Big transition!

On Friday, Alex graduated from nursery school. We went straight from graduation to my parents' house in upstate New York, to visit them for Memorial Day weekend. (Perhaps there will be another post about that later.) We arrived home last night.

This morning I was reading to Colin in the living room when I heard Alex's footsteps on the stairs.

"Who is it?" I called out.

"It's your homeschooler, Alex!" she said back. Pleased as anything. I took a First Day of School picture, posed at her direction: Michael holding Colin, Alex holding a book she can read and looking proudly over the top.

Then, sadly, I went to work. Michael gets to do the first day of homeschooling; he'll be home with the kids every Tuesday. I remind myself that there is going to be an awful lot of this to go around, and that it doesn't matter so much that I'm missing the first few hours of it.

Honestly, it doesn't quite seem real that, from now on, we have no institutional place to send Alex. We are in charge of her education. I feel pretty confident that we'll do a fine job, but still, it's a big job to do.

I don't expect that I'll be posting that much about homeschooling here, but we will probably be updating the homeschooling blog I set up more often now that we're official. In case you want to follow along, it's syndicated at tinderbox_blog.

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I came home this evening to discover that our landlord decided to replace the entire study ceiling, not just the third closest to the damage. I don't disagree, from a safety standpoint. But it means that we'll be without our study and our desktops for more than a week. It also means that all the bookshelves had to be covered with plastic sheeting, including all the homeschooling stuff and all Alex's art supplies, and I didn't know it was going to happen so I didn't save anything out.

Also, I am obsessing about lead. The workers said to keep the kids away from the study. Was that because of tools and ladders and debris and dust? Or was it because there is lead in the plaster debris, and "keep the kids away from the study" is their half-assed risk reduction strategy? Because if so... NO. Every time they come in and out they track dust onto the landing and stairs, where we pick it up on our feet and carry it all over the house. Annoying enough if it's just dirt. Potentially brain-damaging for the kids, if it's lead.

So. Tomorrow I'll be home when they come and I can ask them to test for lead. Until we know, there's no point in borrowing trouble. Right? Because our landlord is a conscientious guy, and not likely to risk the problems that would come from not properly safeguarding children from lead on his property.

Surely. Right?