an elite institution of lower education. Now of course I adore Cheeky but I was psyched for school this year - finally she'd be attending full time and I could reclaim some of my life. It was simple - I had to find something comparable (but hopefully and undoubtedly less expensive).

So I did some online searching to find a school in Austin. Following a brief episode of panic wherein I decided, emphatically, that a) no school would have an opening b) no school would offer a full day and c) Crouton would live and work in Austin and we would stay in Brooklyn, we found some options.

I made a bunch of phone calls and sent Crouton a-visitin'.

We narrowed the list down to two. Both felt, to Crouton, similar to Cheeky's old school in vibe and philosophy. One is located a quick and easy 5-minute drive from our home-to-be. The other is about a 15-minute drive through shopping mall- and traffic-infested streets. Ding ding ding, we have a winner.

I was happy to learn right from the start that Cheeky - and I - would have a full day. More, in fact.
When I asked the school administrator what time the day starts and stops, I got an interesting reply:

School: Well, we open at 7:30 and we close at 5:30.

Me: Really? Are you a daycare or a school?

We are a nationally accredited preschool (sounding slightly offended).

But you have no set start and end time?

We like to be flexible for the parents, but most of the learning-based activities take place between 9am and 3pm.

What??? Flexible? For the parents? Did she really just say that? Clearly we weren't in Brooklyn anymore.

OK, I thought, flexible is good. Weird and completely foreign to everything I know, but definitely a good thing. Imagine if, one day, I was - gasp - doing something for myself and wanted to take some extra time? No problem, just show up later.

But I also thought, really, is there so little structure to what you're doing there all day that it makes no difference whatsoever when the kids come and go?

I opted to give them the benefit of the doubt, deciding that maybe it's not that weird and abnormal for a preschool to be flexible, that maybe instead New York is weird and abnormal for not being flexible and accommodating.

Maybe.

Then school started, and I noticed a few things.

Cheeky, the World's Most Picky eater, was downright gleeful when she learned that her teachers would heat her lunch. Oh. My. God. She could have grilled cheese! Dinosaur nuggets! Kraft dinner! The possibilities were endless.

So imagine my surprise when I peeked into her lunchbox at pickup to see what was left, and her whole sandwich was there.

Um, Cheeky, you didn't like your sandwich?

It was cold. My teachers forgot to warm it up.

So you didn't ask them to heat it?

No.

Oh, did I mention I also have the World's Most Passive child?

When I asked her teachers the next day, they sort of sighed and said, oh yeah, we were running behind and some stuff got forgotten.We'll try to remember tomorrow.

Speaking of food, let's talk about the bowls of snacks out at all times (really? a bowl of cold corn and a stack of paper bowls?) and the kids bellying up to the fridge (it teaches them independence!) to retrieve the remnants of their lunches at any given hour (usually 3 though, it seems). One of things I found most valuable about school was the distraction it provided our not-surprisingly but clearly-definitely snack-prone kid.

Then, there's the mayhem. I arbitrarily decided that I'd pick Cheeky up at 3ish the first day. The next day when I realized most of the other kids were still there and she had no interest in leaving with me, the time slid back until about 3:30. Today, Crouton was planning to be at his millionth fantasy football draft, missing dinner/bedtime chores, so I left Cheeky at school until 4 to minimize my parental responsibilities. What's my point? It's this: Chaos Reigns. It really seems, regardless of what time I show up at school (and I just walk right in, nah, you're not interrupting anything), the room is in complete and utter disarray, the children are in complete and utter disarray and, not surprisingly, the teachers are in complete and utter disarray.

So much so that the other day, I noticed a princess blanket-shaped lump in a corner by a window and asked the head teacher, um, who's that? A look of shock came over her face, she turned and race-walked to the lump, whom she roused, saying, wake up! You shouldn't still be sleeping, that's waay too long of a nap. The poor kid had no clue. She's a sound sleeper and was forgotten in a corner.

All of this is not to say that Cheeky doesn't love school or that I don't feel that she's completely safe, nurtured and happy during the day. I consider myself a pretty laid-back mom. But really, a feeding trough? Forgotten nappers? Flexible hours?

Maybe I just need to loosen up even more. Sure, this school doesn't have the celebrity spawn (I think this one or this one is best we can hope for) that her old one does. Nor does it have the sense of structure. Order. The resources of an elite private school. But at the end of the day (whatever time that may be), does it really matter? She's happy. I'll be happy too.

Goose.