GEAP Test, Check

So, I thought I'd be all bad-ass urban mama and take The Girl on the L to her GEAP test yesterday. And then I realized:

- the test is at 3:30 in the afternoon, which is not the best time for a 4-year-old to be at her best

- it was a school holiday, so Natty didn't need the car to pick up The Boy

- and it's 30-degrees outside

So we drove to IIT instead. Earlier in the day, Natty had taken The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot to the Shedd Aquarium before picking me up at my office (I took a half-day's vacation), so The Girl was pretty wiped out. I left at 2 o'clock, leaving myself a ton of time to get there and hoping The Girl would fall asleep in the car on the way down, but she wrote her first and last name on a piece of paper and counted to forty instead.

We got there way early, at which point I realized I needed cash to pay for parking, so we drove back up to the Jewel-Osco at Roosevelt Road for cash and snacks: Veggie Booty, grapes, and a snack-sized package of bite-sized brownies. Back down to IIT to park, scurry across State Street in the bitingly cold wind, and upstairs to the psychology department in the Life Sciences Building. The Girl was in and out in about 1/2 an hour. She, like The Boy two years ago, couldn't or didn't want to tell me anything about what she'd done during the test. And that's fine. Until recently, it hadn't even occurred to me that someone would prep their kid for the test.

The head of the department was there to answer questions about the process. He couldn't reveal anything about the test CPS uses, or how it's scored. But he did say that the norms they use to determine the standard are actually taken from test data from four or five years ago, which I found pretty interesting. He also said that they score everyone taking into account their actual age, within the month. So The Girl will be scored against all the other 4-year-and-7-month-olds. We'll find out in March how she did.

Green City, Playdate

This morning, I got up early and took The Boy with me to one of the City's green events, a drop-off harmful substances and pick-up a rain barrel and/or compost bin thing. It was held in one of Comiskey Park's parking lots, just north of the 35th Street entrance to the park. We got there around 9 a.m., about an hour after it started, and we were in and out quite fast. We dropped off old paint, Pine-sol, and about 8 pounds of used batteries. I also picked up a subsidized compost bin from the City for $30. Fortunately, I brought my checkbook, because they only took checks. Not everyone was so lucky, so I wrote a check for the guy behind me, who like a few people only had cash.

When we got home, I traded kids with The Dad, and took The Girl to her ballet class. For the first time, I spent the whole class period in the waiting room, and I'm happy that I did not hear Ms. Jen reminding The Girl of good class behavior -- nor did I see her sneak out of class into the waiting room. After class, I brought The Girl and Peri over to Starbucks, to meet Peri's mother and brothers. This is when the giant (very fun!) playdate that was our afternoon began.

Peri, Enver, and The Girl walked home with me. We stopped at Walgreen's to pick up diaper-rash cream and sliced bread, and ran into Beth T. and her kids. A. is in ballet class with Peri and The Girl, and S. is just a few months younger than The Baby. I invited them to come over as well. When we got home, The Boy and D., our neighbor, were already in their swimsuits to go on D.'s slip-n-slide. I found suits to lend all of our guests, and everyone ran back and forth between D.'s slip-n-slide and the sprinkler that The Dad set up and ran for a bit in our front yard. It was nice to talk further with Beth T. and the kids all had a great time running around and, later, playing inside and in the backyard.