Week at Home and First Day of Kindergarten

Well we've survived our first week of no school.  Evie watched a few more movies than I would have liked, but that's just how it had to be some of the time when I had conference calls.  She spent some time playing in her room, which she is always reluctant to do independently because she says she doesn't know how to play by herself.  But there were plenty of times when we did things together: we made crafts and art projects, cooked and baked, did puzzles, read books, played pretend.  So we had an enjoyable time.

One thing I struggled with was finding enough physical activity for her, so at one point I found a YouTube video of old "Mousercize" episodes and let her work out with Mickey Mouse.

My parents also helped watch her three days this week so that I could work at my school.  She had a good time with both Granna and Grannadaddy, though on separate days.  Thursday night, we also took advantage of Dmitry and Marina and had Evie go to their house and play with Sasha while we went to her school's Parent Night.  We got the lowdown on how kindergarten works in this Montessori classroom that she's been attending the last 2 years.  Evie's very excited to get her contract and start having homework.

Evie's still crying herself to sleep over Edgar.  She says that she thinks about him all the time, but I mostly only hear about it at night.  She did say one day while Siouxsie was chasing her, "I can still hear Edgar barking, Mama" - he used to bark at the two of them when they made their runs around the house.

Cristal, Matt, and Nathaniel came over last night and had dinner with us while I showed them how to give Herbie his insulin injections.  They're very kind to be taking on the care of a diabetic dog while we go out of town next weekend for the eclipse.  Evie and Nathaniel had dinner and a movie date.

And today was Evie's first half day of kindergarten.  As I said, she is going to the same class she's been attending since she was 3.  It's a Montessori classroom where the youngest are 3 and the oldest are doing their kindergarten year.  This year, she'll have special kindergarten meetings, she'll have homework, and she'll have the "contract" which is a week-at-a-glance kind of paper that explains what she has to do in class that week.  If she finishes all of it, she gets Free Choice on Friday (which basically means she gets to do the same activities, but she gets to choose which one she wants - and yet the kids are all wild about the concept of Free Choice).  She's very proud to be a kindergartner now and we have homework of practicing reading 9 words every day.

Evie helped me with a project of vacuuming the floor earlier this week.  She had to get down on the floor and pick up some papers and get things out from under the couch and, though we don't usually pay her to pick up and contribute to the tidiness of the house (what little there is), I decided to give her 50 cents for her work.  She shrieked "Thank you, Mama!" and ran to put it in her piggy bank.  When she came out, she said, "I put it in my piggy bank which is for our (hers and Desmond's) kids, so they'll get it when they're kids and it'll keep going on and on."  How in the world did I get such an amazing, sentimental, family-oriented baby?  She's amazing....