Green Belt and the End of 7th Grade

 This was a big week for Evie!  She got promoted to green belt after putting in a ton of hard work the last two weeks.  At her karate dojo, they do belt testing once every 4 months and in order to graduate to the next belt, you have to have attended at least 24 sessions in addition to proving your ability to do the universals and defense blocks or whatever else you need to do to show your skill.  Well because Evie had been in Children of Eden all of February and then went straight into Freaky Friday rehearsals, she had had to miss a lot of karate classes, which we knew would happen from time to time when we signed her up.  I had thought that she was just not going to be eligible to move up a belt, but she really buckled down and attended a lot of classes and they let her stripe twice in one week (you need 3 stripes on your belt in order to move on, usually 8 classes per stripe), so she was eligible.  I think they had a lot of kids who were going to be behind if they didn't do this (flu, snow days, etc. interfered for many) and it's obviously in their best interest if kids keep coming to class rather than feeling like they are so far behind they're stuck in the same belt for 3 more months.  She was so proud of herself and these universals she is doing now are very impressive.

On Monday this past week she got her braces adjusted again.  She's going in about once a month to get them tightened until the bottom ones can be put on.  We thought she would be getting the bottom ones today but she has strong bone density and strong muscles and so she needed an even stronger wire this month than the one they upgraded to last month.  But she's feeling comfortable now with showing her smile.

And today was her last day of school!  She made it through 7th grade!  When I think back to everything this poor child has had to go through this year, I'm honestly amazed we made it through as well as we did.  When she started school, we were living with a friend of mine instead of in the home she had known since she was 2.  She was realizing that life would never be the same, with her parents divorcing.  Even though she said she thought that was for the best, it was still a hard thing.  She was starting school at a new school, where she knew no one in her grade, and switching from public school expectations and curricula to private school.  I remember those first weeks when I would pick her up and she would cry about how she didn't have any friends, how she didn't know what she needed to do for her classes, how she didn't want to go to school the next day.  There were days in August that I let her stay home for her own mental health.  I remember calling meetings with her teachers and the head of the middle school to ask for lenience and grace - Evie was sleeping on a pallet on the floor or in the bed with me, for heaven's sake, completely misplaced from not only her friends at her old school but also her home, trying to have a relationship with her dad who was going through a rough time as well...  Everything was so hard at the beginning of the school year.  And I'm not saying it ever got easy - I actually think most of the days at this school have been hard for her.  But she recognizes her own resilience now and she's not having panic attacks at school (hasn't since October).  I told her, I don't care what her final grades are, this year was all about surviving change, and she has done that.  (And actually, she got pretty decent grades and scored very high on her standardized tests, so I'd say she's done pretty well all around!)