I am sitting here in the middle of MIT, waiting for Alice to finish having fun. She's spent a happy two hours with Serpinski triangles, and spurned the lunch offered for a healthy mix of carbs, sugar and fat (crackers, yogurt and chocolate cheesecake) and is now learning things about Finnish. 

The parents all look vaguely familiar, the kids all look rather more familiar – there is something like finding one's tribe about it. And yet, and yet, parts feel …. odd. I pointed out to Alice that she's a slacker gifted child. We never forced an instrument on her, or a gymnastics routine, or anything really. No sports but fencing, and that intermittently. No special language classes outside of school. Nothing she hasn't requested, basically. Which makes her sane, and me her mother sane because I don't have to drive her somewhere every day. 

On further contemplation, it is a continuum. Like my beloved otherKate told me once, there's always someone feeding their kids more organic food than you are, and someone else who hits micky-d's regularly enough that they have the entire collection of mini-beanie-babies. You do what's right for you and your kids. Don't sweat the neighbors. Do what feels right and works for you. Change if it stops working. (which, parenthetically, is why we stopped going to McD – Alice kept throwing up, which is a powerful demotivator for any behaviour.)

So here we are, testing this part of the continuum. Parents are distinctly unwelcome – we're barred from the official lunching place, and tossed unceremoniously out of any classes we wander into by mistake. It really gives the kids a lot of ownership for the whole process. It makes Alice and me a little twitchy, because we've said we'd rendezvous between classes and travel together from building to building, just to keep me (and her dad, in absentia) from freaking out, not because she is bemused or bewildered. 

The program is for grades 7 – 12. I'm guessing it used to be for high schoolers, and they expanded it because kids are getting smarter younger, and then they couldn't figure out how to integrate parents of younger kids, so they stuck to a model that works. There is an adults program, but most of it looks reeeeeally boring (another lecture on choosing a college? no thanks.) So instead I get to sit still, and read a little, and knit a little, and walk around in nice weather and pretty surroundings. If there were no waiting for Alice, it would be a perfect vacation day. Instead I get to do exactly that and then get hugs when she comes out of class. Pretty good deal, all told. Plus, internet access in the middle of MIT is awesome. 

Al and Alice and Aerin made me a cake (sour cream spice cake with orange butter cream frosting) and figured out how to write 51 on it (in Roman numerals) and it was wonderful. 

Alice has also been making birds: 

including this rather lovely raven.

It is true, I will nevermore be 50.

And a happy Mother's Day to my mom, on the anniversary of the birth of her first child. 

Alice has sharp knees. And because she grows slowly, they wear away at the pants longer in one place. So I've gotten creative mending her pants, because she doesn't outgrow them fast. She's had pandas, cats, dolphins, and a spiderweb that said "some pig". 

When I saw these monsters on a friend's page, I knew Alice needed one. 

These have braces too, out of silver thread. Because even monsters need to have nice, straight teeth.

What I forget, and I shouldn't because I used to be there, is that even a person who doesn't follow or believe in fashion still has a very, VERY firm sense of what they want to look like.

Alice brought that home to me last year when she wanted a pair of boots. She who had lived in slip-on black Merrels for four years (she doesn'r grow very fast) wanted something she couldn't even describe very well, but when we went to Target she walked down the aisle, sorting and discarding options until she came to one in particular. And that was the one. Mid-calf, brown suede elf boots, with a zipper up the side. She wore them all through the school year. When the zipper broke this week, we had to replace them.

This year, the choices were heavily skewed towards Ugg equivalent boots, kind of clumpy and way too warm for her, but we found a couple choices she kind of liked, and she walked out with mid-calf, purple suede elf boots that perfectly matched the purple hoodie shirt she wears.

This is just to say that self image is a deeply mysterious thing.

Alice and I needed things at the not-exactly-fabric store, and we found some other things too. She needed vellum to make a large origami spiky star thing to put a lightbulb in to hang over the table. We found that, and medium gray thread, which I need for the blue Polish hen. And then Alice found patterns for these great floppy creatures, including a hippo, a rhinoceros and an elephant.

So we got the pattern, and some fabric, and came home and made the hippo right off. Together. We think it is for the nephew, but Alice is helping the hippo practice being a good friend. And a good pillow. 

Alice said she felt like she was in a Little Bear episode. And then she said that any day that felt like a Little Bear episode is a very good day. 

So today was a very good day.