Rainy day
Four cousins for lunch
Headache
Day 6 of antibiotics
2 Diet Cokes
3 conference calls
1 coffee with friend
Ears keep popping
Dinner with Hilary
“Fix You” by Coldplay in my head
Swim lesson rescheduled
Grace listening to Little House on the Prairie
(and my first attempt at Googledocs!)
As we drove to the shoe barn to get Grace sneakers this afternoon the children were talking about my dad’s new Mini Cooper. (another time: my incredible inability to deal with shoes for my children. It’s like a blind spot. I am just So Bad At Shoes.)
Whit said, with emotion, “I love Mini Coopers so much.”
Grace responded, “But Whit, you’ve never even seen a Mini Cooper.”
“I know. But I still love them.”
Random.
Later, as I made a panicked pit stop for Robitussin DM (I have the worst cold/strep combo I’ve had in years) it began to rain. Grace had decreed a “quiet ride home,” so there was unusual calm in the car. I heard a small voice pipe up: “I think you should put on the wipers.” Wow. A backseat driver. Who knew that was hereditary? I guess there is no question that Whit, the unexpected micromanager, is also my child.
During our drive Grace was singing an annoying Top 40 song whose refrain is “Someone call 911, someone call 911.” Whit chimed in now and then. Over dinner he began to sing again, “someone call 911, someone call 911,” (ironically with the general persistence and appeal of a siren) and Grace joined him. “Grace,” Whit said, with exaggerated exasperation, “You are annoying me! You are so annoying!”
Again, my child. (incidentally, he found that random red headband himself and put it on like that)
First day of kindergarten, September 2008. Alert readers know this was not the actual first day of kindergarten, which Gracie missed because she had lice. But it was her first day. I anticipate telling that story at her rehearsal dinner.
Last day of kindergarten, June 2009. She looks so grown up to me. On the last full day of school, the day before this picture was taken, the teachers did a slide show in the classroom as part of the “graduation.” They showed each child in September and then again in late May. When Grace’s picture came up one of my friends turned to me, gasped, and said, “She was a baby!” I don’t see the huge change but I know that one has taken place. I suppose it’s the way you don’t notice changes when you live them daily – it’s only the perspective of distance that allows us to grasp transformations and metamorphoses.
Of course this is true in many aspects of our lives – we don’t see patterns and changes as they are being set and then are startled when the full extent of the difference is made real to us. That is, however, a post for another time.
For now it’s Gracie Russell. Six and a half. Leaving kindergarten with new, real friendships, a passion for computers and math, and a combination of confidence and uncertainty that I find both charming and utterly too close for comfort.
I love you, GBP.
