More Puzzle Pieces

First, potty training took a turn for the worse today.  SB took a massive dump in her underwear.  It was kind of horrific.  I had shit under my fingernails, despite my best efforts to minimize the mess while peeling her clothing off.  We don't yell at her, of course, when she has these accidents, but we did talk about it being time to use the potty now, because she's a big girl.  At first, she thought it was funny, but after I explained to her how yucky it was, she apologized about twenty times.  Earlier, She had screamed, then sobbed when I tried to make her pee on the potty (I knew she had to go).  After sitting there for 10 minutes without any progress, wailing her head off, with giant tears rolling down her cheeks, I finally relented.  Five minutes later, she peed herself while sitting on a piece of furniture.  I am going to give it one more week, since I'm off much of the week, and then I am going to shelve it for a while, if we haven't made any progress.

In happier news, we seem to be making progress on schools.  We learned this past week that Miss M and SB have both been accepted into the same bilingual school.  I am both over the moon, and full of self-doubt.  I think it's a solid program, and I'm thrilled to get them into a bilingual program, but it has basically no other kids that are of their racial background.  On the one hand, I don't care.  On the other hand, I worry that I SHOULD care.  Will it matter to other people that we are there?  Will it be weirder than I think it will?  We are one of a handful of families at our current school who are of our race, and no one really cares (well, perhaps the oldest gets a bit spoiled by the positive attention she seems to get by being different, but nothing negative).  It's probably not a big deal, but I still worry a little that I am not as worried as I should be, if that makes any sense.  I am also worried a bit about the quality of the bilingual program, because it's not a school that people tend to rave about.  But, it's also a smaller school, and I like that aspect of things, and it's impossible to get into, and that's probably a part of why it doesn't have a lot of buzz.

The complicated thing is that we still don't know what will happen with a small handful of other schools.  We may still get in, we may not, and worst of all...only one child may get in to a few of the schools.   The hardest part is that it seems like Miss M has a better chance of getting into two very good schools than SB (one because they don't have PK-3 at all, and the other because I already know the PK-3 class is full).  That begs the question of what we would do, should Miss M get into one of those schools.  One the one hand, I obviously want to get the kids into the best bilingual program I can, and one of those two very good schools is a much closer commute for us.  I would hate to deprive Miss M of that opportunity, should she get in, and I would love to have her close to home.  On the other hand, there is something to be said for having them both in the same school.  It would be good for them, and good for me, especially since I am likely to be doing more of the pickup/drop off.  Additionally, at this point, we are only guaranteed to be in the US for two years, through 1st grade for Miss M and PK4 for SB.  It's not like we are looking for a good Ph.D program.  I want a solid, safe program where they can learn.  But then again, we may stay for longer, depending on how things work out.  Sigh.  This is hard.

The other thing is that it looks like we will likely get accepted at two more schools.  They aren't as good academically as the first two.  It's hard to compare them to the school we got into this week.  One is a longer commute than the school we currently have the offers from, but it has almost three times as many Latino and native Spanish speakers (it has more English language learners, which is part of how I know there are more native speakers).  I think it's good for the kids to be around so-called heritage speakers, so I would welcome that.  I see how much language my kids have already learned from their peers, and I think that's important (as a side note, our nanny told me that my outgoing, talk-to-everyone three year old has been racially profiling at the park.  She speaks to white-looking people in English and Latino looking people in Spanish).  I also think SB will get in to that school. It has a beautiful building, apparently, which is a nice plus.  But there is the longer commute, and the question of how it measures up academically.

The other school I think we will get into is a much better commute for us than the school we have the offer from, and has twice as many Latino students as the current offer.  It would seem to be a no-brainer, but SB may not get in there.  And, the building is apparently horrible, and there is some new construction in the works.  I worry about how that will impact us if we go there.

This post is getting long.  The end result of all of this is that we are likely going to have to fly back to the U.S. in the next few weeks.  We need to check out schools and do a million other things.  Miss M also needs to have a personal, in person interview at a school.  I was hoping we would not have to fly back before we move, but it seems there is no way around it.  I think it will put my mind at ease in making these decisions, if we can visit some schools in person, so it's probably a good thing.  But it's a pile of cash and one more logistical thing on my to do list.