Chloe, the jaded 3rd grader who didn’t want me to take her photo because it wasn’t cool.
Both girls had good first days. Sophie saw lots of familiar faces from last year. Chloe is in a class with lots of kids she’s never seen before. And to top it all off, she’s in a new school!
Chloe’s impressed with her homeroom teacher, who is “really young.” Sophie still doesn’t know the names of her teachers. Chloe played soccer at recess today. Sophie has naptime. Chloe is going to have lots of homework everyday. Sophie will have coloring. Chloe can’t wait to walk to the bus stop by herself. Sophie would like nothing more than for us to take her to school every single day.
For us, the beginning of the year isn’t January 1st. The beginning of the year is the first day of school because that’s when we realize how quickly the girls are growing up.
We capped off the Labor Day weekend and the unofficial end of summer with a walk on a local hiking trail. We had a great time. The girls had a field day with all of the fallen trees – they make for great balance beams and planks from which to jump.
Chloe was our trail leader. She followed the yellow-painted trunks and kept us from getting lost. She’s already planning our next outing on the blue trail – or as she prefers to call it, the indigo trail.
We met lots of different dogs on the way. Two of them were particularly friendly, chasing Sophie around in an effort to lick her. The mutts had chosen their perfect prey. Sophie wouldn’t stop running away from them, and they just loved running after her. She refused to listen to our advice to stand still and wait for the dogs to tire of her, probably because she was having too much fun.
By far the highlight of the hike was a large tree stump that provided the perfect springboard for jumping. The girls took turns on this one – with Chloe pretending to be a bird and Sophie wanting nothing more than to imitate her sister.
Sophie starts pre-K tomorrow and Chloe starts on Wednesday. We still don’t know who Chloe’s 3rd grade teacher is going to be, which is more frustrating for me than it is for her. New school, new teacher – you’d think the district would get its act together and make sure the notification arrives before the Labor Day holiday so that kids can spend part of the weekend getting a sense of who might be in their class. But no, that’d be too logical.
Next year, I’m going to plan to take a few days off the week school starts. I think it would be less stressful and more enjoyable if I didn’t feel the job pressures of the first post-summer work week in addition to everything that needs to be done for classes.
We decided to ring in the unofficial start of fall this weekend with an outing to the local miniature golf course. Chloe’s idea. Problem is that Chloe and miniature golf don’t get along very well.
I tried to teach her the Tiger Woods putting stance, but she wouldn’t listen. The photo pretty much captures her posture and her swing throughout the afternoon. Needless to say, she was not particularly successful getting the ball into the hole. And this frustrated her to no end.
Forgetting, perhaps, that she was the one who requested this outing, at one point she asked if we could go home because she was tired of missing. We were only at the 9th hole. We reiterated her need to imitate the Tiger swing and stance, and she then had a few glimmers of success, which she reluctantly admitted was due to the Tiger swing and stance.
The rest of the game was relatively uneventful. But if our Chloe thinks she’s going to talk us into taking her to play miniature golf in the near future, she has another thing coming. Not until she goes to Tiger Woods miniature golf training camp.
I’m looking forward to what our girls will be like when they’re older. As I’ve written before, Chloe is the more intense child, more independent. Sophie is more happy-go-lucky and loves to be surrounded by people.
In addition to the differences in their personalities, they are also much different when it comes to hygiene. True story follows.
Yesterday, the girls went to the playground with my mom. When they got home, they realized their feet were filthy. Sophie immediately asked my mom to wash her feet with soap and water. That’s because even though Sophie likes to play in the sand and dirt, Sophie does not like to stay dirty once she’s done playing.
Chloe is another species altogether. When Chloe realized her feet were dirty, she proceeded to spit on her hands and start wiping. And you can bet that her hands were just as filthy as her feet. I mean, really. I sometimes think that she’s spent way too much time watching the gorillas at the Bronx Zoo.
I love my iPod. I love my MacBook. But in the end, I decided to stick with Verizon and get a new BlackBerry. Truth of the matter is, I feel like I’m already too connected. And too addicted to being connected. And the last thing I need is yet another toy to distract me from all the other things I need to focus on.
And besides, AT&T cellphone service sucks. I’ve been victimized by it countless times when my husband calls me using his AT&T phone and vice versa. So – until Apple decides to terminate its exclusive deal with AT&T, I’m sticking with the BlackBerry.
The best thing about it is that I’ll now have just one device for work and phone. Which pleases me to no end. And Chloe and Sophie will like it too, because there are games. OK – maybe not as cool as iPhone games, but let’s face it, the girls’ threshold for coolness is not very high.
This is Sophie at her best. A big, joyful grin. Because she’s such a happy kid. Most of the time anyway. But because she’s been spending so much time with her sister over the last few weeks, she’s also started to take on some of Chloe’s less charming traits. Like getting angry when she feels we’re not taking her seriously. Or getting all serious and stern when she thinks we’re misbehaving.
And Sophie has learned to give as good as she gets. She’s always been fairly talented when it comes to bugging her older sister. But she’s become a master over the last few months. She mimics Chloe, much to Chloe’s consternation. She baits Chloe will all manner of words and actions (like sticking out her tongue). And Chloe makes all of this really easy for Sophie, because Chloe is incapable of ignoring her little sister’s antics. Try as she may, and she doesn’t try hard enough, she allows Sophie to get under her skin for the most inconsequential of acts.
Am I being a horrible mommy for sheepishly admitting that I find all of that pretty funny? Truth is, when I was a kid, my brother James was like Sophie. He was my arch-nemesis. He knew what buttons to push with me, and I’ve always said that Chloe is her mother’s daughter. I love him dearly now, but I wanted nothing to do with him until I left for college. The good thing is that Sophie and Chloe generally get along much better than I got along with my brother when we were kids. At least for now.
Chloe has found all sorts of silly things to do with her friends when they come over to play. The other day, it was this. Today, she and her friend invented a game that involves throwing a deflated pink puffy ball at a larger beach ball and hoping the two meet mid-air.
Chloe demonstrated the game to me this evening, with the able assistance of little Sophie, who was happy to prance around in her underwear. Ah, the joys of youth.
What’s most amazing to me, however, is that today was an absolutely gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the sky, a little on the cool side. Could they have played this game outside? Of course. Was it suited to being played outside? You bet. And yet, did they go outside? No. Ugh.
There’s never a dull moment. While at work yesterday, I started noticing pressure in my left eye. Almost as if I had rubbed it too hard. The pain got progressively worse. My eye was completely bloodshot and started to tear profusely as the evening wore on. Having never had pink eye, I thought perhaps I had a contracted a really bad case of conjunctivitis. But no one had ever told me that pink eye was so painful.
When I woke up this morning, I could barely open my eye. Light was excruciating. I felt like a vampire. Arranged an emergency appointment at the ophtalmologist and sure enough, I don’t have pink eye. I have what’s known as iritis, an inflammation of the iris, the cause of which is unclear. Can be a serious condition if not treated quickly. I’m on a treatment of steroid drops as well as drops to keep my eye dilated.
Needless to say, it was pretty scary. It’s still painful, but at least the tearing has stopped and I can keep my eye open without feeling like a tumor is pushing my eyeball out of my head. And if the redness subsides by Monday, at least I won’t have to go to work and give everyone the impression that I’m a walking case of contagious pink eye. I was kind of hoping I’d have to wear a patch for a few days – that would have been sort of cool. But the doc said no. Oh well. My pirate days will have to wait until Halloween.
Gloup died today. He’s survived by his brother, Alubus. Gloup was a good pet. He liked to eat a lot. He hogged the food and the water, and Alubus often fought for his share. Sometimes they would fight and we’d hear their squeaks when they argued. Sophie loved Gloupie, as she called him. She also called him Wee Wee, which is her preferred name for her favorite animals.
Chloe bought Sophie little Shirley the lamb when Sophie was about one year old. Sophie loves Shirley very much and treats her like a princess. Sophie also loves her two towels very much.
Like Linus with his blanket, Sophie’s towels follow her all over the house (we rarely let Sophie take the towels outside). The towels are actually burp cloths that we’ve had since Sophie was born almost four years ago. They’re stained and have holes. And we only have two left. Problem is that if we ever needed to replace them, it’d be extremely difficult since I haven’t been able to find those same burp cloths anywhere.
Every time Sophie can’t find her towels, we panic. We search high and low. We rely on Sophie’s notoriously bad toddler memory to tell us where she last left them. And we tear apart the house while listening to her sob. Until now, we’ve been lucky because we’ve always found them. But one day, they will be gone for good. Disintegrated or misplaced. And boy, will that be a bad day. Let’s hope that bad day doesn’t come any time soon.
A Mom's Ramblings About the Marvels & Mishaps of Parenting, the Joys of Family Travel & the Writing Life
Chloe, the jaded 3rd grader who didn’t want me to take her photo because it wasn’t cool. 
