Thing-A-Day 2011...It's Alive!

Well, February 1st is here, and you know what that means...it's Thing-A-Day! I'll be posting links to my projects over there on the right, but you really should go to the main site and take a look at all the cool things that people are doing. It's definitely an inspiration.

Today, I was a little lazy -- just detail on the sweater I was already working on. Actually, I don't think "lazy" describes my state, so much as exhausted. I spent a few hours with Paul's fourth grade class today (Teacher Appreciation Day), and knitting a few inches is really all I have left in me. Honestly, I don't know how Miss Hall does it day in and day out.

Things I learned about 4th graders today:

1. The boys and the girls do not sit together at lunch. Duh.

2. The girls coordinate their tag day (out of uniform) outfits. It entails a lot of discussion.

3. No one wants to sing. Again, duh.

End of an era

Our family has been part of the Cheverly Weekday Nursery/Mother's Day Out family for the past seven years. Both Paul and Maggie attended nursery school and summer sessions in these programs, which have been running for 30 years (give or take). WDN/MDO is an institution in Cheverly, and we've been very happy to be part of it. Today, we're done.

I remember carrying Maggie through the halls in her carseat as we delivered Paul to preschool. I remember how terribly excited Maggie was to get her chance to stay at school (how could she run off without even kissing me goodbye?!) even as Paul would sob and cling to me when it was time to begin class. I remember the days spent with other parents painting murals in the hallways to enliven otherwise drab areas that the kids & teachers use. We had fun creating the first concert series last year, and our favorite parts of each holiday season have been the Halloween parade and the Christmas pageant. I don't know how many cookies I've baked for WDN/MDO over the past seven years, but I suspect that number is in the thousands.

Today was Maggie's last day at WDN. She's now an official graduate of preschool (with a diploma to prove it), ready for the rigors and challenges of kindergarten. And that ends an era for our family. I'll miss seeing the very capable, creative, compassionate teachers whom I have come to count as friends over the years. I'll miss the murals in the hallways. I'll miss the countless art projects. I know she's ready for new challenges, but it seems like these years have gone by so fast. Too fast, really. We don't have a very young child any longer. We have two elementary school kids. The door to very special time of our lives closed at 12:15pm today. I'm sad. I'm happy. I'm all sorts of things. I guess that, most of all, I'm delighted at the thought of what's next on the horizon.

This. That. The Other.

We've had two weekends in a row of school extravaganzas...the school year must be (at long last) coming to an end!

First, Cheverly Weekday Nursery's Truck Touch, in which the children touch the trucks and honk the horns and eat the hot dogs and hamburgers and cookies and...and...and... Liz and I whrrled the event, which was pretty cool. You can follow the story here.

This past Saturday, Paul's school hosted its Annual Fun Day, which was -- for many a dad -- more fun than usual, due to the presence of the Redskins cheerleaders (Redskinettes? I dunno.) They were giving mini cheerleading camps, and Maggie was right in the mix. There were a lot of very attentive dads once they figured out what was going on...and some of them didn't even have kids doing the mini camp.

Paul was at both of these events, but he, in what seems to be 2nd grader mode (judging by his friends) was extraordinarily free range, visiting us only for infusions of tickets. He came home with a lot of crap from both events. Have you ever noticed that attending school fairs is much like taking a day trip to NYC? You come with money, but 30 minutes later it's all gone and you have no recollection of where it went. Maybe I need to get to New York more often and school fairs less often...

I think Paul has taken stories of hell to heart during religious studies at school. He really gets the detail. Not sure what this has to do with anything, but there it is.

Sigh. School.

Paul started school on Tuesday... School seems fine, except that I've already learned that Paul is having difficulty focusing in 2nd grade (when asked, he told me that he's having a really hard time not thinking about the pool...I can't blame him.) Also, when checking through his work yesterday, I came across "wiski" (known to grown-ups as "whiskey") as his "w" word. How, you may ask, did I know what he was trying to spell? I asked. He told me it's "something that Daddy likes to drink." He's wrong. Mommy likes to drink whiskey. Daddy likes beer.

But my real problem? Maggie starts preschool in 30 minutes. She's excited but nervous, as evidenced by the increase in crying jags, potty accidents and an unwillingness to eat breakfast. I know she'll have a great time and she's certainly ready for it, but I can't believe she's already this big! This was my 6 lb. baby. Now she's going to school? How in the world did that happen?

There should be some magic wand that will, whenever you want, take you back to when your children were tiny babies and you spent the days (and nights) holding their little sleeping bodies on your chest while listening to them breathe and counting their fingers and toes over and over to make sure everything was there. When your kids are that small, it's impossible to soak up all the details you're going to want to remember when they're going off to nursery school, or second grade, or college.