Starting School

Tuesday was Callia's first day of Kindergarten at Hugh Mercer Elementary. Her teacher's name is Ms. Jones, who is a seemingly sweet and quite professional black woman who has apparently been teaching for about 30 years, according to Barbara down the street, who we met at the bus stop Tuesday afternoon. Anyhow, so far so good with school for Callia, although she has only gone for two days. Today she didn't go because she had some kidney tests down at VCU Medical Center and an appointment with the urinologist, which thankfully went quite well.


Comments Callia had about her first day of school:

While sitting in the car waiting to be dropped off at the curb:
"I don't want to go to school, Mommy, I think I just will miss you and I want to stay with you"

After school referring to my promise that someone would be there to hold her hand and help her to class:
"Nobody held my hand and I just had to walk down the hall and find my class where they pointed."

"I made a friend on the bus" "I don't know what her name is" "The bus driver was very very mad and yelling a lot" "Me and my friend were being quiet while the other kids were yelling when the bus driver got mad" "She was just yelling and yelling and yelling"

"I made a friend in class and her name is Clair"

"The B-I-B-L-E yes that's the book for me....we sang that song in class today"


So overall to me it sounds like a pretty rough start and I'm a bit concerned about how harsh her bus driver is. I'm sure Callia will be able to adjust but I'm not sure that I want her to get used to that kind of situation...I'll have to think about that for a bit. Running back and forth to pick her up and drop her off will be difficult especially once the weather starts getting cold and I'll have to bundle Thad and strap him into the car seat....ugh! We'll see. Callia's view so far is that school is good, despite all the negative comments. I think that in general she shared with me the things that she thought were bad and not so many of the things she thought were good, since she would probably consider good to be normal. Hopefully. Thank goodness she is a good communicator. What do parents do when there child isn't? I'd be out of my mind with worry.

Thanks Uncle Brent

Went down to MCV for Callia to get some tests done and Brent met us there. While we were hanging out in the garden and "lawn" of the Museum of the Confederacy next to the hospital he convinced Callia to let me take her picture by getting in the picture with her! Yay! So here are some long overdue pictures of Callia:In the picture above they are sitting on the anchor chain of the Merrimac, and below is our dear sweet Callia posing on a shaft from the same ship. I love this picture:
And one with Thad, too:

I think it'd be nice to actually visit this museum sometime. I'll probably need to wait until these little angels are a little older, though. :)

Rocks are fun...

...but tomatoes...





...are more fun!

Wrinkles for the Brain

Thaddeus especially enjoyed the watermelon, and used it as a learning experience on the subject of how liquids work. Apparently, you can't eat watermelon juice with a fork.


Maybe I should be directing him a little more, though...

Watermelon Eating Technique

So I cut up one of the watermelons that I grew in the garden and it was delicious!

Bedtime Snuggles

Thaddeus is such a snuggler. Tonight we were having a hard time getting him to bed and I think it was because he was just a little low on snuggling. He had a lot of good play time with me today and it was a great day, but when Nathan went to put him to bed and I went to put Callia to bed, Thaddeus just cried and cried like we were killing him. I put Callia to bed, which is not a short process, and as I came down her stairs and still heard Thad crying, I decided to see if Nathan needed any backup. I opened the door and he was leaning over the crib rubbing Thad's back and trying to get him to lay down, but Thad was just a tearful, boogery, sobbing mess. So with Nathan's permission I picked him up and held him. Then when Nathan was going to leave the room Thad was very upset about that, so Nathan stayed in the room and paced around. We went through several rounds of throwing the blanket on the floor and fussing and getting put back in the crib and crying and being picked back up and crying a little less and then getting mad about something and starting over. I think it takes a while once he gets upset for him to realize that I am in for the long haul and I am going to be there for him as long as he needs me. At some point Nathan decided to go ahead and leave which temporarily made things worse. But at the end of the next "round" when I picked him up, he snuggled into my shoulder with his blanket, didn't scream when I sat down in the rocking chair, and we rocked together comfortably. I kissed the top of his little head and the back of his little hand which was on my shoulder. He pushed the back of his hand back onto my lips for another kiss. Then again and again, and I must have kissed his hand two dozen times. Then I started kissing his little fuzzy head again and must have kissed his head a few dozen times as well. I squeezed him and he "sang" a song that went "uuuuUUUHhh....uuuuUUUHhh....dada..dada...dada..daDA...daduuuuhda" and rubbed his face on me and got a few more kisses on top of his head. After about ten minutes he was ready to be put in bed. He didn't seem any closer to being asleep than he was when we started, but I guess he had been thoroughly snuggled and was secure enough to lay down and try to sleep.

Summer Reading

Callia is going to be starting Kindergarten soon and we have gone to the library to get books from the summer reading list for rising kindergartners. Corduroy was on the list and I remember it being one of my favorites when I was little!