Grace

Last lunch


Packed Grace’s very last kindergarten lunch tonight. Wow. She requested a ham, turkey, and (vegan) cheese sandwich and some fruit. I made the sandwich, using my most-treasured parenting secret weapon to make it special (run, don’t walk, to buy a large heart-shaped cookie cutter. I use it almost daily), cut up an apple, put in some pretzels and a juice box. Then I wrote a note. And fought my tears.

Tomorrow’s kindergarten “open house” is a graduation of sorts. Gulp. How did we get here? She was just born. Where’s the pause button?

communion comedy

Grace and Whit both took communion for the first time today (one of many things I learned in yesterday’s pre-baptism class is that baptism, not confirmation, is the entree into communion).

They were both fairly hilarious at the altar. Whit asked the minister, quietly, “Does this cracker have nuts in it?” before politely saying “No thank you” to the wine.

Grace took the wine, grimaced, and walked back to the pew with me.

“What was that?” she asked

“Wine, Grace.”

“Just wine? Nothing else? I had real live wine?”

“Yes, Gracie.”

“Yuck.”

“Don’t worry, white wine is better.”

“Next time, can you ask them to use white wine?”

Poems

In keeping with the poetry theme, last week Grace was puttering in the kitchen with me one afternoon. She told me she wanted to write some poems.

“Okay, Grace. Go for it.” (invisible eye roll)

“I am going to bring this candle over here, okay?” (takes Votivo scented candle, lit, to table)

“Why?”

“I am going to look at it in a new way.”

I looked at her, puzzled, wondering at this clear verbatim repetition of something she’d heard at school. And then the wisdom of it sunk in. If only I was better able to do that.

She then looked at a lemon in a new way. Her poems are above.

Dancing, and ties


(note both majesty tie and that Whit is fully aloft)

These dear, hilarious children of mine. So funny and warm in spite of all of my mistakes! They deserve much better than a “mother who is more shade than sun.” (Daphne Merkin)