Tomorrow I Will Be Sporting Some Obnoxious Bumper Sticker

I have been reveling in my kindergarten experience with Olivia: mainly, she doesn't despise it and every night is not spent in a horrific fight about homework. I have to admit, selfishly, that it is a great feeling.

Olivia does her homework without prompting and I consequently get to relax about what's due or upcoming tests. Case in point, this evening, as I cleaned out her backpack (because it always looks like an episode of the "Hoarders") I found an award for the spelling bee today in her class. I had forgotten that today was the big event; she had been looking over her words during the last few days.

I asked her if this award meant she had done well in the bee. Sure she shrugged, she had won.

Won? Won? Okay, you need to picture this--me, alone, in my room, having excused myself under the pretense of going to the bathroom--doing a simple dance that could let out my joy at having a child that seems to be a naturally-driven student that brings home awards!

Infantile? Certainly. Try to indulge me however; I have a lot of years of reaching into backpacks and pulling out detention slips.

The Blinding Sunlight, and, But This is Why I Had Her

Update: I emerge from my cave of two years of school, dazed, and wondering if some of my friends' phone numbers are still reliable. I cannot believe I am finally educationally "whole", teaching certificate in hand, ready to--stop the presses! I have managed to come out into the teaching world at the only time in history when school districts aren't hiring! Oh tee-hee, isn't it hilarious?

Olivia, while I have been lost in kids student teaching, has been lost in ballet. She just had her Swan Lake "recital". She has been rather flippant about dancing and cannot figure out just exactly why ballet makes her mother wipe tears from her eyes, but I think she has had a change of heart due to limelight.

Her classes have been fun enough, but I think my daughter was struggling with visualizing a "pay off". Until Sunday, when she came skittering out to see an audience. And at class two days later I saw a new Olivia. She was practicing her positions prior to class, rather than needling me to buy her something from the vending machine. Not that I am a stage mom or anything. And I feel a LOT better even if I am, because I had a conversation about motivation with a mother there yesterday that is more blatant than I, what with naming her daughter Giselle and all.