holy crap she's growing up

When Olivia was born, all of a sudden Emma seemed like such a big girl.  She started to look less like a little girl and more like a grown up girl!  I thought it was just because we had a teeny infant in the house and it was just my imagination.

And then we got this today:

 In the words of my sister:  'OMG She looks so much older!!  I don't like it!!'

it's been awhile

Who knew having a baby would put a damper on blogging??  Mostly it's about not having the energy to blog.  Lots of stuff has been going on, but I hadn't uploaded pictures or anything.  Today I finally got around to reorganizing my pictures and updating my 365 projects of Emma and Olivia.

Olivia's growing and now she's starting to outgrow the preemie diapers!  We gave her her first bath last week and she really didn't care for it.  A couple of days later though I discovered she loves being in the shower.  I plug the drain and put her foam bath mat in there and lay her down covered with a washcloth to keep her warm.  She just lays there and looks around calm as can be.  Unfortunately she's had a stuffy nose (courtesy of Emma and I) this week so I've been putting her in the shower with me to get some of the boogers out.  Thankfully, she doesn't mind it too much.

Emma's been busy too!  Last week she was VIP at school.  Every week a student in class is chosen to be VIP.  They bring pictures to class that they can share with the class and they are 'interviewed' about their favorite things and such.  They also get to be line leader and they feel very important.  Her friends in the other kinder classes were all very excited for her.

For Halloween the school does a pumpkin run.  The kids gather pledges and then run ten laps.  If their class earns enough to meet their class goal they win a pizza party.  It's the school's biggest fundraiser and this year they raised over $38,000!  Emma's class met their goal so they'll have their pizza party.  She's very excited!

We spent the morning at the school cheering on all the kinder classes since we have friends in each class.  They were so cute running around the pumpkin track!  Most of them started out gung-ho, but then after a couple of laps started getting tired.  Emma actually ran the whole ten laps!

Autumn

Kai

Emma's Class Ready to Run

Running like the wind!

family fun night....oh yes it was

Emma's school held a Family Fun Night last week.  It's a little fundraiser for the 6th grade science camp.  They have some carnival style games, food, bakery goodies and other fun stuff.  I invited my niece and nephew and they brought my sister and my parents stopped by too.

They tried out some games.

 Emma is not a natural when it comes to holding a golf club, but she did get a hole in one!

Thanks to his rigorous hockey training Dominic is much better at holding the golf club.

Chloe decided against golf and showed us her mad sliding skills.  She was so proud of herself when my sister got there she ran over and said 'Mama!!  Watch me!!'

The carnival games lost their appeal for a brief time when they decided playing on the playground was a much better idea.

Afterwards we went over to Hanami for some sushi.  Dominic was worn out.

 But a good time was had by all!  And the school raised a little over $5,000 that night!  Pretty impressive when you think that for $5 you got 25 tickets and all the games took just one ticket.  Yay Science Camp!

teach what you know

With Emma starting kindergarten I knew that some things would change, but I thought those changes would be more about me.  She went to preschool so it’s not like this is the first time she’s been away from home for a few hours and as far as she’s concerned that was school so to her, kindergarten isn’t that new of a thing.  So I thought it would mostly be me adjusting to this new 5 hour block of ‘free’ time I would have and the idea that my baby now goes to ‘big kid’ school.

And for the most part it’s been that way.  We’re getting used to getting up earlier every morning (we’re both kind of late sleepers), packing lunch, eating breakfast in a timely manner and walking to school.  We meet up with our friends who live nearby and I get to chat with them on the way home.

What I didn’t think about is that despite the fact that there’s only 20 kids in her class, she now has contact with the other kinder classes as well so she’s observing and absorbing attitudes from 79 other kids.

The charming parts are things like meeting a new friend in her class whose name is Jasmine.  She told us, “there’s a girl named Jasmine in my class!  She’s in real life, not in the movies!”  Of course, the other friend she has named Jasmine is in Disney’s Aladdin.

But then there’s the other things that I knew would be a part of elementary school life, but I just didn’t think it would happen in kindergarten.  Maybe because it’s been 30 years since I was there myself.  A boy in her class is quite overweight.  When Ray picked Emma up from school on Friday she told him how the other kids were making fun of him at lunch.  She told him ‘But I like him just the way he is.’

It occurred to me that while we’ve always told her that saying someone is ‘fat’ is not a nice thing to say we’ve never really explained that commenting on someone’s weight is not nice too.  We usually say ‘chubby’.  Since she pretty much has no more baby fat (and hasn’t since she was about 8 months old) when we tickle her tummy or squeeze her cheeks we would say we were pinching the chubs.  I’ve said how Mama has chubs or Ray will say he has chubs and we’ve never said it in a mean way.  When she says it, she’s not saying it to be mean, she’s just calling it like it is.

Then the other thought in my mind is how the mean spirited teasing has already begun.  Ugh.  You want to protect your children from everything without clipping their wings.  You want them to be able to stand up for themselves or let it roll off their backs without affecting them, but it’s hard.  It’s hard leaving her there every day hoping that she’ll have a good day and be a good girl.  That she won’t come back to me hurt.

I read an article yesterday about a French company, Jours Apres Lunes who have designed a line of lingerie for girls aged 4-12.  They called it loungerie as they say it is a mixture of lingerie and loungewear.  While that is disturbing to me, why do 4 year olds need bras and panties that look like sexy lingerie, what is most awful was the ad that shows some girls laying back wearing the loungerie and pearls bed headed or sporting sunglasses looking very adult.  To me, it’s fodder for pedophiles.  It was disgusting.

A friend of mine sent me this article after she saw my post on Facebook about the kiddie lingerie.  I couldn’t agree more.  And what can we do?  The best thing is to do my best with my daughters.  To teach them to be respectful to the people they come in contact with and to themselves.  To be confidant and strong, but not so much that the fall into arrogance.  To be compassionate.  To be heard.  To be fun.

Good luck to me.

baby’s growing up

Despite my wishes.

Today is Emma’s first day of school.  Yesterday around 2:30 she asked me if it was time for her to go to bed because she really wanted to go to school.  Today she woke up and was all ready to go.  Asked me every few minutes if it was time to leave.  We finally got dressed, got her lunch packed, ate breakfast and headed out.

Along the way we discovered our neighbors a few houses down were headed to their first day of kindergarten too!  A few blocks away we caught up with Autumn and her entourage.

Their first steps onto school grounds as students!

All the girls together!  Tashi (on the end) is Emma’s adopted little sister.  Her brother Kai started kindergarten today too (but he wouldn’t pose for pictures) but Tashi doesn’t start preschool for a couple of weeks.  However, she was there today with her backpack to send everyone off!

And here it is, time to go in.  She didn’t even look back!  *sigh*  All grown up.

Why My Husband is Rad

Did anyone know that registering for Kindergarten was such a pain the ass?  You should have told me.  Really, that was rude of you.

Maybe it's just in our area.  Apparently, the elementary school that we live .5 miles away from is the most coveted of public elementary schools around so people will drive their kids in from other districts, lie, cheat and steal in order to get their kid a spot here.

You would think that living .5 miles it would be no big deal for us to get Emma registered.  You would be wrong.  First, I have to navigate the packet of paperwork I have to fill out and have ready and waiting on registration day.  Then on Tuesday night I have to camp out at the school to be at least one of 80 people ready at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning to get a date and time stamp for registration.  Yes, I will be spending the night in front of the school.  To register.  For Kindergarten. 

Our first and hopefully only hiccup was proof of a negative TB test.  When Emma had her 4 year check up the doctor told us that we could do the TB test then and it would be good for her kindergarten registration.  We got it done in June and they require a TB test 18 months before entering school.  June 2010 to August 2011 = 14 months < 18 months, right?  I thought so.

Thanks to JeNae's suggestion I went in to the school office today with all my paperwork to make sure everything was in order.  I was informed everything was great except the TB test.  The TB test needed to be done within 6 months.  The secretary then paraphrased the paperwork for me in a way that completely got me thinking I was an idiot and couldn't read because I swore I had read over that form 8 times to make sure I had all my stuff ready.

For those of you in the know, for about the entire month of February Emma was fighting an infection and it sucked.  She was on antibiotics for 20 out of the 28 days of February and halfway through that she had to get a booster shot of antibiotics to try to get rid of the infection.  The shot is very painful and is mixed with kind of a numbing agent because it is so painful.  Emma HATED it and ever since then has been super afraid of needles.  We had to get a flu shot this last week and that sucked big time.  The idea of taking Emma in to get another TB test just about had me in tears.

But that's not really the worst part.  This is the worst:  Emma is standing by the counter with me, not really paying attention.  The school nurse checks over the immunizations and asks about the TB shot.  The secretary says 'she's going to get another one.'  The nurse says, okay and leans down to Emma and says 'You're going to have a long needle do a long poke and make a little bubble in your arm.  It's not so bad!'  Instantly, Emma is hysterical with tears.  I said to the nurse, 'Could you please not do that?!  She's really afraid of needles!'

I swear, I wanted to do physical harm to this woman.  Why would you say that to a 4 year old child?!  There are adults who don't want to hear they have to get a long needle poked into their arm!  I was in disbelief.  But I knew Emma was going to go to this school and I didn't want her forever remembered as the kid whose mom killed the school nurse.  I think that would probably go on her permanent record.

So I took 15 minutes to console her and get her off to preschool where she finally stopped crying, but I could see she was completely stressed about the shot.  When I got home I checked the paperwork again and this is what it says:

• 'Also, Santa Clara County requires that all new Kindergarten students have documentation of a TB test given no more than 18 months before entering school. (All other students coming from out of Santa Clara County) must show proof of a TB test no more than 6 months before entering the district.

That is exactly how it is typed out, boldface and all.  Emma has never lived anywhere outside of Santa Clara County.  So she should qualify as an 18 monther.  I gathered the paperwork again and asked Ray to go over to the school and please try to fix this.

Basically what they tell him is that the test must be taken within 18 months of entering a mandatory grade level and since Kindergarten is considered optional it doesn't count so it must be within 18 months of her entering 1st grade.  What????  That doesn't even make sense!  And that is NOT what it says on the paperwork.  They say that the paperwork comes from the district so they themselves don't have any say in how things should be worded.  Ray tells them that he wants confirmation from the district that Emma has to get another TB shot.  If she does, not problem we'll go get it, but if she doesn't then we're not going to get her poked unnecessarily.  About an hour later the school calls and leaves a message on his voicemail telling him that Emma's TB shot is fine and we don't need to get another one.  He saved the voicemail.

And that, my friends, is why my husband is rad.