Back to {pre}school

For the past two weeks the older two girls have been back at school, and I have been the lone playmate for the Preschooler. I love her energy and her spunk. I appreciate that she wakes up each day {often ridiculously early} eager to take on the world. I’m grateful for the ways she teaches me to add more fun to everyday life. But, I am tired because she needs quite a bit more stimulation than I am able to provide. Since she’s been missing the big girls during the day, she has started talking about her need for a baby sister or two. I’ve explained to her that this will not be happening because she IS the baby sister in this family. She’s not taking that news too well.

I’ll admit that August isn’t my strongest parenting month. I’m running on end-of-summer fumes and way past doing anything creative or exciting during the day. So when I hear that I’m “boring,” I know this to be true. I can paint and play card games with the best of them. But, my young playmate would really like for me to do tricks on the scooter that I’m just not physically able to do. Maybe I’m overly cautious, but I’m scared to throw my leg over the handlebars and ride around at a high speed with my eyes shut like she’s fond of doing. So, she’s had to come up with more of her own entertainment. After we had a discussion about why we can’t paint our nails with bright pink polish on the couch, she walked downstairs yesterday afternoon to ask me a question and we had this conversation.

Me: I thought I told you not to get into the makeup.

Her: I didn’t.

Hmm. Strangely, the evidence suggested otherwise.

Today, though, is a new day because it was her first day back to preschool. I feel like she’s excited to learn new things from gifted teachers. And, I’m excited to complete a thought! It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

I’m hoping that we’ll get into something of a routine in the next few weeks. I want to be especially mindful this year of finding joy in the different ages and stages the girls are in because I know that while the days are long, the years fly by. I’m just struggling to learn what to focus on and what things to let go. For example, spelling. We’re two weeks into the new school year, and I think I’m going to have to let that one go. I have one child who loves it and one who couldn’t care less about it. See exhibit A:

For clarification, we have a fluffy, candy, bumpy, quiet, sugary marshmallow that we’re discussing here. And, it doesn’t matter how many times we go over a word like “quiet” or how many games she plays and correctly identifies “quiet” on the screen. At the end of the day, “quwit” is how she would like to spell it in writing because that is how it sounds. Fair enough. Fortunately, “quiet” and “sugary” are not on our actual list of spelling words this week. And, even if they were… it’s OK. I wouldn’t know how to spell “sugary” if it weren’t for the autocorrect feature on the computer. So, I’m going to go ahead and put spelling into that category of things I don’t stress about this year.

Besides, there are more important things to worry about than spelling. Like fish. I read an article in a magazine last weekend that had all kinds of helpful information about bettas, like the three we adopted this summer.

Do you see where it says they can recognize their owners?? I fear this is bad news for the 4th Grader because her fish may realize that she never feeds her but instead has one of her sisters do that job. Also, it appears that the 2nd Grader was right about her fish being destined to live an unhappy life without a few fancy furnishings in her bowl. The article clearly states that one should “provide objects for fish to swim around or hide behind.” Maybe Sparkles needs a castle after all. Most concerning, though, is the news that the average longevity for these fish is 4-10 YEARS! I was thinking that our commitment would probably be something more along the lines of 4-10 months. If 10 years proves true, we could potentially be moving Boomer, Sparkles, and Betsy Ross into college dorm rooms in a few years to live with their rightful owners.

So far, fish ownership has not been stress-reducing for us. But, since it sounds like we have up to a DECADE to bond with them, maybe there’s hope for us yet.