Tag: Kids

Slater School 1942

I happened to have found this photograph in the Library of Congress’ collection. It was listed as a Negro elementary school. When I took a closer look I saw the name of the school on the building.

Slater-Negro-School
Slater School. Kids playing on P St NW. 1942.

I am amazed seeing children playing on P Street as if it was an extension of the playground. P Street actually doesn’t look that wide in this photo. Things were different in 1942, when this was taken by Marjory Collins the Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information photographer who took the photograph.

I found a similar view from 2008.

Unit block of P Street NW taken January 8, 2008

The school was in poor shape then.

Slater School on the unit block of P St NW ca. 2008

Armstrong and Maybe the Homeopathic Hospital

Military unit in Armstrong Technical High School being trained by an U.S. Army lieutenant. Library of Congress.

This is a 1942 photo of the military unit for Armstrong High School. I think, and I could be wrong, they are on the Dunbar High School’s field. From this view there are two tall buildings in the background. Those buildings do not exist in current day Truxton Circle. I think they are part of the Homeopathic Hospital.

Thank You For Your Service Kid- Armstrong High School 1942

Military unit in Armstrong Technical High School being trained by a U.S. Army lieutenant, Library of Congress

 

Happy Memorial Day to all who have served. Be ye ROTC, whatever this was, or any of the branches of our military. Thank you for your service.

COVID & Daycares or DC.gov’s Stupid Interpretation of CDC Guidelines

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.– Hanlon’s Razor

So March 15th our daycare closed in response to the corona virus. Then a few weeks later we got a message from our daycare that they would be open on a very limited-restricted basis. I figured it wouldn’t last long, and the daycare closed again citing rules from the DC Office of the State Superintendent (OSSE), which has oversight over schools & child care centers, that were impossible to follow.

I got a hold of those OSSE rules. Most made sense, but several seemed like they were written by someone with no practical knowledge of children or child behavior.

Then I compared those rules to the CDC’s Guidance for Childcare Programs That Remain Open. Yup, OSSE’s rules were written by an idiot, or an intern, or maybe a childless lawyer.

Let’s review shall we? These are the OSSE rules shared with me, I’ve italicized the stupid:

  • All staff & children above 2 years old must wear non-medical face coverings at all times
  • One staff member has to be at the door to receive children or go curbside
  • All surfaces must be cleaned, sanitized, and disinfected after each use
  • Staff must bring clothes to work to change every day before the start of work
  • Children & staff must be 6 feet apart at all times
  • Staff are not allowed to hug the children
  • Staff & children must wash their hands for 20 seconds every 20 minutes
  • Staff & parents [should be] aware of the requirement to check their own (or their child’s) temperature 2 hours or less before arrival to the facility each morning
  • Staff are to wear clean, large, button-down, long sleeved shirts when working with infants and young children.
  • Parents are required to wear non-medical face coverings when picking [up] and dropping off children
  • Signs posted in every classroom throughout the building with reminders regarding cleaning, disinfection, and sanitation, as well as hand hygiene

Of the 11 rules, 3 are stupid, so stupid all cannot be practically followed. And when looking at CDC’s guidance, they are horrible misinterpretations. Let’s compare:

Face Masks for Kids

OSSE: All staff & children above 2 years old must wear non-medical face coverings at all times.

CDC: Cloth face coverings should NOT be put on babies and children under age two because of the danger of suffocation.
and
When feasible, staff members and older children should wear face coverings within the facility. Cloth face coverings should NOT be put on babies and children under age two because of the danger of suffocation.

Notice the difference between what OSSE says and the CDC. The CDC is mainly saying don’t put masks on children under 2 because of the high risk of suffocation. It appears it got interpreted by OSSE as put masks on everyone over 2. I’m not 100% sure the danger of suffocation is non-existent for the 2-5 year old set. Also, we know for a fact 4 year olds like to rip off clothing. Shoes. Socks. That sort of thing. Many adults working in industries or conditions find protective masks irritating after several hours, and will take them off, I have my doubts the 2-5 year olds will have a greater tolerance.

There is a phrase in all the stupid OSSE rules, “at all times.”  Sometimes it’s the part that makes a reasonable rule, stupid. The CDC says that staff and older children (not really defined) should wear cloth face coverings “when feasible”, providing opportunities for meal times and other incidences when face coverings are not feasible or practical. The CDC’ “when feasible” provides more leeway than OSSE’s phrase “at all times,” which I can only imagine means mealtimes and nap times (opportunities for suffocation and partial ingestion of loose cloth– remember this covers the nose & mouth).

Social Distancing at the Childcare Facility

OSSE: Children & staff must be 6 feet apart at all times.
CDC: If possible, child care classes should include the same group each day, and the same child care providers should remain with the same group each day. If your child care program remains open, consider creating a separate classroom or group for the children of healthcare workers and other first responders. If your program is unable to create a separate classroom, consider serving only the children of healthcare workers and first responders.
and
Consider whether to alter or halt daily group activities that may promote transmission.

      • Keep each group of children in a separate room.
      • Limit the mixing of children, such as staggering playground times and keeping groups separate for special activities such as art, music, and exercising.
      • If possible, at nap time, ensure that children’s naptime mats (or cribs) are spaced out as much as possible, ideally 6 feet apart. Consider placing children head to toe in order to further reduce the potential for viral spread.

and
It is important to comfort crying, sad, and/or anxious infants and toddlers, and they often need to be held. To the extent possible, when washing, feeding, or holding very young children: Child care providers can protect themselves by wearing an over-large button-down, long sleeved shirt and by wearing long hair up off the collar in a ponytail or other updo.

There are several examples where the CDC propose the 6 feet of separation, during the pick up and dropoff period, temperature screening and naptime. I have failed to locate in the CDC guidelines anything close to the OSSE’s rule of staff being 6 ft. away from children at all times, which creates another safety issue. The OSSE rule makes no exception for toddlers who need close (less than 6ft) supervision, especially when they are mobile and attempting suicide via exploring their environment. Once again the CDC provides greater leeway than the OSSE.

Our particular daycare has several separate rooms that would allow mixed ages but separate spaces for children of 1st responders and other kids.

The OSSE rules appear not to allow for kids to be in groups, but the CDC does.

Lastly, on this point, outside of a Soviet orphanage, who does childcare at a 6 foot distance? If this was a temporary measure of a few days, less than a week, fine. Longer than that and there are some childhood developmental and behavioral issues (see institutional autism) that could crop up for some population of children. Logically when the economy starts opening up, some of these rules are going to remain in place in order to head off the second wave. And if all the stupid rules remain in place, then daycares cannot remain open and be in compliance.

Wash Yo Hands

OSSE: Staff & children must wash their hands for 20 seconds every 20 minutes
CDC: All children, staff, and volunteers should engage in hand hygiene at the following times:

    • Arrival to the facility and after breaks
    • Before and after preparing food or drinks
    • Before and after eating or handling food, or feeding children
    • Before and after administering medication or medical ointment
    • Before and after diapering
    • After using the toilet or helping a child use the bathroom
    • After coming in contact with bodily fluid
    • After handling animals or cleaning up animal waste
    • After playing outdoors or in sand
    • After handling garbage
  • Wash hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If hands are not visibly dirty, alcohol-based hand sanitizers with at least 60% alcohol can be used if soap and water are not readily available.
  • Supervise children when they use hand sanitizer to prevent ingestion.

The CDC guidelines on handwashing are something that should be done anyway, virus or no virus. My only concerns would be with drying out infant skin if interpreted to include them. But OSSE’s rules would have adults and children trying to wash hands 6ft apart constantly all day…. while wearing face masks.

Conclusion

I don’t know how long this is going last, and if things open this Summer, they’ll close back down for the 2nd wave, which tends to be worse than the 1st. I don’t expect to get back to life as it was in 2019. But I would like my daycare to open back up so I can get back to work and it (and the schools) can’t open up if OSSE insists on keeping unworkable rules that have less leeway than the CDC.

Yes, I care about my son’s safety, which is why I looked at the CDC’s webpage. If the daycares cannot open, then I guess we’ll be looking for a nanny, and that has it’s own issues.

You can contact the OSSE and ask about their rules their email is osse@dc.gov or you can fill out the Ask the Superintendent of Education form.

I Suck as a Hausfrau

View down Florida Avenue
Random picture of Florida Avenue NW

Well. If this furlough as proven anything, I suck as a housewife. I do not have what it takes to be a stay at home mom. I need to get back to work. This shutdown has lasted way too long.

The house is not cleaner than normal. I’ve scrubbed the kitchen floor several times, but somebody who will go unnamed, keeps throwing banana slices on the floor. Then somebody else who isn’t paying attention, steps on the slice or the sticky left over from the banana and tracks it all over the 1st floor.

The handywoman list of things to do, still undone. I haven’t fixed the sink. I have an excuse, I’m sick, with a cold. And I don’t wanna. The light needs me to have the ladder brought up and someone to spot me. That’s the negative to high ceilings, looks great but a pain to replace the lights.

The SAHM thing is not a thing for me, right now. When he’s not sick or school isn’t closed, Destruct-o-Baby still goes to daycare. He’s not waiting till 2 yo to be terrible. The holidays and other days when he’s stayed home with me, have not made me yearn to be with him all day. The laid back chill baby we brought home is gone, replaced by a loud, moody, whirlwind of energy (thus the name Desctruct-o-Baby) who throws food. Maybe if this had happened when he was still immobile, I might have fallen in love with the idea of hanging out with him all day, everyday. So yeah, he’s still going to daycare. I’m afraid if I pull him out we will lose our spot. We lucked out and weren’t on a waiting list to begin with, so not gonna screw with a good thing. If this lasts longer than 2 months, we might see if he can go part-time. Please Lord, don’t let this thing go longer than 2 months.

I am cooking more. I guess this is where I shine in one of the housewifery skills. Normally, one of us does 3 nights, and the other 3 nights and Wednesday is for sandwiches. Sandwiches are perfectly fine for dinner in this house. I’m doing all nights. Nothing fancy, but I did make some paneer cheese for palak paneer. No sandwiches, unless I plan for some fancy schmancy sandwiches like monte cristos or BLTs.

Thankfully, the Help has not complained about my hausfrau skills. Destruct-o has been complaining non-stop, but he started that before the shutdown.

 

Adoption- Dear Birthmother

November is National Adoption Month, so I’m writing a few posts about our experience.

Let’s hear it for the birthmom’s because without them, some of us would not be parents. We tried and failed to have a biological kid of our own. Miscarriages suck. I only had one and that was enough. But I came to appreciate that brief moment of pregnancy when an adoptive mom said that I at least was able to get pregnant. I’d like to think I’m a realist about our ages, so IVF would have been a waste of money and moral and mental energy. So adoption was the logical choice, and there can’t be adoptions without birthparents deciding to place their children with strangers like us.

I am incredibly grateful for Destruct-O-baby’s birthmom and her decision to let the agency pick us. Mainly because that let us re-name him and until then no birthfamily wanted us, like never getting picked for the parent team.

On some level I get that deciding to make an adoption plan to place (we don’t say ‘giving the child up’) a child is very difficult. We had to read the book “Dear Birthmother” and trying to understand the birth families’ perspective was a major part of our adoption classes. The agency continues to champion the side of the birthparent in the seasonal magazine we get from them. One issue talked about the challenges one mother in forming romantic relationships. So guys, if you’re dating a gal and you really like her, and she mentions she has a kid out there in the world being raised by other people, don’t be an ass about how you respond. You’d be doing me a huge favor.

Adoption- Human

Baby in portable bassinet
Baby in portable bassinet

I was going to wait until November, National Adoption month, to write about our adoption experience. But a retweet of something I saw with a long string of comments that do not reflect nor resemble our experience  prompted me to post this.

We’ve recently finalized the adoption of our son. It was a closed adoption per the birthmother’s wishes. And even though it is closed, we still need to write letters and send 5-6 photos of Destruct-O-baby every 3-4 months for the next couple of years. We were interviewed by a birthmother who wanted an open adoption, however, she didn’t choose us. But if she did there would have been more in person visits or more letters, depending on what she wanted.

The adoption itself did not cost $20-$30K. Rounding up less than $10K went to the agency for all the administrative and facilitation stuff. Less than $2K went to our lawyer, and I have no idea how much we spent to take the CPR classes, get the background checks, renovate the house for the inspections and home study. Those higher prices are international adoption prices. Destruct-O-baby is from the land of Mary (which means he’ll drive in the bike lane & speed through yellow and red lights).

Adoption has changed over the years. My sister in law (the one who drained her mother’s retirement fund in a year) was adopted from Korea. According to the Help, his parents were told to show up to the airport and they were handed a 2 year old, who became his sister. They did not have to take the classes. They were a school teacher and factory worker, so I’ll guess it wasn’t that expensive. We had to read books, write essays, take classes for several weeks and go through a lot more stuff before we could even get on a waiting list.

What helped us a lot, was the network of other parents we knew (mostly but not exclusively, from the Help’s church) who also went through the same agency. It was great when trying to figure out what to do, there was someone I could email or call. These include families who engage in fostering, foster to adopt, and respite care, separate from the infant adoption.

There are three parts of the adoption triangle, the birth families, the adopting families, and the adoptee. I can only speak about my part. Because of the agency’s national scope and functions other than domestic infant adoption they’ve attracted some vitriol, and it’s hard not to take some of those nasty comments personally.

Suing the city about daycare regs

The only reason why I’m curious about this is because I am a consumer of DC daycare, which is already expensive. I’m spending about $1500 a month, which I know is way cheaper than what some of my neighbors are spending on nanny shares and other daycare facilities. I’ve been told the wonderful women who care for the Babyman and his friends aren’t paid enough. The city decided that the lovely ladies need a college degree. I’m not sure who’s going to absorb that cost. As I mentioned, daycare is already f’ing expensive.

So there is a mom and two day care providers are suing the city, OSSE exactly, regarding the new regulations for childcare workers. Pictured is Ms. Sanchez who has a daycare in her home and claims the new regulation would put her out of business. My heart goes out to the parents who use her services, ’cause daycare waitlists ’round here are horrid. As soon as you are pregnant, find a daycare, get on their waitlist.

So I’m curious about this case. I’m also curious about increases in childcare costs to pay for the degree. I really hope we don’t lose the women Babyman seems most attached to at his daycare, but it is likely that will happen.

Baby adoption

Spouse and newly adopted son
The Help and Babyman

As some of our friends and neighbors know, my spouse (the Help) we are in the adoption process. Babyman (formerly the Helpless) has been in our home for 6 months and just recently got released from ‘legal risk’. I suspect Mayor Muriel Bowser’s newly adopted child may be under legal risk, so besides her usual privacy, she’s probably not at liberty to say much.

I was pleasantly surprised to read that our mayor has adopted an infant. So congrats to Mayor Bowser on joining the process and good luck. She’ll need it. She’ll also need a strong support network and some live in help. The Help and I act like a tag team in the care of Babyman. In those early days before Babyman was sleeping through the night, even that had me working at half power running on a few hours of sleep. She might be able to deal with a few nights of no sleep but after about a week of almost no sleep because the screaming bottle feeding poop machine, something horrid happens to your brain. When that happens, you really need your support team. For us that was our relatives, neighbors, church members, co-workers, and any person who offered to babysit.

Mayor Bowser get used to being an old mommy. Forgive people who mistake you for your child’s grandma. I do and it’s not worth my time getting upset.  I’m in my late 40s and my spouse will be 50 before Babyman turns 1. I’d like to think patience comes with age and we’re calmer than younger parents. We’ve been told Babyman is a very calm easygoing baby. I’m not sure that is him or us, but for now, I’ll take the credit.

We’re not done with the process. We’ve got to go to court and appear before a judge in some random area of Maryland. I guess Mayor Bowser will have to deal with legal risk, then once both the birthparent’s parental rights are severed, and the adoption agency/lawyer gets the paperwork in order she too will go before a judge who make her a full fledged mommy.

Welcome to the club Mayor Bowser, as a parent you will see the city in a whole new light.

Babies, babies and more babies

Baby in portable bassinet
Baby in portable bassinet

So we found out two more couples in our general area (two block radius) are pregnant. This is in addition to a colleague of the Help who lives nearby, who recently had a boy. So add those pre-people to the little people who currently occupy our street and we’ll have ourselves an awesome Halloween in a year or so. At one point we had a nice number of toddlers and little kids (5) on our street and it made for fun Halloweens, because they would bring some of their pre-K school friends and have a mass of cuteness go from house to house and it is so fun when you know the kids.

Many years ago, the same thing was breaking out in our two block radius where I was hearing so many wives were getting pregnant, I joked that there must have been something in the water. I might (my memory is fuzzy) have told this to a fellow who was living with his girlfriend, and he laughed nervously. They later married and had a couple kids. So once again, there may be something in the water.

That batch of kids, and their parents, eventually moved away. At the time charter schools were not as valued by the city government and citizens as they are today. The voices saying how charters were so bad were the loudest. Now charters are a part of the system and there are more of them. When my neighbors moved, some of them moved because they did not get into the school of their choice, and at the time, there were not a lot of choices. Some of them moved to be in the boundary of the schools of their choice. And some moved because one of the parents got a job that moved them.

But this time, it’s different. There is the BloomingdaleKids Yahoo group(est. 2009), which has been a wonderful resource for free and cheaper than new stuff, and a way to get rid of stuff. There are more daycares. There are now two daycares above the Shaw metro station (one on S the other on 7th& R-ish) and I see newer child care centers popping up in other locations around town. This time the school lottery is for DCPS and DC Charter Schools, all in one and you can put your child’s name in for 12 schools. There are more charters to choose from and the DCPS schools are improved. There are more reasons to stay and not move as kids get closer to kindergarten. Middle school… that’s a different story.

In the meantime, yay, babies.