First Day of "School"

If Anna's first day of kindergarten is anything like this morning was, we'll have an interesting year, to be sure. Today was day one of "preschool" for Anna and Laura Kate. A few months ago I bought a school house calendar for the girls. It has the calendar, months, holidays, weather chart, the whole nine. It was only $12, so I picked it up. I just now got around to mounting it onto a cork board. I spent until 3 a.m. (I had a cappuchino from McDonald's at about 8 p.m...big mistake) getting the pieces that we needed for this morning laminated with contact paper. Not as easy as it looks. The rest I'll take to the teacher store and get laminated by the machine. I don't even want to see contact paper for a while.

Anyway, this morning after breakfast we started school. We had calendar time, where we sang the months of the year and days of the week in English and Spanish, we counted how many days were in the month of September, discussed Labor Day, and observed the weather for today. After that we had prayer time and a bible story. They colored corresponding coloring pages. Anna and I worked on letter sounds, beginning word sounds, and handwriting. We had taken a break and were just about to move on to numbers, when she started whining.

But, she is a smart little cookie. My expectations of her are so high. I hope we can both come to a middle ground and work from there. I'm excited to see how quickly and how well she'll pick up on the things we'll do...as I know she will. Aren't kids amazing? Their brains are like little sponges. And Laura Kate's is more like a steel trap. She's like an elephant, she never forgets.

Speaking of Laura Kate, she's doing well. She (and we) is tired of being stuck at home. Hopefully we can get her back to more strenuous activities soon. I think that will help take her mind off of the fact that we aren't going and doing as much as we're all used to. I also think the steroids are making her face swell. It's like her cheeks are on, er, steroids...I guess they are.

Justin and I enjoyed a few hours out yesterday. Our dear friend Nancy called up, unexpectedly, and offered to watch the girls while we got out of the house. We went to eat and catch a movie. We saw Traitor. It was decent. More than anything, we appreciated a little bit of time alone. The girls had fun as well. Nancy read to them, painted with them, and they all played Candy Land. When Nancy left, Anna said she was disappointed- "I wanted Ms. Nancy to stay the WHOLE day!" I'm sure that could be arranged at a later date :)