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Rob's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 11/15/00 -------------------- 11/7/00 11/1/00 10/25/00 10/10/00 10/4/00 9/25/00 9/19/00 9/13/00 9/6/00 8/29/00 8/23/00 8/16/00 8/8/00 8/7/00 8/1/00 7/26/00 7/19/00 7/12/00 7/5/00 6/26/00 6/15/00 6/8/00 5/25/00 5/22/00 -------------------- Rob's Introduction

May 25, 2000

It’s graduation day, and soon I’ll have to get cleaned up and head down to the school. I have to clean up my classroom, which is also where we build sets, and then I have to change into a suit and tie, put on my robe, hood and funny hat, and sweat out the ceremony. Fortunately, we are a small school with a small graduating class.

In the meantime, I’m home with Rowan and her friend Georgia. Georgia is the daughter of our friends Mary K. and Brent, and she’s just 10 weeks younger than Rowan. Our regular day-care provider is on vacation this week and we are improvising.

A lot of the time, Rowan and Georgia stick to parallel play. Each does her own thing more or less in the same space. Sometimes though, they play together, sharing the blocks or chasing each other. And then of course they fight over things too. I try to let them resolve their own differences as long as it doesn’t come to pushing or emotional melt-downs.

This morning I was allowing Rowan and Georgia to work through a fight over a ring-and-post toy when they brought the dispute to me. Rowan was holding the toy out of Georgia’s reach as she ran over to me. They were both babbling angrily and I had no idea who had first taken the toy from whom, so I just took it away.

Well, this was the worst outcome imaginable, I guess, because they both burst into tears and then fell into each other’s arms for comfort. The measure was a bit arbitrary I suppose, but in terms of peace-making, the result was more than I had hoped for. But don’t call the U.N. yet, I felt so bad for them that I gave the toy back. Not too surprisingly, the fight started again, but it fizzled on its own pretty quickly. I swear, next time I’ll be more consistent.