ChiKat

With all my complaining about Chicago public schools, I thought I should mention some of the greatest things about being a parent in this city.

First, our park district has 26 indoor pools in the city, and tons of swimming classes. I'm signing my son up for an intro to swimming classes for toddlers. It's eight weeks and it costs only $15. My girl friend who lives in the suburbs paid $85 for a six-week swimming class, so the $15 is a total bargain.

The Chicago public library lets you sign out a family membership to any of the Chicago museums. We used to choose one museum each year and buy a membership, but that's really expensive. Then I found the library program, and we've been museum-hopping ever since. You can sign out the membership for a week. Last week we checked out the butterfly garden at the Nature Museum (my son tried to eat the butterflies). This week is the Children's Museum.

I have six amazing playgrounds within walking distance to our condo. I'm not sure if that is specific to our neighborhood, or if that is city-wide, but I am so happy with the number of playgrounds to which we have access. Now if only the weather would cooperate.

My mother-in-law is pretty determined to move out of the city once the school year is over. On a selfish note, this means I lose my Friday night babysitter, which will really hurt my dates with my husband. But it's even more depressing because the biggest reason she is leaving is the Chicago public schools.

My mother-in-law has two adopted children with special needs. She has moved them to several different public schools trying to find the right programs for the boys. In some of the schools, the teachers don't have the right training. That problem is a hassle, but it can be fixed because CPS allows you to transfer your children to a different public school if you can show that your child isn't getting the right training. Because there are so many different types of special needs, it isn't unreasonable for a parent to request a specific school because the special ed teacher's training at that school.

However, the boys share recesses, study halls and lunch hours with the mainstream kids, and that has unearthed an amazing number of problems for my mother-in-law. The last straw for her was the yearbook picture. In it, several mainstream kids are flashing gang signs. My mother-in-law is not a naive woman. She has worked with disadvantaged kids for 15+ years, so I believe her when she says that the kids are flashing gang signs. The school, however, said the photographer just happened to catch the kids while the kids were moving their hands. Not a gang sign! Just movement!

Whatever. My mother-in-law is frustrated that the school is being so naive. The principal clings to the notion that they live in a decent neighborhood and their kids wouldn't do that. My mother-in-law feels differently, and doesn't like the idea of her highly-impressionable, desperate-to-make-friends, special-ed son sharing limited supervised playtime with kids flashing gang signs. The boys are TWELVE. The next few years are such at-risk years. I can understand her concern.

So she's looking at moving out to the suburbs. My husband and I are back to trying to figure out if it's possible to live in the city when you don't live in the nicest neighborhood and you can't afford private schooling.

We are officially going to Bolivia and Peru! We'll see Machu Picchu and hike to elevations of 16,000 feet. I am pretty excited, and so is my husband. We agonized about this decision. Giving the yellow fever vaccine to our son worries us, dragging him to 16,000 feet when he is barely a year old worries us…and taking him on a 8+ hour flight TERRIFIES us. But our love of travel, and our determination not to become hermits just because we have a baby, has won out.

We are now the proud owners of a baby backpack, a stroller that coverts to a car seat for the airplane, and a passport for our son.

The entire time I was getting passport photos taken of our son, the photographer kept saying, "I have NEVER had to take pictures of a BABY for a PASSPORT…who takes a BABY out of the COUNTRY? I've just NEVER had to do this before." I was both totally exasperated (because TONS of people take their children on trips) and totally embarrassed because he IS a baby and we are the terrible parents dragging him away from his safe home.

But even the CVS photographer couldn't keep us from checking out Incan ruins.

We don't leave for another two months, but I'm already trying to figure out how we haul all of his stuff onto a plane. I am so excited about this trip!

I picked up a second client for my freelance writing, so that is where I've been this past month. Sorry for the lack of posts.

I just found out an old friend of mine is attempting to hike the entire 1,000+ mile Appalachian Trail, which I think is pretty amazing. You can track his progress on his website.

In other news, this week's Newsweek has an interesting article about Michelle Obama. I really respect Michelle and her commitment to her family. She sounds like a pretty amazing woman. The article says that she wrote her thesis from Princeton on the racial tension on campus. According to Newsweek, Michelle said:

"Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton," she wrote, "it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second." (Today, Michelle says, not quite convincingly, that she can't remember what was in her thesis.)

What I find most interesting is her unwillingness to discuss the racial tension. I went to U of I in Urbana-Champaign. There were tons of students from all different ethnic backgrounds, but when I look back on my time at U of I, I was friends with whites, Asians and Indians. There was a huge divide between the black students and everyone else. I have no idea how to bridge that divide, but I can't image not talking about it is going to help.

At the same time, when Michelle said that she has never felt happier about America as she does right now, Bill O'Reilly jumps all over her for being so negative, so pessimistic. To the conservatives, suggesting that America isn't perfect makes you a terrorist. So I can understand why Michelle wants to keep the focus on political issues and leave the hyper-sensitive issue of race off the table for now.

I just hope, if Obama really does win the whole kit and caboodle, that we as a country are strong enough to talk about race and make real changes.