quick post

Here's a quick pic of Parker reading to hold you over until I have time for a longer post. Parker is continuing to soak up school like a sponge. It's like there's not enough information out there for her to absorb.
Also notice her new favorite wardrobe item: boots. In this pic, she has them paired with shorts.

Emerging reader

Parker is soaking up Kindergarten like a sponge. They spend the first half of the day focusing on reading and writing, and she is becoming a great reader. Her new parlor trick to to pick up a book and start reading it....she still can only do simple words and has to do lots of sounding out, but she's very confident and is really enjoying knowing what signs and labels and words around her say. Her favorite thing is to read words, usually dialog, that have exclamation marks.
The days of spelling things out in front of her are fading. The other day at dinner I told Bob, "someone in Garland with Swine Flu D-I-E-D." and Parker said "SOMEONE DIED?" She said she figured it out by using the first and last letter sounds, and context clues.

Speaking of Swine Flu, or actually, the flu formerly know as Swine, we are bracing for it. There were hundreds of absences at the middle school last week, and at our doctor's visit (a followup on her reflux stomach issues) there were several kids being carried in and out by their parents, obviously quite sick. And if the flu doesn't get us, the school nurse said that lice is being passed around too. Flu sounds like less work.

The outcome of Parker's doc visit was that she's going to continue to take Prevacid for a while until she is totally symptom free, and then we'll try to ween her off. I'm not crazy about the idea of her being on medince long term, but the ped says that it's very safe and much prefered over having an inflmaed esophagus for long periods of time. We are also going to do a blood test for Celiac disease and something else just to cover all the bases. I hope the HIPAA police don't come after me for posting that. If anyone has any opinions on any of that, feel free to share them.

I'm expecting a super busy week, but I'll try to at least scan some artwork or something so my sister doesn't have to resort to watching zoo cams because there is nothing new on the blog.

Random pics from the week

For the first time in several days, I have a few minutes to blog. Bob found me a work (CAD) project for the next couple weeks, so most of my computer time has been spent doing that. My non computer time has been spent managing an overtired kid. Parker continues to be super needy and cranky in the afternoons on some days. I'm looking for ways to squeeze in more sleep time. I'm also having a neighborhood 6th grader come over twice a week to amuse Parker while I work and help me prep for the evening and next day by picking out pajamas and her school outfit. She's generally pretty happy as long as she's busy and/or the center of attention.

She has a lot of fun with 'her' camera. It's our old digital that works pretty well occasionally.

Today she completed a project she's been thinking about for a while....a painted box. She's been asking me for a box for a while, a PLAIN box to paint. Today she couldn't stand it any longer so I found her a box and she spent her time after school painting it. I have no idea what it's for....possibly a home for a stuffed animal. It's so fun to watch her so engrossed in things like painting and taking (and reviewing) pictures.

The big thing last week was the pep rally and football game. If you can believe it, those thing are actually on the average kindergartner's radar. (talk about indoctrination...) I was able to get out of taking Parker to the football game by taking her to the pep rally. Not that she has any interest in watching football, she just knows it's a big deal and 'everyone' goes. She enjoyed the pep rally and said her favorite part was the cheerleaders, which surprised me...I thought she'd like the drill team the best. ..I think we'll probably continue to go to them...wait, is there another one in 2 days? Maybe every other one. I've ordered a school shirt for her, and we're anxiously awaiting its arrival. She's VERY into her school colors of Red! Black! and White! (also a cheer)

Our (Bob's and my) big deal last week was our 20k race. It started and ended at the arboretum and went around White Rock lake and through the adjacent neighborhoods. It was a very pretty course and the rain had finally ended so we had clear skies and mild temps.
Bob did really well....7th in his age group, 27th over all. He had a sub-7min/mile pace. I was #62 in my AG, and #837 OA. It was WAY more crowded when I finished than when Bob did, haha. Luckily New Belgium was a sponsor, so he had beer to enjoy while waited for me to finish. Our friends Allie, Todd, Holly and that ran it too and it was fun hanging out with them afterward....although I think this was the 'before' picture.
(is it lame to post a proof of a picture? If so, I guess I'm lame)

Random Pictures - week review

Has it been a week already? The 4 day week last week really threw me off. We had a pretty boring week, not much new to report. Here are some blurbs on what Parker did in school this week from the teacher's weekly email:

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Academic Focuses

Math

Ask your child what the word “attribute” means. We have been discussing the different attributes of our button collection and of our parquetry blocks.

We our still enjoying exploring the many different manipulatives we will be using this year.

Writers Workshop

Stories are popping up in journals, we are learning to really think about real things that happen to us, and put our thoughts on paper as illustrations and words. We thought it was pretty special when Mrs. Foster took time to come read in our journals!

Science: Magnets

We took magnets outside to see if we could find anything that would be attracted to a magnet (I was reminded by the students it meant it had iron in it). The biggest thrill was when our magnets stuck to the school bus! Children were busy recording the results.

Language/Arts

We are busy practicing becoming independent readers using a great resource called “The Daily Five”. This takes lots of practice and we are building stamina (ask your child the meaning of this new vocabulary word) so we can read longer each day by ourselves. They are very proud of their accomplishments this week and so am I!

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Parker really struggled with being tired this week...which means lots of whining and crying and unreasonable arguments. She was especially grumpy and mad at me on Thursday so she got a post it out to 'journal' about her bad day. She started out by drawing a house....OUR house. Luckily she calmed down before she added a picture of me sending her to her room. When she calmed down a bit, she started adding lots of other parts, and told me she was doing "el-ab-or-ation. Adding details!" Nice to know she's absorbing what they're doing in school.

Random picture: getting a haircut last weekend at Bob's parent's house courtesy of Gigi. It was just a trim, but I had her do the bangs just short enough that they'll pull out of her ponytail after a little while and make the pretty curls around her face. She hasn't seemed to notice...as long as it's all pulled back ("not poofy!") in the morning when she looks in the mirror, she's happy.

Here's a better picture of the volunteer angel trumpet/moon flower.

We've had a ton of rain the past few days. It's very welcome, but I'm getting a little tired of it. A fun thing we did today when we were stuck inside was to watch the preying mantis that lives on the gardenia. He's been there most of the summer, and he's getting bigger and bigger. He was sitting there today in the rain enjoying his front row seat to the hummingbird wars. I have 2 feeders and 4 hummingbirds and they fuss and fight and zoom around ALL DAY LONG. If everyone would just relax and take turns, they wouldn't need to consume so many calories. If i would move the feeders farther apart, it would be harder for 1 bird to try to guard both feeders, but what would be the fun in that (for me)?

Garden update

Here's a quick garden update. It's so hard to update the garden progress....by the time I get the pictures taken, uploaded and the post written, we've eaten the stuff in the pictures, and something new has started growing.

This isn't in the garden, but in one of the new flower beds. It's one of last year's angel trumpets....or maybe it's a moon flower. It popped up on it's own....I guess the seeds found their way across the yard last year. The stems are a super pretty dark purple, and the flowers are light purple on the inside, dark on the outside. It's a very striking plant.

Fall yellow squash (from seed) is starting to produce. It's 3 times that big now....I'm picking it tomorrow.

The Japanese eggplant is still hanging in there, along with the beautiful giant zinnias. We ate the eggplant on tuesday in a pasta-veggie stir fry.

The cucumbers are still totally insane. It covers my entire bamboo teepee. Next year I need to plant a LESS PROLIFIC cucumber. I bet I have 5 out there that will be ready tomorrow, and no end in site. Would a bush-type plant be a better choice for next year I wonder? My bush canteloupes did not do well, so I'm hesitant to try it.

I also noticed 3 tiny (golf ball sized) pumpkins today....no pictures yet. The plant is supposed to be 'compact', but we'll see. I'm pretty sure I'll have fall tomatoes and string beans, possibly kale, maybe jalapeno and doubtfully zucchini. why can I never grow zucchini? Oh, and about 100 poblano peppers, all ready for harvest at the same time.

Family Portrait Drawing, 2nd week review

The 2nd week of school went pretty much like the first week with a few more bumps. We had 1 major morning meltdown over clothing (nothing felt right) and one horrendous evening of one meltdown after another because of being overtired (I think).
Parker had her first 'cafeteria food' this week and that went smoothly. Considering she's accustomed to just unpacking a lunch, going through a line and picking everything out is a big deal, but she insisted she could do it and I guess she did. She chose a corn dog, cantaloupe and black beans.

Here's a family picture she drew the 2nd day of school. Bob's smile is concealed by his beard.

In case you are wondering, this is how our school district is approaching the Obama speech issue that everyone is losing their minds over:

From the Office of the Superintendent

The President of the United States will conduct a live web cast on Tuesday, September 8. The Department of Education has billed this as a “Back to School” Speech and the department website has provided some activities that a teacher could choose to do with his/her students. Many of the activities seem appropriate for a lesson in civics. However, the will not participate in the live web cast on Tuesday September 8 for the following reasons:

· District teachers have done collaborative planning in advance and the notice we received on this speech is inadequate for us to incorporate it into meaningful

lessons

· Since the speech is live, we are unable to receive a copy of the text in advance which handicaps a teacher to prepare a meaningful lesson

· It would be rare that the same resource would be equally appropriate for a Kindergarten student and a senior in high school. Since we do not have details on the content, we do not have the information to determine the grade level and/or subject matter to which it is best aligned

· If we access as a web cast, we do not have sufficient bandwidth to get a clean audio and video program. We actually learned this last November when our volleyball team state playoff game was web cast during school

· At this time of the school year, I am unwilling to allow any activity that may have little benefit, but could serve as a distraction to the core mission of the school. Whether the President’s words to our students have a political tone or not, this address has already become politicized and could serve as a distraction in our schools.

Therefore, we will not web cast the speech on Tuesday, but we will download it and review it to determine if it does have any valuable instructional benefit. In the event that we choose to use any of the speech at any level K-12, parents will receive advance notice and your son/daughters will be able to choose an alternate assignment and opt out of the speech.
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In other news, I'm sad to report, it appears we are ballet school dropouts. Remember the meltdown evening I mentioned earlier? That was the day we were supposed to go to ballet. She told me in hysterical sobs that she didn't want to go to ballet anymore, that it was too hard and too soon after getting home from school and that she'd prefer to just do her own 'homeschool' practice. So we stayed home. Not the usual way I'd handle something like that, but...you've heard the phrase "you can lead a horse to water...."? Well and even more impossible task is putting a bawling 5 year old into lycra tights. We're going to give it another week just to make sure, but I think her mind is made up. It didn't seem hard, but it is right after school and I can totally understand why she'd just want to stay home after a long day of school. She used to love to put on her ballet stuff and dance around, so hopefully she'll keep that up.

Shoe Tying and first week review

We made it through the first week of school. It was the easiest week I've had in a LOOOOONG time. During preschool, the first week back was a big adjustment....Parker would come home and flop on the couch and need lots of down time. And it didn't change all that much as the school year went along. For some reason, now, she energized and ready for more action when she gets home. She needs a big snack, but is ready to play with friends immediately....unlike last year when she needed a good hour to recover.

We had a huge breakthrough this weekend in shoe tying. She LOVES her running shoes and has been very frustrated that she can't tie them....and she's very easily frustrated when trying to learn. Apparently, I have not been letting her watch enough tv...because that's how she put it all together. She was watching Little Bill (a Bill Cosby creation) and they showed Little Bill learning to tie his shoes. Bob said Parker came running into the room and said "I wanna try something" and got it on her first try, including remembering the rhyme.
The audio is low, so here's what she's saying:

One little loop,
what do you do?
Wrap it around,
then pull it through.
Now you have a bow
and you tied your shoe!


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Kindergarten - First day - last part

So we all loaded up and headed off for the big drop off. There were tons of parents...we had to park 'off road' in a field.





So we go in and Parker's teacher shows her where to hang her backpack and where to put her lunch box. This will be her routine every day I guess.

She was the only one at her table that had arrived, and I was a little worried about that....her being willing to sit alone while everyone else trickled in, but she was fine. We gave her hugs and kisses. And then more hugs and kisses and she sort of gave us a look like "ok, that's enough. Get out of here before I cry". So we did one more hug and kiss and hit the road.

At the appointed time, I went and picked her up in the carpool loop. She seemed a little drained, but said she liked it and had a good day. She was very hungry and had a granola bar, sun chips and 2 things of peaches. I need to figure out a filling snack that won't spoil her dinner. Maybe we'll try popcorn tomorrow. Hopefully her calorie management will even out soon.

When we got home she learned her best friend had ridden the bus home and she had a huge meltdown. Might have just been a bit of a stress release, but she is VERY anxious to ride the bus. All the kids here ride the bus to and from school....and I intend to let her, just not the FIRST DAY. It's a very sore subject. Parker's friend did ride the bus TO SCHOOL her first day...got right on the bus with her sister and her parents couldn't convince her otherwise. They had to get in the car and follow the bus to school so they could walk her in and do their traditional pictures!

She's also very interested in 'cafeteria food' and what it is and how you get it. Right now she's taking her lunch, but I can see letting her get cafeteria food once a week or so. None of it looks all that healthy to me....but I guess I can replace my junk for their junk once a week.

So it was a lot of buildup...but you only have one first day of Kindergarten, and I think we soaked it up and got the most out of it.

Kindergarten - First Day - part 2

Parker's first day of Kindergarten FINALLY arrived. Aside from a few minutes of hysteria when she was overtired over the weekend, she is really ready to get started. She had a good breakfast and got dressed in the outfit she picked out. We loaded up her lunch and her backpack and went out front for the customary picture.

She wasn't complaining about her shoes....but she didn't like the way her socks looked, and she was walking like a duck. I think they might be a little big. We we did a shoe change.

I've been hesitant to let her wear her 'running shoes' since she can't tie them....but then we figured out that we could double knot them and they'd be fine. Duh. She doesn't take them off, so it doesn't matter that she can't untie them w/out help either.

Take two. The official photo:

At Meet the Teacher, Parker's teacher read us The Kissing Hand - a story about a little raccoon's first day of school. His mother kisses the palm of his hand and tells him that if he misses her during the day, to just press this palm against his cheek, and it would be like a kiss from her. The teacher requested that we do this with our kids before school. Parker really enjoyed the idea of kisses from us on her palms. She'd get extras and put her arms around herself for hugs.

The rest on part 3

Kindergarten - 1st day - part 1

You might have to click on the picture to see it larger...as it grows, the size it uploads shrinks. Next year I'll have to start a new row I guess.
Parker has grown a TON since last year, hasn't she? She's possibly even taller than she seems in the pictures....she was leaning against the door.
All went well today. No tears or drama....and Parker handled it well too, haha. I'll post a blow by blow report tomorrow when I have more time. I used my extra free time today to enjoy menu planning and a trip to the grocery store without help or company. Tomorrow is Target and Costco! Whoohoo.

The day before

'Twas the night before Kindergarten and all through the house...
a small creature was stirring
and tossing and turning
and giggling and talking
and asking questions
and full of energy when she should be sleeping.

I realize that doesn't rhyme. Maybe Holly will whip up a rhyming diddy and post it in the comments.
Parker is super excited about the big day tomorrow. Yesterday around bedtime she was VERY anxious.....I made the mistake of bringing it up during story reading and she totally fell apart. Today she had a bit of a stomach ache and some reflux troubles, most likely from not eating....which I relate to anxiety about school starting, but maybe it was just a fluke.

We have our outfit all picked out and road tested (she can snap the snaps on the pants, and the shoes have velcro....we are still a few days away from being able to tie shoelaces). It's not the one in the photo below, that one was one that I did when we had a little 'fashion show' earlier in the week. I had her put on several outfit combination so she could see what can go together and I'm going to print them out so she'll have a little 'look book' of her outfits.
Yes really.
I'm trying to avoid the situation where she has only 2 things she'll wear.

After my last post, I got the following comment about our clothing battles:
"Do not make Parker dress like everyone else..."
but you don't understand, it's not ME making her dress this way. She has completed a detailed analysis of what 'big girls' (i.e. older girls....3rd-6th graders) wear, and she has determined that it is:

1. hair in low ponytail (not high, must be low)
2. jeans
3. tshirts
4. flip flops

This is a fine uniform except it's hard to find (non-babyish) shirts to fit her and it will be too hot for jeans for a while, and she can't wear flip flops to school.

At least the hair part will be easy.

Tune in tomorrow afternoon for the first day pictures and the day's recap!

(ps, I've removed the black nail polish, she has a sensible pink on there now)

Getting ready for school / Meet The Teacher

School starts on Monday! Parker is very excited, but also very anxious about it. Although we've been doing little things to get ready for the big day....we're still not nearly ready.

I've put a big calendar on the fridge and we put apple stickers on important school days, ballet stickers on ballet days, etc. She marks off the days and it helps us count down to special events.

We got a new backpack and new lunchbox, in her new favorite color, blue. Also notice the pj pants and tank top...her new favorite pajama combination. She has 2 pairs of these and wants to wear them ALL THE TIME.

Tonight was Meet The Teacher. Bob came home early from work to attend. Parker changed clothes 3 times before she came up with the right outfit. I'm still super stressed about what she's going to wear to school. She wants to wear jeans 24/7 (when she's not wearing pj pants), but it will be way too hot for jeans to start with, so I have no idea what type of bottom she's going to wear. She has many pairs of capri pants....but I'd have to tranquilize her to get her in them I think.

Her teacher is nice, Parker likes her, and she has many years of experience with 4 and 5 year olds. When we first got there, they took the kids on a tour of the school and the parents met with the teacher. She went over some of the basic info and the parents went around the room and introduced themselves and said if this was their first kindergartener, or last, or whatever. 2 moms got weepy (not me!). There are 3 other parents from our neighborhood....but they all have boys. Parker returned from the tour looking pretty shaken. The teacher had everyone do a dance, but Parker just stood there sort of frozen. She'll snap out of it, but it might take her a few days (weeks?). At her table are 2 boys and another girl. The other little girl was sobbing the entire time and was glued to her mom...not good. There are more girls in the class than boys, and many of the girls have gender-neutral names like Parker does. Hopefully she'll find a buddy quickly.

Part of the evening's events was for the kids to put away their schools supplies. Instead of running around buying everything, you could order supplies from the PTA back a few months ago. I COULD HAVE SWORN I DID THIS. But apparently not. Our package of supplies wasn't there, and I can't find the canceled check...so even if i did order them, I haven't been charged for them, so I'm moving on and hitting Target first thing tomorrow to get what I can. It looks pretty standard, and a lot of it is communal stuff, and then we'll pop in and drop it off tomorrow afternoon. Not even the first day and I've already dropped the ball, created chaos, and put us behind the 8 ball. Not a good way to start things, but hopefully it will all work out. It will all work out, right?

Back to Ballet

A couple months ago Parker announced that she was ready to go back to ballet lessons. I'm not sure why she took a break, but she has been happy just to put on her ballet stuff and dance around the house up until now. Of course she had grown out of everything except for her ponytail holder, so we made a trip to the fancy dance store and had her re-outfitted. She was thrilled of course.

We've switched studios to one closer to home. It's not your normal dance place either, it's a serious ballet conservatory, whatever that means. I got very nervous at the beginning of her first lesson when I heard the teacher explaining that they are to answer "Oui, Madam" instead of "yes ma'am" .

But Parker loved it and did really well. There is definitely a no-nonsense approach at this studio, but Parker loves a structured teaching environment. At the end of her class, the next class had accumulated in the lobby...little girls probably ages 7-9 all decked out in their ballet gear w/ their hair in buns. Parker loved seeing the 'older ballerinas'.

In addition to the usual spring recital they get to participate in the city production of The Nutcracker at Christmas. I was thrilled about this....until I saw the dates of the production. It's the same day as the White Rock Marathon/Half Marathon that Bob and I usually run. So things that weekend should get very interesting.

Granbury Visit

Last weekend we did a short trip out to Granbury to visit Parker's Gigi and Papa. Here, it was raining and icky, but out there it was nice and sunny. Luckily we decided to take our swimsuits, since Parker spent a lot of time floating in the lake. I was a little surprised that she still wanted to swim even though her cousins weren't there, but she did and had a ball.

Tap Dancing on the raft

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First ride on the jet ski

Up until now, she was adamant that she didn't want to ride the jetski. Apparently they talked her into it if Gigi drove and went very very slow. (I was napping)

10 minutes into the ride home

She looks really red here. She had a tiny bit of sunburn, but the car was really hot when we got in too and she gets super red when hot.

Today's project

This will make my mom happy.
Today I organized part of the pantry. I hadn't cleaned or organized it since we moved in 5 years ago, but I though I'd go ahead and do it whether it needed it or not.

I am VERY space challenged with this pantry, so I'm going to confine my purchases to just what will fit in my bins.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the top half done. Stay tuned.