Now we play telephone

My firstborn now has a phone. She's had a whole bunch of firsts lately and the phone is mostly for my paranoia's sake to make sure she can stay safe in all her activities. Let's see, what new things is she up to or will be soon?

• She got her first Young Person's Travelcard. Which means she can now take all the busses she wants to. Alone. She has to pay for the tube so at least I know she'll not be going off to random places. Intentionally. She's not a got a good sense of direction and I worry she'll end up in Morden on her way to some afterschool club.
• She's starting secondary school next week. It's a bit of an awkward trek. I'm pretty sure she can manage it without a phone. Which is good because the school does 't allow phones at all in the building at all. Whatsoever. A Policy I find quite antediluvian. but then again, they have a dress code, which I find mad as well. but that's a post for another time.
• She's got after school activities she'll be going to on her own. I've been going with her to some for years, and still she can't recall which bus we take and which stop to get off at.
• she's been going over to friends houses a bunch. Not that I don't trust her to walk a well known route that's like 10 minutes by foot. It's more we want to be able to remind her to pick up stuff on the way home, or her to have a way to get in touch when she somehow turns the 10 min walk into 40 min by getting on the wrong bus or something.
• We did make a set of house keys for her, but we didn't them to her yet. Mostly because she's never home when we are not, so the only point would be if we're too lazy to walk to the door to let her in. but I also worry about her losing the keys, as changing locks is such a huge pain.

So I got her a S30 Nokia. It's almost completely unchanged from the 90s. The only difference is it's in colour and the speaker can make more sounds. But otherwise it's the exact same terrible UI which made the iPhone such a success. It takes a "mini" size SIM (you know, the biggest possible SIM you can find) which I didn't think anyone used anymore. But it is a lovely shade of blue, which I like.

It doesn't even have internet – something I feel kind of guilty about. Partly because I'm paying for a few GB of data, which she'll not be able to use. And partly because she's missing out on things like bus schedules and maps. I feel zero guilt about no whatsapp, though.

I also feel guilty about making her have to use T9 to write text messages. I hated that back in the day, and switched to stylus/touchscreen/mini-qwerty phones as soon as I possibly could. But this thing doesn't even have Bluetooth. So she's now learning how to associate letters with the number buttons. Like she's a millennial or something.

In the end, this phone is an experiment. It's to see if she can keep it without losing or breaking it. I mean, it's a Nokia, so breaking it will be a challenge. Losing, I really don't know. I do know her track record of keeping pairs of gloves as a pair is bad enough we stopped buying her gloves. I have told her that if she does manage to not lose it and keep it one piece for long enough we can upgrade to something more 21^st century.

Level 2 normality

The boy was born 2 weeks ago today. We've now reached a steady state to the 2nd stage of normality.

For context, the first stage of normality was after the child was born, his grandparents came to visit. So we'd gotten used to having the baby around and seeing my parents or my in-laws every day. Our main concerns were what nappies to use, how and where to have meals with the family, and getting the daughter to school.

On Tuesday the last of the grandparents left and we've settled into the second stage of normality. School runs. Cooking dinner at home for 3 people. Laundry (unending laundry). Cleaning. You know – basic life stuff. Well.. except for work – I've a couple of weeks left of leave. We seem to be settling in to it ok. The school runs seem to nicely bookmark the domestic management of cleaning and whatnot. Once R is home, life descends into the usual chaos it's been for the past few years, except she's constantly asking to hold her brother – which has its own complications.

R can only really interact with or hold her brother when he's awake and not feeding. Now, as 2 week old spends the bulk of their time either sleeping or eating, the window of opportunity is much smaller than R would prefer. That plus R's stubbornness that she knows what she's doing has led to a few arguments. She's loving and really wants to be with her brother, which is delightful. When all is in order, it's lovely. She'll sing to him and hold him and rock him to sleep. On the other hand she'll advise me on how to settle him, and refuse to listen when holding him dangerously. Please just listen to the 2 people in the room with you who have actually gotten a child to survive infancy. A few days of experience does not make you an expert.
At least she means well

Next week we'll focus on getting ready for 3rd stage normality – me going back to work. The baby will need to go with L on the school runs, and I won't be around to cook dinner every night. That's going to be the tough bit.

Different surnames

My wife and I have different last names. I discovered a new interesting side-effect of that. I volunteered to help out at our daughter's school fair. Today, the person coordinating it introduced me to my wife as someone who could help out at her stall, saying that we should get in touch to work out the details.

Fair enough. The coordinator didn't know us, so it shouldn't be shocking. On the other hand, it amuses me that they thought I would work well with L – which I appreciate.

This reminds me of a story from the another point of view. A couple of years ago I was visiting my cousin. At one point, her 15 year old son, asked how his grandmother and his great aunt (her sister) could have had different surnames. His mother had to explain how they were married and took their husbands’ names. Oh yeah, he said I forgot people did that.

Football and Gender

R is in year 2 now. Since year 1 she's been able to join school clubs. There are lots of clubs available. One of the clubs she chose for this year is Football Club.

Clubs at her school meet once per week. There are 3 Football Clubs. She does Wednesday lunchtime. Turns out that she is the only girl in that session. The fact that she's the only girl does not bother her at all. However, this week, she told us she wants to quit the club next term. The problem is that none of the boys in the club ever pass her the ball. She's taken to just sitting on the sidelines not participating.

Now I’m sure it’s not a case of 9 boys conspiring to keep the ball away from the one girl. I've met the kids in her year. Very few of them strike me as evil. I think it's just 7 year olds playing I've got the ball. I'll keep the ball. Add to that, the fact that all of them have payed football before, while R is new to it, and clearly won't be as skilled with the ball. What bothers me here is that whoever is running the club is not doing a good job of it. Ignoring the fact that they’ve completely flubbed teaching teamwork, they don’t seem to notice that their actions are causing the one girl in the class to lose interest. I don’t think the point of the club is to weed out the worst players. It should be to teach kids how to play the sport – especially kids like my daughter who clearly have an interest and have gone out of their way to join the club in order to learn.

L has spoken to the school before about this, asking for the person running the session to get the kids to pass the ball and play more fairly with each other. R says this never happened.

What am I expecting? First off, I’m paying for this club, I’m expecting them to provide a service for my child. It's not like I can come by at lunchtime at coax her into playing.

Secondly, it's about not institutionalising sexism in sports at such as young age. The school recently changed the football clubs from being a boys club and a girls club, to being mixed. They even took special care at signup time to point out that the football club is not a boys-only club, but anyone can join. So clearly they want to break down the gender barriers. However, what I’m seeing is that despite this, they’re letting it turn into a boys-only club by driving away any girl who wants to join.

Now we lose teeth

Wobbly tooth! The girl has a loose tooth. It's the lower right incisor. I think this was her first tooth to come in, so it makes sense it's the first one out.

We all discovered it yesterday at her school's Winter Fayre. L got her a candied apple to eat on the way home. At some point when eating this she burst into tears. Which of course was because the hard apple was too rough on the tooth. After L consoled her, she became all excited, because her friends at school have been getting loose teeth for some time. And now it's her turn. So she came up to me and showed me her mouth, and I tested the tooth – and it definitely was wobbly. Excitement.

Of course I forgot all this and made her a bagel and lox for breakfast, which of course she could not eat. Treat fail.

First day of school

Big first: R started reception today (that's kindergarten for the non-Brits out there). She's in school now. For the next who-knows-how-many years. Somewhere between 14 and 22 (if she's anything like me). So that's going to take a bit of time.

I walked her to her new school today. We did the obligatory stuff. A special breakfast (R2-D2 shaped porridge)). A whole bunch of pictures at home both before we left and then getting on the scooter and getting our adventure on.

We live in Stoke Newington, which is a home to organic free range children. So you can imagine the number of people doing the same thing as me. I passed a family taking pictures of their kids in front of their house. I passed 3 neighbours on the way to the school and saw at least 3 more inside. It felt like being a part of a community, not at all like the middle of a megacity. Weird. Nice, though.

One of the neighbours I passed on the way asked So who is her teacher?

Um... not sure. R, do you remember your teacher's name?

Errrrrr. No.

I should probably find that out, shouldn't I?

Yeah.

A quick SMS back and forth to the wife gave us the name of the teacher, but that didn't help the confusion I faced next.

We got the school and entered into the playground. It was full. Hundreds of children, parents, maybe teachers too. It was a bit chaotic. All I knew is that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I deduced from the scooter lock-up by the gate I should probably get R off her scooter. But beyond that, no clue.

I remembered the confusion I had as a kid for things like this — big masses of people and I was supposed to be somewhere specific in it, doing something. Well, turns out it's just as bad for the parent. I found the line-ups for the years 1-7, but not reception. I eventually found a neighbour and asked, and she told me where to find the reception classrooms. So I just had to dodge the queues and masses of children to make my way to the other side of the school. I picked up the girl and said, hold on tight, and swooshed through to relative calm of the other side.

I didn't need the teacher's name after all. I kind of recognised her from her home visit. So at least I was spared the embarrassment of dropping her off in the wrong class. Just an uncomfortable Am I in the right place? was enough.

They stagger the start day for the reception classes, so each day 6 new people start. Which means today there was R and 5 others. Not overwhelming at all, which is good. I stood around with her, helping her adjust and commiserating with the parents of another child from our street.

Her day was a bit marred by having slept on her neck funny. She woke up in the middle of the night with neck pain. By morning her neck hurt so much she was only comfortable tilting it to one side. So she was far less enthusiastic about the whole thing than I expect she normally would have been. Still, she braved her way through it. And I explained to the teacher to bear with her and she'd be more excited in time.

Her teacher dropped the hint that I should be heading out, so I and the two other remaining parents took off, leaving the kids sitting on a rug about to be addressed together for the first time.

She just turned 4 a month ago. I was 5½ when I started school. So I've no feeling at all for what she must think of all this. She's as ready as anyone else there, but that doesn't change that's it's a lot to take in.

L picked her up after school. By then her neck was ok and she was in a better mood. She spoke of the other children she met and what they played with. So that went well.

Another 3000 or so more days to go.