Debate

Here's the debate. We love the city and we love living in the city. K keeps saying I want to live where we don't have to be in the car all the time. We loved our apartment building when we lived here from 2001-2004.

The city has 2 gifted only schools which are supposed to be awesome. One you have to apply for kindergarten and you have to live in Manhattan. C would qualify. I'm not sure he would score high enough on the test or do well with the interview but I could give him a shot. He would have a hard time b/c the cutoff is dec 31st to start Kindergarten at 4.5 and his bday is dec 29th. But the interview and testing would be right after he turned 4 so I'm not sure maturity wise he would do too well. I'd love to give him a shot but we have to live in Manhattan.

The other gifted school accepts at kindergarten and at the other grades by attrition. K could apply here. You have to live in the 5 boroughs to apply. I emailed the director, who knows if they will have space. There are a couple other gifted type schools she could apply to also.

All of these applications would be for fall 2008 so I still have to do something for fall 2007 so I need to live in a good school district so I have the option of doing that. Homeschooling is an option too.

Sounds OK right? Back to the city... we cannot afford our apartment building anymore. The rents in the city have gone up about $1000/month since we left. So, we can't find anything to match all the criteria - mainly a good school district and some space with more than 1 bathroom. And if I homeschool, I'll need a little bit of space. We are looking at 2 bedrooms now or 1 bedrooms with a dining room converted to a 2nd bedroom if we want a doorman. I'm not sure we can live like that and I'm not sure I want to do that. We have to sell our car to move in the city and I'd like to explore the area more, there's so much to see educationally for the kids but that's hard to do when you have to rent a car every time. I think we would just do it once a month or once every two months. We many be at a different time in our lives now but I hate not giving the kids a chance at these schools.

The other reality is that even if I were to get in both these schools, I would have kids in 2 different schools and they are on opposite sides of Central Park which is actually a big deal. It takes a while to get across because you have to walk or go by bus so it'll take 15-20 minutes. I'm not sure I want them in different schools. I'm not sure we'll even be able to get them to school on time every day.

I'm in the circle of debate...

All time low

I've hit an all time low with the housing search. We seem to be all over the board and we have not found the right place. I'm not sure I know what the right place is.

I'm not doing anything with the kids. I brought those math books for K but never have time to work with her doing them. I'm ready for this process to be over. The kids have been troopers and I've been trying to give them some fun things but we've been doing a lot of trekking - either by foot or car to see apartments/houses.

There are so many options here and the place is so big with so much traffic to get from place to place. I can't seem to decide. I really need to decide on the city vs. the suburbs b/c searching both is exhausting!

The apartment

We are living in a temporary apartment in White Plains. It's nice. Today it is stormy, lots of rain. We have been looking at places to live. It's crazy, exhausting and awful. K & C are good and then horrible. We're going to a movie today so that should help, something fun for them.

I went to two schools yesterday and talked to them about acceleration and K. This move is going to be very challenging. D said it will test my ability to be flexible. I usually like to plan things out but with this whole process, I've been unable to plan and that's hard for me. It's character building...

Swim Pictures

K finishing a race!


K in the water, hanging on the block, for backstroke

She did a great job with swim team this year. I'm very proud.

Math Workbooks

I bought some Math workbooks today. K scored poorly in Math on the Iowa first grade assessment. She said there wasn't any Math, just a bunch of questions about money and she doesn't know money that well. That's my fault. She likes to do adding, subtracting, multiplication so we spend more time on that. So, I bought 1st and 2nd grade Math books for her to work on in the car. We are driving to NY this week. I've always hated Math workbooks but now realize that she needs to understand how questions are asked on standardized tests. Montessori uses math manipulatives so it is completely different. I spend more time on real life word problems. You want to take that Gymnastics class and it's 100 for 8 weeks and this other class is 100 for 10 weeks so which class is cheaper type things.

I don't think 1st and 2nd grade are the right level but I want to make sure she has covered everything in them. Also, she needs some repetitive work with math so this will help. She'll love it.

Back online

D finally came home for a visit and figured out why the computer died on June 18th! The HD video card was bad so we just didn't have any output to the monitor. So we did not lose all the files that we thought we lost and I'm back up again.

We have been so busy lately. Swim team ended yesterday with Championships! I'm sad and happy. K has definitely improved with her swimming. I'll have to post some pictures. She was the heat winner in the freestyle and backstroke so she got ribbons and prizes; that was very exciting for her. Friday at the last practice she asked to go off the high dive. It's a 3 meter board. She went off the low board a bunch of times and then asked to go off the high. She went up there with a 12 year old and jumped all by herself! She said she liked it but smacked her hand a little bit so she didn't want to do it again. I was shocked she wanted to do it at all.

Last night we went to a Reds game. Both kids loved it.

D goes back to NYC tomorrow so we'll be on our own again.