Erin Finishes Kindergarten

In case you are wondering, NO BABY YET! I am definitely getting a little bored and tired of waiting, so I'm taking it out on my blog. Believe it or not, there is only so much HGTV that a person can watch and I don't really want to start any new projects, although now I'm wondering why I haven't. Also, it's a little disheartening to see the baby widget now tell me I have increasingly more days to go.

Ahem... Since today is nobody's birthday (yet), I thought I would write about Erin finishing her first year of elementary school. The last day is tomorrow. She has had a really good experience with school. There haven't been any mean kids that I know about, she loves her teacher and she has made some really cute friends.

What really surprised me about this year is how responsible Erin has been. We set her alarm for 7:05 and she gets up to it by herself every day. Then she'll come to wake one of us up to get her breakfast (slacker parents). She gets dressed by herself, brushes her teeth and even tries to do her hair (but it is way too snarly for her to deal with right now). For the first while we would leave with just enough time to barely make it before the bell. But the last few months she has started getting ready really early so she can be one of the first ones there--not sure where that gene came from or how it suddenly kicked in. I guess she just really likes school. On her report card it shows her attendance: no absences all year and only one tardy. Pretty amazing. But the best part is why she was tardy that day. She woke up to her alarm and instead of waking us up, she decided to paint or something for a while. By the time she got hungry enough to wake us up it was 8:15, and school starts at 8:00! Usually we set our alarm as a backup but not that day. Do we win as the worst parents of the year?

Other things that happened during this school year:

-She has learned to tie her shoes, and double knot them. It occurred to me half way through that unless I bought her shoes with ties instead of velcro she wasn't going to learn, so I did and she learned.
-Although she was reading when she started school, she has become a really great reader throughout the year. She does great with scriptures and was one of only four kids in her class to read 100 books this year. Her award? Two gold Mardi Gras necklaces.
-I got called by the school nurse twice: once when somebody accidentally poked her in the eye with a pencil at the beginning of the year and once two weeks ago when she threw up on the playground.
-She lost her first tooth.
-She quickly learned to love music, art and media and just as quickly began to hate science and P.E. She finally warmed up to science, but P.E. is still the worst because as she said, "I don't like any sport where you have to run." (why is she always running around the house then?) Good thing the only physical activity they have time for is once a week, and no recess either.
-She learned her phone number, along with Alex (it's much more efficient to have more than one kid).
-She discovered ice cream day every Wednesday and now goes through her piggy bank for 65 cents each week to pay for it (she even made Jared walk home after they were half way to school one day when she forgot it).
-She only forgot her lunch once, and I brought it to her (does this cancel out the bad parent award?)
-She has become a very creative writer. Her only homework this year was writing whatever she wanted in a journal every day. She wrote a lot about rainbows and butterflies, but she has also come up with some really great stories. She filled up 2 1/2 notebooks and about 5 journals at school too.
-She learned how to add and subtract and now only writes two of the numbers consistently backwards, 5 and 6.
-She started to play the piano and likes to go through all the songs she knows (Hot Cross Buns, Once I Caught a Fish Alive, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Up and Down the Keyboard, Puppy Dog and some of her original works). She is starting to read music too. Speaking of efficiency, without ever teaching Alex, he sits down and plunks out some of the same songs until he gets them right.
-She experienced the worst day of her life, according to her, which was the day of the Walk-a-thon when everyone got to go to the gym to walk except for her because her horrible mother didn't send in the $5 for it (bad parent again?). She seriously cried for over 45 minutes after that one. I will know for next year, but it still doesn't seem fair that everyone can't participate especially if it's someone who really can't afford it.

This is her first school picture at the beginning of the year.They sent another picture form home about a month ago and I did have every intention of sending it in. Then one day Erin said, "Remember that picture form you were supposed to send in?" I quickly said, "Oh yeah, let's send it in tomorrow." She said, "Actually they took our pictures yesterday." I was really hoping she was wearing an acceptable outfit and that her hair looked okay. Here it is. She even got to pick her own pose since I didn't send the form in. It probably turned out better than if we had stressed over it. Does that background really look like Florida to anyone?This is her class picture. They must have gotten more kids since this was taken because they ended up with 21 kids. Erin is the shortest and the whitest one of the bunch. Diversity is one thing I really like about Florida. There were kids from parts of South America, Haiti, Lithuania, and India, to name a few. One thing I love about this picture is how far she is standing from that boy. She's definitely not the touchiest child in the world.
Here's another thing that makes me laugh. One day I was walking her home when she said, "I'm so sick of everyone always telling me that Umar likes me!" I asked her what she says when they say that and she said, "I already know!" What is she supposed to say? Anyway, this boy was in her pre-school class last year, sat at her table this year and was in the same reading group as her. He would send home little notes or pictures, but I think it was more annoying than anything to her. I asked if she was still nice to him and she said, "Yes, I'm still nice to people I don't like." That's good. Today she came home with a picture saying, "To Erin, Love Alex" and another one with two snakes that he'd drawn representing them. How romantic. She even told this kid that she loved him too! Good thing school is over. Erin said she liked Umar too, just not as much as Alex. Poor Umar. Maybe next year.

One last funny thing. One day when I picked her up I told her I had two surprises for her. She got all excited and asked, "Did you clean the house?" Uh, no. That actually wasn't one of the surprises. Another time as she left for school she said, "Mom, do you think you could do some laundry while I'm at school?" Yes, I definitely deserve the worst parent award. Just the other day we had this conversation:
Me: Erin, is our house always clean?
E: No
Me: Why do you think it's not always clean?
E: Because you don't clean enough (obviously--not because three little tornadoes sweep through my house every day?)
I am pretty sure that she thinks that cleaning up after kids is the reason for my existence. Maybe it is right now.