Is it still Monday?

I'm tired, and it's only 1:30. No nap today either, fer sure. I took the girls to school this morning so I could go on Soren's class field trip to Strong Museum. I had taken the girls there on an inservice day so we knew what we wanted to do, but we weren't there very long! And half of the time was taken up with a "lesson" using the Berenstain Bears exhibit. The kids got into groups and had to write a story with beginning, middle and end (that was the lesson part) and then act it out in front of the rest of the class. They did great!

I was really impressed with the whole class. It was the first day for the new substitute who will be there for the rest of the year. I don't like her nearly as much as Soren's regular teacher, but she's passable I guess. She's going to need to firm up a bit though. The whole class is SUCH a cool group of kids though! They were much better behaved and fun to hang out with than Emma's old 2nd grade class that I went to RMSC with a while back.

We came back to school in time for lunch and I stayed for the first time to eat with Soren. She was SO good and was totally fine when I left after lunch. No tears, just asked for Kissing Hands.

I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but she had a run-in with a lunch lady last week. She apparently made a fan out of folding a piece of paper and was fanning another child and her story is that the lunch lady grabbed it out of her hand without even confronting her about her behavior, and then took her whole sandwich, which she had only had a bite out of, and threw it away! She was very upset about the whole thing.

Just let me be totally un-PC here for a moment - this woman is clearly a lunch lady for reason, and it's not because she likes kids. It's because her intelligence is sub-standard and she is a fat, stupid imbecile. I saw her do something similar to two other children while I was there today. She actually had made a point of coming up to me and introducing herself to me and telling me what a "good kid" Soren is, but she was probably afraid I'd blast her. I told Soren just to ignore her - Soren could run mental rings around her even on a bad day. Yeesh. As my friend Jennifer used to say, "Stupid People Shouldn't Breathe."

Another cool thing about Soren is that she confronted the girl two girls down yesterday for being bossy! She did it in a really nice way too, and the girl, who is 9, seemed to get her point, and tried to be less bossy the rest of the time they were playing :-D. Made my day!

As soon as the kids got home from school yesterday, I sent them outside, because it was warm (it's sleeting today). We took the training wheels off of Emma's bike (note: I have been trying to get Emma to ride a bike without training wheels for about 3 years now), and the first time she tried on two wheels, she took off like a bat out of hell and never looked back. I guess it was just time! So I called David and told him right away :).

Soren is doing great with her rollerblades too. Not really "skating" yet, but practicing getting around and getting up from falling down!

They played with the neigbor girl for awhile, then I got them all to husk some sweet corn for me for dinner and then I shooed the playmate out so we could eat dinner. I think this kid could become a real leech if I let her. I don't like other people's kids enough (except my close friends' kids) to have them hanging around all the time. We had lentil soup and fresh cantaloupe and corn on the cob (first of the season, from Fla.). It was yummy! Then Emma had to go to the gym for practice.

While we were eating dinner, one of Emma's old classmates stopped by to ask if she could play. They live in our development and I've given them an open invititation since we moved here, so it was too bad that the timing was off. We're going to try for Thursday of Friday.

Anyway, I've got to get dinner started and pack gymnastics stuff for the girls so it's not a big rush when they get home. But boy would I rather have a nap!