Last Day of School!
SUMMER!!! This school year seemed to last a hundred years, but today was FINALLY the last day of school. Last day of first grade for Greta, last day of third grade for Lucia. It was a half day. Lucia went right to a friend's house for an end-of-year party, with a backyard inflatable waterslide contraption that looked amazing. When Greta came home she ate lunch and read for two hours, determined to catch up to Lucia for the library's summer reading program. We signed up on Tuesday and they're already obsessed with racking up hours.
I gave them each an end-of-school gift of a rainbow of model magic colors--they've been asking for this for months--and a divided organizer tray of Rainbow Loom bands, plus a sun-shaped cookie from the Able Baker (a bakery in town).
When Lucia got home, they played outside a bit (the rain has finally stopped) and then got into a giant argument about these two hobby horses they use as "crutches," but the argument was stupid and not even the point, because when Lucia began sobbing it wasn't about the horse-crutches at all. She ran to her room and sobbed in her bed, inconsolable. This happens every single year. She feels the end of the school year very intensely when she has to leave a beloved teacher. The only time she didn't have an end-of-school breakdown was after first grade, because she was returning to the same teacher for second grade. She cried for a long time, poor thing. She cheered up when I remembered I'd gotten a new outfit for Carmel Judy at a yard sale a few weeks ago, and brought it to her.
No tears for Greta. She's returning to the same teacher for second grade next year, just as Lucia did.
The three of us then walked to dinner at Mt. Fuji, a sushi restaurant in town. We ordered a bunch of gyoza, shumai, california rolls, and eel rolls. Yes, Greta 'fed' some of the shumai to Shumai, who was sitting on the chair next to her.
At the end of dinner, Lucia turned to me with a mature, theatrical expression and said, "Hi, I'm Caroline. I'm from North Carolina, and I love hamburgers. I also love my family and friends, but my parents got divorced two years ago." Then she cracked up. She kept doing the routine over and over again, slinging her small backpack over one shoulder first and then launching into her monologue, kind of looking over one shoulder as though she were looking at a camera, explaining that this was the beginning of a TV show, when we first meet her character. I was cry-laughing. It just came out of nowhere. How did she even know about a state called North Carolina? And why North Carolina, of all places? Then, walking home, of course Greta had to act out her own monologue, and she said, "Hi, I'm Jennifer, and I'm from Austria." These kids are too much.
Then they had baths and read their books. I have a grand plan for their reading this summer. They LOVE to read and really need no encouragement at all--the library's summer reading program is fun for them, but they'd read even without it. The problem (and it's not even really a 'problem' per se) is that they are stuck in a real rut of rereading the same books again and again. And again. I have nothing against this in theory--I read the Baby-sitters Club books so many times they fell apart--but we're at a point where really nothing new is getting read at all, even though they buy quite a lot of books at library sales and yard sales, and take lots of books out from the library. So I'm giving them a new incentive this summer called Bonus Books. I'm going to make a basket for each of them full of books that *I* select, and for every two books they read from their Bonus Bins, they'll get $5. Lucia was rabidly excited about this and Greta was on board too. I'm going to cull some choice titles from the bookshelves that have been overlooked, and I've requested a bunch from the library too. We'll see if it's a successful idea.
Today marks the beginning of my daily summer blogging--where I try to capture the magical essence of our unstructured, camp-free summer, as well as the reality of what being together ALL DAY with no break really looks like. Sometimes it's so much fun, like dinner tonight, where we're all holding hands and cracking up as we're walking home. Sometimes it's me screaming IF YOU DON'T STOP FIGHTING I'M SENDING YOU TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?? DO YOU? DO YOU? (It's day one. I haven't gotten there yet, but it's a given that I will at some point.) It's all good. I treasure our free summers.
I gave them each an end-of-school gift of a rainbow of model magic colors--they've been asking for this for months--and a divided organizer tray of Rainbow Loom bands, plus a sun-shaped cookie from the Able Baker (a bakery in town).
When Lucia got home, they played outside a bit (the rain has finally stopped) and then got into a giant argument about these two hobby horses they use as "crutches," but the argument was stupid and not even the point, because when Lucia began sobbing it wasn't about the horse-crutches at all. She ran to her room and sobbed in her bed, inconsolable. This happens every single year. She feels the end of the school year very intensely when she has to leave a beloved teacher. The only time she didn't have an end-of-school breakdown was after first grade, because she was returning to the same teacher for second grade. She cried for a long time, poor thing. She cheered up when I remembered I'd gotten a new outfit for Carmel Judy at a yard sale a few weeks ago, and brought it to her.
No tears for Greta. She's returning to the same teacher for second grade next year, just as Lucia did.
The three of us then walked to dinner at Mt. Fuji, a sushi restaurant in town. We ordered a bunch of gyoza, shumai, california rolls, and eel rolls. Yes, Greta 'fed' some of the shumai to Shumai, who was sitting on the chair next to her.
At the end of dinner, Lucia turned to me with a mature, theatrical expression and said, "Hi, I'm Caroline. I'm from North Carolina, and I love hamburgers. I also love my family and friends, but my parents got divorced two years ago." Then she cracked up. She kept doing the routine over and over again, slinging her small backpack over one shoulder first and then launching into her monologue, kind of looking over one shoulder as though she were looking at a camera, explaining that this was the beginning of a TV show, when we first meet her character. I was cry-laughing. It just came out of nowhere. How did she even know about a state called North Carolina? And why North Carolina, of all places? Then, walking home, of course Greta had to act out her own monologue, and she said, "Hi, I'm Jennifer, and I'm from Austria." These kids are too much.
Then they had baths and read their books. I have a grand plan for their reading this summer. They LOVE to read and really need no encouragement at all--the library's summer reading program is fun for them, but they'd read even without it. The problem (and it's not even really a 'problem' per se) is that they are stuck in a real rut of rereading the same books again and again. And again. I have nothing against this in theory--I read the Baby-sitters Club books so many times they fell apart--but we're at a point where really nothing new is getting read at all, even though they buy quite a lot of books at library sales and yard sales, and take lots of books out from the library. So I'm giving them a new incentive this summer called Bonus Books. I'm going to make a basket for each of them full of books that *I* select, and for every two books they read from their Bonus Bins, they'll get $5. Lucia was rabidly excited about this and Greta was on board too. I'm going to cull some choice titles from the bookshelves that have been overlooked, and I've requested a bunch from the library too. We'll see if it's a successful idea.
Today marks the beginning of my daily summer blogging--where I try to capture the magical essence of our unstructured, camp-free summer, as well as the reality of what being together ALL DAY with no break really looks like. Sometimes it's so much fun, like dinner tonight, where we're all holding hands and cracking up as we're walking home. Sometimes it's me screaming IF YOU DON'T STOP FIGHTING I'M SENDING YOU TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?? DO YOU? DO YOU? (It's day one. I haven't gotten there yet, but it's a given that I will at some point.) It's all good. I treasure our free summers.
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