school

Molly’s First Day of School (Ever!)

| patmcg

Today was Molly’s first day of school. Of course, Molly was unaware of this exciting milestone.

Kit’s mom, Claire, Molly, and I all piled in the car this morning and headed off to school together. Molly is still adjusting to car rides and complained (ie, cried) a bit on the way to school.

Per the teacher’s suggestion, we dropped Claire off first at her class and then headed across the parking lot to the “small building” where the baby Chicks have their classroom. I had been taking Molly along to drop off Claire for a couple of weeks now, and Claire was still so proud to show off her baby sister to anyone who would look, including other kids, parents, and teachers. Yes, everyone in Claire’s class already knew Molly, and many were still fascinated by the sweet little baby in the car seat.

When we first arrived at the small building and set Molly down in the Chick’s room in her car seat, a big baby named Bobby showed up immediately to investigate. Once we got Molly out, he tried to climb into, or maybe tip over, her car seat. The teachers laughed and said that was Bobby.

The teachers suggested putting Molly in “the pool”, which is a round padded area in a sunny corner of the room. The main point of the pool is that is has short padded walls a few inches tall, so she is somewhat protected from Bobby and the like. We laid Molly down in the pool, and she did not complain a bit. She was immediately transfixed by all the neat stuff to look at. There were big windows with curly trees right outside, toys and mirrors in the pool, and interesting sounds from a few other babies.

We dropped off Molly’s milk, formula, bottles, diapers, diaper cream, extra clothes, pacifier, etc. We also filled out Molly’s daily note stating when she had woken up and eaten this morning. Then it was time to go, but it felt weird just leaving her there. Molly did not seem to mind or even notice. She was just looking around happily un her little corner. Still, we hung around a few minutes to make sure everything was okay. And everything stayed okay. So off we went, feeling a little weird, but without notice.

That afternoon when we picked Molly up, they said she had a great day. She did a lot of cooing and sleeping, and she loved to watch the other babies. I think Molly is in good hands and probably having more fun at school than at home.

A Cat Ran on the Sidewalk

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One of the Halloween activities in Claire’s class this year was for each kid to make up a Halloween story on their own.  The teachers transcribed the stories, printed and laminated them, and posted them on the wall for everyone to read.  Claire’s read as follows:

A cat ran on the sidewalk.  The doggie got the cat.  The mommy forgot her purse.  The little lady laughed.  The little lady wore a hat.  She also had thousands and thousands of coins.

Most of the other kids’ stories were pretty nice too.  A couple were scarcely one sentence long.  And one or two were just descriptions of Star Wars battles that had nothing to do with Halloween.

Claire Awaits Her Baby Sister

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While Kit and I were at the hospital delivering Molly, life went on somewhat normally for Claire.  Of course, we did need some help while Kit, Molly, and I were in the hospital.  Claire is pretty responsible, but she is not old enough to take care of herself yet.  If she did, I would just love to see what kind of dinner she would make herself, and when she would put herself to bed.  I picture her asleep on the living room floor, covered in chocolate ice cream with Horton Hears a Who playing on the TV.  But we will never know, because Kit’s parents came down to help out.  😉

Claire went to school today as normal.  Her daily note from school read as follows:

Note that Claire was “super excited” about her baby sister, for whom we had not officially picked out a name yet.  Also, it just so happens to be Mexican Independence Day, which is neat.  And who is this Pinky?  What happened to her today?  Pinky is the class hamster, and she died today.  Claire got the next door neighbor, Aubry, back in Atlanta when she was born.  And now Molly seems to have gotten Claire’s class hamster.  It is the circle of life, I suppose.

    Panda on the Loose

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    The new school year started today for Claire. She has graduated to the next class, and is now officially a Panda. This is good since Claire is now with her own age group. She had spent the first few weeks in the Colts classroom with slightly older kids since they had a random spot open just to get her through the summer.

    Claire may benefit from having more girls in her new classroom as compared to the Colts, where there were only three girls to about a dozen boys. However, she will leave behind some friends, including her very favorite twins, Alex and Leo, who she seems to follow around and literally pull their arms towards her to make them play with her.

    Claire’s new teacher writes a little summary of all the kids’ days, which is helpful. Apparently today Claire ate “some” of her lunch (just the muffin and bluberries), but she was too busy talking to do much eating. (One of her Colts teachers had also remarked that she “treats lunch time as sort of a social hour.”) Claire’s new teacher circled “cheerful”, “silly”, and “talkative” to describe Claire’s mood today. I am glad Claire had a good day, especially since she is a little sick. If I were to fill out the same form for tonight, I would have circled “cuddly” and “frustrated”.

    P as in “prenatal”

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    Claire came home from school the other day with a big white envelope and some brief instructions to fill it with with things starting with P or J. This is, of course, to help kids learn about the different letters and how they apply to real-world situations. We left most of the work up to Claire, and she quickly divined than we should fill her bag with a pen, a pencil, a penny, and some nail polish. The next morning before school, she said excitedly, “I know! Piano!” Then she hurried over to her little toy piano (a small plastic keyboard, really) and dumped it in the bag. We never came up with any J words, at least not ones we had laying around the house that would fit in an envelope.

    Tonight over dinner, Kit and I were asking Claire what “P” objects that the other kids found. She mumbled a couple of things, then suddenly blurted out, “I know! Prenatal! I should bring your pills to school, Mom!” I wish she had. I think it is safe to say she would have been the first kid to bring prenatal pills to school for this exercise.

    By the way, I think this was Claire’s first real homework assignment. Actually, she did a different pair of letters, I think B and H, a couple of weeks ago.

    TODO: Go back and tag all entries before this with “claire” too

    Goodbye, Cast!

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    Claire finally got her full leg cast off today. She has been as cool as a cucumber about her cast for the last three or four weeks. Once we explained that her cast was there to help her leg heal, but she would have to wait for it to work, she never complained about it. She just ambled around with one leg sticking out funny.

    Today that all ended, and once again we got to see her left leg in its full glory. The process of taking her cast off — where they take that loud power saw and tear through the cast towards her flesh — did not go so well. There was screaming and resisting and crying. No amount of reassurance could convince this three year old kid that the power saw cutting into her leg was “okay.” Once it was over, Claire, in tears, said she wanted to see the other doctor instead, meaning the one who shows her the x-ray of her leg and talks to her about it.

    The “nice” doctor said her leg was fully healed, and gave her the green light to walk and jump and do whatever she wanted. After a nice bath back at home — her first real soaking bath in weeks — Claire spent a few hours getting comfortable walking on her leg. Eventually she was fine with it, if a little slow. I dropped her off at day care for a couple of hours towards the end of the day. When I went to pick her up again, she was in the play room playing a game called “fall down on the ground” with her best friend Catherine. The game involved repeatedly crashing down on the carpet and getting back up (on her healed leg) to do it again. This kid is okay!

    Here is Claire working the room with the “nice” doctor after her leg had been freed.

    “Intelligence”

    | patmcg

    Kit was reading Claire her books for bedtime tonight, when I heard Kit say, “Claire! Wow! I am so proud of you!” Usually Claire doe not get that reaction for simply listening to a story, so I was wondering what was gong on. Fortunately, Kit called me in and said that she was really proud of Claire. Claire explained, “I spelled a really big word!” Prompted for the word in question, Claire said she had spelled intelligence.

    What Claire had actually done was read the letters from a book, so in a sense she read the word rather than spelled it from memory, but still it was extremely surprising. We don’t normally work on spelling with Claire. She might have occasionally spelled very short words like cat. But apparently she has been paying attention in school, and now she seems to really know her letters, at least I, N, T, E, L, G, and C.

    Kid Hug

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    This afternoon when I picked up Claire from school, all the kids were running around and playing in the big indoors playroom like normal. Claire did not see me at first, but another kid saw me and said, “Claire, your Daddy is here!”. Then Claire ran over for a hug. I said, “Are you ready to go?”, which a split second later I realized was a mistake. What if she said no? Fortunately, Claire had only one request before leaving. “I want a hug from a kid.” Before I could ask her to expand on that idea, or perhaps suggest a particular kid, a slightly older girl who was in earshot ran over to Claire and gave her a nice big extended hug. Then Claire grabbed my hand, and we headed out the door. 

    This whole transaction had the feel of being set up, like Claire had gone to this other girl a few minutes earlier and said, “When my Daddy comes to get me, come over and give me a hug.  He is going to eat it up!”.  Well, it worked.