First Week of School: Complete

Here's Vivi's first day of school picture.  I wish I'd taken a better one, but we were in a hurry, so it is what it is!  She chose to wear her "school dress" for the first day.  I was very gratified.  

 We had driven by the school on Saturday and done a dry run of the drop-off, so I didn't feel bad driving by and sending her in on her own.

That is, I didn't feel bad until I pulled up past that satellite building and saw all the other kindergarten parents waiting outside the classroom with their children . . . My friend whose son is in Vivi's class texted me later that morning and told me Vivien had been crying a little when she walked in, but when I picked her up that day she was a right little ray of sunshine.  I think she would've cried whether I had walked her in or not.  Probably would've been worse if I had!  I think she was just nervous to do something new, but she is so ready for school she couldn't be nervous for long.  She absolutely loves it.  Every day I pick her up and she says, "Today was even better than the day before!"  Here we are waiting at the school for her to get out.  

She gives me very detailed reports of her days.  My favorite comment so far: "Mr. H controls P.E."  She is in heaven making a new friend every day.  She comes home and tells me their names and what she did with them.  There is a boy in her class that she was calling "Hiwi."  She said, "Like the book we got from the library!"

Vivien likes to draw the Hueys.

I like Oliver Jeffers books.  He's got these characters that are easy enough for a 6 year old to draw mixed in with gorgeous illustrations and his cool handwriting.  And he was raised in Ireland, so sometimes there are funny words in there too.  Like "boke" which is apparently the Irish word for dry heaving.

Vivi had pictures on Friday, so we gave her a haircut.  Her picture smile is going through a weird phase right now . . . 

Reminds me of this:

 I think I might be getting a little better at cutting her hair.  It still mega-stresses me out, but it's nice to save some money, and she always loves to have it short again.  You can see the layers well in this picture of her pouting.

 She was trying to play a game during stake conference today (we're singing I Believe in Christ at a peppy mm=106), but Annie wasn't cooperating.  I tried to convince her that helping Annie to be happy by changing her game a little so that Annie could have a fun time too would be choosing the right and make her feel good.  She didn't buy it.  So, I made her do it anyway and she threw a fit.

 Annie was unmoved, and unsportingly smug about getting her way.  How do you keep younger children from being spoiled?  There's no one to make them share with!

So hard to learn to play together.  Sometimes it's nice when we can just parallel play happily.     Notice Rafe's hands full of long pointy things.  The other day he played with a Tylenol syringe all day.  He called it his "boo-let gun."  Like bullet, but funnier.

 It's interesting to have Vivien at school all day.  There's definitely a different feel to the house.  The first day she was gone Rafe replaced her with a bike pump he carried around with him everywhere and referred to as "Tall Kid."

 It's been fun to watch him play with Annie more.

 And Merrick too.  I hate to say it, but there's a lot less fighting when Vivien's at school . . .

 Rafe got a haircut too.  He needed it.

 I don't love how it turned out.  It looks really cute when it will stay parted on the side, but it never stays parted on the side.

 Luckily he is a cute enough boy that he can get away with a funny haircut for awhile.  Here he is asking me if his face is clean.  I instituted a rule that they can't ask me if their faces are clean unless they are close enough to touch me, because I got tired of them asking me from across the room where I can't possibly tell.  He likes to clean his face himself, because apparently when I do it I let the damp washcloth touch his shirt and it gets him wet.  It's hard for me to not roll my eyes sometimes.

 Annie is being a potty training champ!  I still put her in a diaper at night,

but she is 100% successful during the day . . . as long as she is completely naked from the waist down. 

 Underwear is confusing to her, and it's tricky to get on (I realized this week that I've never made her dress herself in her life, so we're having to learn how to do that simultaneously.  Toddler proportions make dressing oneself very difficult!).

I hope we can get accustomed to underwear soon, because the tender skin on her little bottom is getting all irritated from direct contact with the scratchy carpet all day.  Also, there is GLITTER all over my house and therefore all over Annie's backside.  When she sits on her "baby toilet" she always leaves it a little more bedazzled than it was before.    

I also hope we can progress to the actual toilet soon.  I bought (and installed myself!) a nifty diaper sprayer for Merrick's cloth diapers now that he's eating solids, so that makes cleaning out the little chamber pot super easy, but Annie actually has a really hard time handling the sight of her excretions.  She'll hop off to show me she's gone in her baby toilet and then start gagging at the sight of it.  I think she'll benefit from the separation a toilet bowl full of water will afford her.  Enough poop talk.  Look!  Annie got a little haircut too.  All the pictures I take of her seem blurrier than they actually are because her fine hair is always in her eyes.  Well, no more!  Hello, Pretty Eyes.

Here are more pretty eyes.

 

 Merrick can sit up now.

 Which means he can join his siblings for bathtime . . .

. . . and reach even more things, like my skirt hem.

He can also roll quickly and purposefully, which means he can reach everything the kids leave on the floor.  Scraps of paper, little toys, scissors, library books.  Merrick can't keep himself from trying to eat all these dangerous things.  He's like a suicidal goat.  We have lost so many book pages to his grasping hands this week . . .

 But you can't be mad at him, because he's the sweetest little Fatso there's ever been.

I am making him a wall hanging for his room.  It is going to be Goodnight Gorilla themed.

 Some sad new for the week.  Sassafras is ill again.  His gills were all swollen and he's been very lethargic.  I came in the other day and he was throwing himself up on top of his Catappa leaf and laying there miserably for a few seconds before sliding back off into the water.  He's stopped eating and spends most of his time resting against the stems of his plant.  It makes me sad.  He was such a lively thing before.

2 things here at the bottom.  Annie's getting really good at talking, but there are still a couple words that crack me up.  My favorite this week is, "Close the doord!"

We were making shapes with our magnetic construction set the other day and talking about how shapes can be different depending on which way you look at them (square, diamond, etc.).  Vivien said, "A circle is always right no matter how you look at it."  It made me think about how "the course of the Lord is one eternal round." No matter who we are or how different our lives are from each other's, God's love and plan is the same for each of us.  I love this line from a talk my Uncle Rex gave at a family reunion on things he learned from my great grandma Woods: "Her conduct implied to me that the gospel essentials are few and simple at the core, and in the rest there is great latitude to include the customs and traditions of humanity."  Those few and simple gospel essentials are a circle, and they are the same no matter how you look at them!