Passover (I)

We like to spread Passover out over a few nights, to make it less onerous and more fun for all involved. It really started yesterday, with a truly grand quantity of cleaning done pretty much entirely by Dale. A truly thorough sweeping and mopping turned up an amazing quantity of chametz. Jordan was delighted to sweep some of it into a paper bag with a giant blue feather he had gotten at religious school, and according to tradition, we took the paper bag outside last night and burned it. Way cool. I hope we are not struck down by lightning for doing the bedikat chametz without actually intending to keep kosher for passover... We're just not up for that level of observance.

Tonight we assembled the seder plate, matzah, juice, and salt water, using my cake platter as a seder plate and substituting arugula from the farmer's market for parsley. (It just has to be greens, right?) Then we carefully brought these fine items upstairs, and did the first few blessings (the openers and the karpas).... in a TENT. In the playroom. (Which Dale had not only cleaned to a shine, but had also totally rearranged and reorganized. wow!) We pretended we were camping in the desert. After just a few minutes of ceremony, we went downstairs for a delicious dinner of slow-cooked farmer's market lamb, root vegetable kugel, and radishes. Delicious. The lamb was shoulder, rather than shank, which is why the bone on the seder plate is not the usual shape. Aaron tried to eat it and said it was too crunchy.

Twenty questions

Jordan and Aaron are both very into "Twenty Questions" lately. Jordan is downright sneaky: his recent selections have included a water skater, a chimaera, and air.

Aaron is less sneaky but entirely charming. This morning he said, "I have a trunk, big tusks, and stompy feet. What am I?" He was delighted when we guessed correctly.

Thiiiiis much

I took the boys out to a favorite restaurant.

Jordan: "You know how much I love mac and cheese? I would have to attach my hands and then split my body in half to make my hands go so far apart to show how much."
Rachel (loving the idea but distracted by a detail): "Attach your hands? To each other? How would that work?"
Jordan (not distracted): "Not to each other. Attach my hands to the two halves of my body, to hold it up."

Spectrum tested

We had Jordan tested privately for "cognitive ability," and he hit it out of the park. "I got a lot of check marks," he told me, and he must have been right because his scores are plenty high. He is particularly strong in what they call "fluid reasoning" (this is the Stanford-Binet 5), which has to do with adapting between inductive and deductive reasoning skills. We've submitted the score report to the school district and are hoping that he will be admitted to the Spectrum Young Scholars program.

I didn't get much out of him about the test itself (Dale brought him to be tested while I was out of town, and he had Aaron along). Jordan said that he had to build things out of blocks, and he had to build the opposite of what the testing lady built: "Like if she did red, yellow, yellow, I would do yellow, yellow, red," he explained. He added, "She was not a very good builder." The score report said that Jordan "enjoyed sharing information about himself and his experiences" and that, while his attention and effort were "adequate to excellent," he "frequently required reminders to stay in his seat." That's our Jordan! Elsewhere in the report she said he was an "inquisitive and delightful young boy." We agree.

Cell paper

Dale has had a super-important paper accepted! It's in Cell, which is as prestigious as it gets in his field. He's been working on it for years. The publication brings an extraordinary close to his NIH research and puts him on excellent footing for what comes next. Yay!

The title of the paper, for your information, is "Mitochondria supply membranes for autophagosome biogenesis during starvation." (It won't be published for months yet; the cover at right is for the current issue.)

Weekly

Spectrum testing

We had Jordan tested for the Spectrum program, which is what they call the gifted-and-talented program here. He scored high, but not high enough to qualify. We were initially tempted to just take that at face value. Of course we think he's brilliant, but even if we're right he seems fine where he is; I'm irritated with pushing kids too fast academically anyway, he's on the young side for kindergarten (a midsummer boy), and although Dale and I were identified as gifted and got a lot of benefit from that, back in our day they didn't test you until middle school. So we were just going to call it good.

On the other hand, though... The test was a group test, and was a scan-tron. For five-year-olds? How accurate can that be? And although I don't need him to go faster or get into college sooner or any of that, I do hope for him to be in a cohort of engaged students, and if he got some of the better teachers that would certainly be a good thing. So when we learned that one of his best buddies tested in, and his other best buddy scored much higher on a private test than the school test and is appealing to be admitted... we were swayed. Although it is a chunk of change, we're going to have him tested privately. If he tests well, he can stay with his buddies (and maybe have a good cohort generally, with better teachers); and if he scores the same as he did on the school test, we'll have our doubts relieved about the testing conditions.

The whole thing makes me think about what I want for Jordan (and later Aaron), in school. I think a huge thing that school is for is to learn about society: not in social studies class, but in how the school and the people in it function with each other. I would like for them to be engaged - to participate in what's going on, and through that maybe even find some knowledge or skill that excites them. And I would like them to enjoy themselves - to have some fun, to have good friends, to have positive relationships with adults, to not be anxious. Reading? It'll happen.