Kindergarten registration was hilarious. I had to fill out 12 pages of forms (this is in addition to the ones I�d been asked to bring with me). These asked questions like, �What was the student�s birth weight?� and �How long was your labor?� The other mothers and I stared at each other and snickered. �Who remembers that?� one snorted. The woman next to me said, �I do,� so softly that no one but me could hear. Like me, this is her oldest, first and only heading to school in the fall. �Me too,� I whispered. I was, however, stymied when asked for telephone numbers for my doctor, my neighbor and AJ�s current preschool. I�m not even sure I got my mother-in-law�s number right.

While I was scribbling at a table designed for legs much shorter than mine, AJ was exploring the room, which appeared to be a cafeteria-gym-art-gallery-classroom, given the tables, the basketball hoop, the chalk board and the colorful pictures on the wall. It seems like a nice school. Not too big, not too small. AJ found a table covered with paper and crayons for coloring, but he preferred to wrestle with some other small boys underneath the basketball hoop where there were some large blue mats to jump and fall on.

AJ has been flagged for testing so they can figure out what to do with him. They gave us a list of what he is supposed to have learned by the end of kindergarten. There isn�t one thing on it that he has not been doing for over a year.

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There is much writing to be done today, and a couple of job applications that need to be churned out (or at least commenced). Tomorrow I�m taking AJ to hear a concert of his beloved �Peter and the Wolf� in Chicago, which he�s very excited about. He�s never been to a concert before and this one�s being performed by a bunch of friends of mine, so I�m hoping we�ll be able to meet some of the players, which I think he�d like. We plan to have lunch downtown, after which he and his dad will repair to AJ�s grandma�s for a rest before heading to my niece�s birthday party. I�ll be staying downtown to do a little shopping and meet up with my friend H. to see a play based on Stuart Dybek�s collection of short stories, The Coast of Chicago. I love this collection, but I must admit that I have absolutely no idea how such a thing could work as a stage play. I�m kind of expecting the worst.

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