Sophie survived her first week of school! And she liked it, we think. No complaints on Thursday and next week she’ll experience her first class trip on a school bus. She is, of course, very excited about that and was very keen on knowing whether or not it is going to be a big school bus or a little school bus.
Chloe has started Harry Potter all over again. However, she remarked this evening that she’d rather have a more Nancy Drew books, or the 3rd book in the Sisters Grimm series. For those of you reading this blog who are wondering what to get her for her upcoming birthday, there you go. She’s read the first 14 Nancy Drew books. It’s crazy how much she’s been reading.
I’m glad this week is over. It was a long week, and a somewhat stressful one at work. There’s definitely a sense of anxiety in the air – everywhere. I’m looking forward to the weekend. First item on the agenda: moving back into the sunroom. It’s finished (except for the outside stucco, which will be taken care of once the weather gets warmer) and it looks great. Believe it or not, my husband chose the color and he was right. He and color don’t really get along, so it was surprising, to say the least. Second item on the agenda: buy Chloe her birthday present (a Nintendo DS). Third item on the agenda: get a manicure. And on Sunday, a trip to the museum sounds appealing…
Came home to a very cranky Sophie this evening. This is the Sophie that was wimpering because she was unhappy about something – what it was remains a mystery because all she did was whimper. No words, just whimpering.
After she realized that whimpering was getting her nowhere, she calmed down. For a few minutes. And then she got pissed off because I had the audacity to bring her cup of milk outside. She didn’t want me to bring it outside and she took it from me and proceeded to throw it on the ground.
One would think I had committed a capital offense. So I picked up the cup and was very stern and told her that if she didn’t put it in the fridge, she’d have quiet time in the corner. She hates the corner. But she doesn’t hate it enough, I guess. She stubbornly refused to oblige, and so the corner had company for two minutes (which, in a few weeks, will increase to three minutes when she celebrates her birthday).
Chloe starts school tomorrow – 2nd grade! In the meantime, her Papa bought her two more Nancy Drew books yesterday afternoon, volumes 9 and 10. And I’m not kidding when I tell you that since yesterday at about 5 pm she’s finished volume 9 and is halfway through volume 10…How crazy is that?
That’d be our dear Chloe. Who started volume six of the Nancy Drew series on Saturday and who is now almost done with volume seven, a mere two days later!
She has become a voracious reader, at least of Nancy Drew. I’m trying to convince her to start reading the “Harry Potter” books, but because she’s the obsessive-compulsive daughter of an obsessive-compulsive mother, she likely won’t even seriously consider starting another series until she’s read all of the million (ok – the original series had 56 books; but there have been several spin-offs since which, according to Wikipedia, have produced at least a couple hundred more) Nancy Drews. Crazy, no?
On another note, I made some calls about procuring entertainment for Sophie’s birthday party next month. I should be able to check that off my list by the end of the week. I like the idea of a friendly clown who can do face painting, tattoos and balloons – there’s a “Colors” and a “Lickerish” who might fit the bill. Sophie would love that.
Chloe finished her second Nancy Drew mystery today. It was her last day to log books for her school’s 100 book challenge
She was a little upset this morning, because she’s afraid that even after receiving credit for the Nancy Drew tome (to the tune of one point for two chapters), she won’t make it to 100.
After a stellar school year (she got 100% on her last spelling test and her year-end math test), she was beating herself up over the number of books she’d read over the last nine months. And not just any books – complicated chapter books.
I told her she should be proud of herself for all she had accomplished – and the tears quickly dried up. But I still have this lingering feeling that she puts too much pressure on herself; or perhaps, more likely, that we (and mostly I) unintentionally put too much pressure on her. It’s something I’m going to have to monitor closely. I wouldn’t want my girls growing up needing too much therapy once they reach their adult years…
Although Chloe has hosted a couple of sleepovers with friends in her short kid life, she hadn’t enjoyed a sleepover at a friend’s house until tonight.
You can imagine her excitement when she received the phone call…and her exultation when we told her she could go…Although it would be an exaggeration to say that her joyful shrieks could be heard around the world, it wouldn’t much of a stretch to say that they were probably heard by our next-door neighbor.
To top it all off, she and her friend were going to watch “Nancy Drew,” a movie she’s been clamoring to see since it came out last year and since she started reading her first Nancy Drew book a few weeks ago. Life doesn’t get much better than that.
It’s amusing to see Chloe and her friends enjoying many of the same things, including sleepovers, that my friends and I enjoyed when I was a child. Despite the fact that kids grow up more quickly than they did when I was younger, Chloe and her buddies are still young enough to have innocent fun. Which makes me extremely happy and that much more determined to prevent her from growing up. At all.
She has her weekly swim lesson tomorrow morning – but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to get an early phone call. Her end of the conversation will no doubt go something like this: “Mommy, we didn’t get to sleep until after MIDNIGHT! I’m really tired and I want to play some more here. Please, Mommy, please…”
A Mom's Ramblings About the Marvels & Mishaps of Parenting, the Joys of Family Travel & the Writing Life
Sophie survived her first week of school! And she liked it, we think. No complaints on Thursday and next week she’ll experience her first class trip on a school bus. She is, of course, very excited about that and was very keen on knowing whether or not it is going to be a big school bus or a little school bus.
