More Kindergarten

I thought I posted this photo earlier, but I don't see it now. Ryan wanted to take his own back to school picture with her. Finding the box with where these books were packed was a mid-sized challenge.

I'm so glad I took a picture of this because I totally forgot it had existed and it took me a few minutes to re-decipher it: "Willa McCall Daniels"spelled phonetically by its owner. McCall was my mom's maiden name and I really love and miss my Grandma McCall.

We had my first parent/teacher conference a week or two ago. It's hard to read, but basically, Willa scored 49 on letter fluency and the end-of-year goal for the kindergarten is to score 40. She scored 31 on sounds, and they want them to be at a 30 by December.

 I was a little intrigued and disturbed that her behavior was only a "P" for "progressing", but I'm pretty sure she can get extra silly when there are other little girls to be silly with. And now that I've photographed and documented all of this for posterity, I can throw everything away :).

Kindergarten

We moved into the new house on a Tuesday and Willa started kindergarten the following Monday. Life was crazy! I remember trying to pack all her school supplies in a certain school supply box, but then of course I'd come across something I'd forgotten and then that would get packed in a different box. Then, finding that special box somewhere in the house or garage after the move took some work. Suffice it to say, the classroom is short one box of large Ziploc bags that I was supposed to donate - but at least they got the extra paper, pencils, glue, and scissors.

For the past year or so I've thought about where to send Willa to school. The school by the old house was a title I school, there were several apartments and section 8 housing zoned for the school. So even though we'd heard the teachers and principal were excellent, the student body left a lot to be desired and the school was not a 5 Star School (which is a Nevada rubric). But, we had a good friend teaching there and I knew she would look out for Willa. I think it would have been fine, the kids on our street all went to school there and most people I'd talked to had had a good experience there.

Las Vegas does not have great schools, I think a large part of it is the transiency. When a lot of the population works in the service industry, people move around a lot, shows on the Strip open and close, etc. There isn't the same kind of permanency you'd find elsewhere. Where I grew up, people live in their houses 30+ years and send their kids to the same school and the same teachers are all there. My parents have been in their house 40 years and have most of their original neighbors. Here, even among church members, living in the same house 15 years is pretty rare. In addition, Clark County is one of the largest school districts in the country. They haven't figured out how to split it because the city of Henderson and the area of Summerlin could each be their own district, but then all those high-income tax dollars would be cut off from funding the poorer areas of the city. It's just a big tangled web. So there are good schools around, but there are lots of not good schools.

During this time I needed to decide which school, we were also unsure about whether we would get the house. The school in the new area was rated better, but still not 5 Stars, and what if we didn't get the house? I decided to put Willa on the list for two different charter schools. The first one, was by the old house. I only did that one because 95% of our old ward attended it, people in our ward had written the charter, opened the school, etc. But, I really wasn't excited about this school. It is very strict and I think they miss the point a lot of the time. For example, they assign up to an hour of homework a day for kindergarteners. One of their reasons for assigning homework is so that kids won't be idle. Seriously. That's their real reason. The school is really into building character, but for me it is a totally wrong-headed approach. One of my little piano students came to lesson. I asked how school was and she said it was good, but there were new words they couldn't say. I asked what the words were (thinking they were something like poop, or boo-boo butt). She said, "Well, because we are all at different levels, we can't say 'This is impossible.' or 'Piece of cake.'" Okay.... so what words can you say if something is hard? She said you could say, "This is exciting!"

I told Ryan that night that that school was like 1984. Words have meaning and we should allow kids to express that meaning and their feelings. It's like Doublespeak to force kids to say "This is exciting" about a hard math problem instead of honestly saying, "I'm having trouble with this, I find it hard." I also feel like it's a Socialist education system where they want to equalize everyone, they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. In real life, we all have different abilities, and kids need to learn that. Any way, I digress. As a caveat, I learned from another friend who teaches there that none of that word stuff was school policy, but must have been that specific teacher (who was also in the ward). For me, it was just a sign of bad teaching. I put Willa's name on the raffle to get in mainly because people in the ward (who wrote the charter) told me to and I decided to have options.

The second charter school was called Doral Academy. It's an arts-integrated curriculum and very popular. They've had to open up a new campus almost every other year to keep up with the demand. For example, my harp students went to the Doral by our old house. Last year for that school, there were 3,000 applicants for six spots. And the only reason those six slots were available is because two families moved out of state, so no one was dropping out of the school. The only real way to get into Doral is if you somehow squeeze in with the new kindergarten class (something that was still hard because all the younger siblings of students get seats first) or if they build another school. Luckily for us, they were building another school so I put Willa's name on the list for the new school, and two of the other Doral campuses and she ended up getting into the new school. It's a random lottery for all the schools.

Now I actually felt like I had a dilemma. She got into this great charter school that people rave about and that has a reputation in the city. However, I'm suspicious of charter schools in general. They don't have as much oversight as the public schools, they have a smaller budget so they often have new teachers because veteran teachers would be taking a pay cut to leave the district, etc. I also didn't know if I wanted Willa to go to a school that wasn't in her neighborhood because I like the idea of going to school with neighbor friends and church friends. However, because the school system in Las Vegas is so patchy, a lot of the kids don't go to the neighborhood school anyway.

On the other hand, I felt like I HAD to take this spot at Doral. People were dying for spots at this school and if we didn't take this slot, it was likely that we'd never get in again through the lottery. Lots of people see Doral as an alternative to private schools that they didn't want to afford anymore, so a fair amount of the students are coming from Montessori or other private schools. So even if I didn't know that much about the curriculum and exactly why it was so much better than the public schools, was it okay to just follow the crowd and everyone else's opinion that it was :)? Also, it has a middle school and high school on the same campus (in different buildings). It would be especially nice to stick with Doral through middle school where the parents are a little more involved, the kids have to wear uniforms, and you can kind of alleviate some of stresses of those awful middle school years. I also liked that they have a STEAM program for the upper schools. Instead of just STEM, they add Arts into the curriculum so it's balanced. I feel really strongly about being an educated person instead of just knowing facts. Learning about the arts and understanding the arts helps our logical reasoning skills and really gives a broader education in the long run. Lastly, a friend in our old ward is a veteran and award winning teacher. She actually got recruited out of the public schools two years ago, by Adelson, which is this very elite Jewish private school (recognize the same Sheldon Adelson?). She knew teachers going to Doral as well as the superintendent. She was extremely impressed and said that if she ever left Adelson, Doral is where she would most consider going. 

In the end, I went with the flow and we settled on Doral. The new campus is beautiful, it's the last development before you get to Red Rock, it has a beautiful view of the red mountains from the playground. Here is Meet the Teacher night a few days before school started. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Chevalier and it's her first year teaching, eek.

First day of school. She's gotten so sassy with her poses! Willa has been really excited about kindergarten for the past year, talking about it almost every day as we would drive past the neighborhood school. Unfortunately, one day this summer she was talking about it and I said, "You know, it's going to be long. It's going to be longer than day camp." She had just come from a day camp with June that was four hours long... Whoops, that was the wrong thing to say. From that point on, she never talked about kindergarten again. The night before school she was a little excited, but also nervous about the length of the school day and we had to kind of pump it up for her. I feel bad that I ruined it a little for her.

Lining up the first day with her class. It was very sweet and she managed a cute smile and really was looking forward to it. Some of the kids were actually quite sad and it was hard to see them crying and hugging their parents. 

Hmmm...not so excited about the second day. It's rough getting into a schedule. Last year, all of Clark County went to full day kindergarten. A few of the charters still do half day, but ours is not one of them. I wish they would do a five or six hour day, which would be more than the 2 1/2 of half day, but less than the 8+ of full day.

 Lining up the second day.

Her school day runs from 8:30-3:19. We leave about 8:00 a.m. so that she has time to play on the playground before school. The parking and driving situation at the school is pretty awful. Since it's a charter school, there are no buses and it's not a neighborhood school for most kids so there aren't a lot of walkers. That means there are a LOT of drivers. We are lucky to get home around 3:45 most days. If I get there super early, wait in line outside the gate for 10-15 minutes, and am first to pick her up out of her classroom, I can get home by 3:35, wahoo! Still, I find that it's usually easiest to be five minutes late and not have any wait at all to get into the school, but then I hit a little more traffic on the way out. Still, I think 8:00-4:00 pm is a little much for a 5/6 year old. I keep salivating on the little neighborhood school down the street and dream a little about going there. I can get door to drop-off for Willa in 12 minutes depending on school traffic, but then I think about just driving two minutes to the neighborhood school.... Anyway, I like Doral for now. It's a nice place. I don't have anything to compare it to and I'm sure she'd be fine at the local elementary, but I really like having the option to go there for middle school. I also like that a charter school can be more flexible and less bureaucratic with a student or a teacher. If I really had issues with her teacher or something going on, I feel like I would have more of a voice with the principal and there would be more options to solve the problem with less red tape.

It took about two or more weeks for Willa to really settle in and not cry about going to school. There were definitely lots of tears the second day. I feel like we don't have a lot of free time to practice piano and get other stuff done. It feels sad to get home and have it almost dinnertime. I've been trying to get practicing done before school, but that's difficult too. She just doesn't have a lot of down time and so I feel bad taking some of that precious down time and scheduling it for piano or another activity. Still, they do a lot of fun things in class and have lots of specials and breaks so she does enjoy school quite a bit now and it's not all sitting straight at a desk. She's getting to know her classmates and gets very silly with them.

Suzuki Harp Institute 2016

After we got back from the cabin, we stayed in Utah for Suzuki Institute. I was doing teacher training for Book 3 and Willa was starting as a pre-twinkler. Institute was in Logan at USU again this year. Last time, I commuted back and forth and it worked really well. It's about an hour and fifteen minute drive most days. I had two different people I could carpool with and my classes ended around 3 or 4, so I got home in the late afternoon and felt like I could play with the girls and relax. I thought it would be very similar this year...I was so so so so so wrong.

The main thing was they put my training classes in the afternoon, from 2-5:30 p.m. In addition to my classes, I had to observe so many hours of classes and lessons, then I had to attend Willa's classes and help her practice. I could combine a little, but I needed so many hours of Bk 3, and Willa was Bk 1. Willa's first class started at 10 a.m. (and one morning, we arrived to observe a class at 9:00 a.m.). With the long commute, we weren't getting home until almost 7:00 p.m., then we had to leave by 8:30 a.m. or earlier. Poor Willa, she was exhausted. When we got home, she just need a release and her and June wanted to play and relax together. We'd finally force them to bed around 8 or 8:30 and then she would SLEEP. Most mornings, I had to drag her out of bed at 8:15 sometimes straight to the car to drive up. I felt so bad for her and I was totally exhausted. In hindsight, we should have stayed up on campus like most people, but once you factor in the costs of the Institute plus lodging and food, it really added up. Plus, I didn't want to be away from June for the whole week. Still, it would have been better and next time we will do that - if we make it another time.

Willa's first harp lesson with Delaine. Learning from one of the masters.

 A much needed ice cream break at the creamery.

Kindermusik

Group lesson/repertoire class, she's on the far left so it's hard to see her. This was her favorite class to play with the other little girls. Little girls are very silly.

Here is a picture from the final concert. Every day, Willa had master class - which is a small class of three girls where each got about 10-15 minute mini-lesson each day. Then she had repertoire class - where a bigger group of 5-6 girls played through all the songs as a group with the teacher. Older kids had a theory class and a technique class, but since Willa was brand new, she had Kindermusik.

Honestly, I was just so exhausted and it was hard to be positive the whole week. I don't know if it was all the commuting or other stuff going on, but I had a hard time being as excited and enjoying myself as I have had in times past.

The final concert was the biggest disappointment and letdown. All week, the kids are practicing all the pieces and polishing them in preparation for this concert. In Willa's repertoire class the teacher would say, "This is how we are going to play this piece in the concert. Let's practice doing this. Let's practice our chair bows..." etc. So the whole week, there was this expectation for the concert. The classes were M-Th, then the concert was Friday morning around 10 or 11 a.m. and then everything was over. So Friday, our last day to drive, we drove up with my mom and June for the concert. Willa wore her favorite dress and was very excited. I was a little confused because normally there is a rehearsal onstage beforehand and we hadn't been told anything about that. We got there early and went in the auditorium and there was definitely a rehearsal going on. However, Willa's harp was not on the stage. Another harp was missing, the other little girl from her masterclass. I tried to ask several people in charge and kept getting the brush off. "I'm not sure about that. I'm not in charge of that. Ask this person..." Meanwhile, Willa starts freaking out, "Where is my harp? Am I going to be in the concert?"

Finally, I found Pam, who taught the repertoire class. I asked her where Willa and Lydia's harps were. She said that since they were just pre-twinklers, they weren't going to be onstage, they were going to bring them up to show how to bow and then they could sit and clap the rhythms with her at the front of the stage where everyone else played. What?!!!! Now, I've been to my fair share of Suzuki concerts and I could really care less that Willa gets her moment to shine onstage. However, she had been told all week that she was going to be in a concert and she was excited and expecting it. I also found Lydia's family (Lydia and Willa were in classes together all week). They had no idea that their daughter wouldn't be playing in the concert either. In fact, the dad had taken off work and driven the two hours up from Provo with other family members just to hear her play in the concert.

I explained all this to Pam and tried to ask who had made this decision (she didn't know because she had been at a rehearsal with the older kids). I explained how extremely disappointed the girls were and begged if we could please put their two harps in the back where there was obviously enough space for them. She agreed and we hurried and added the harps. Then Pam sat with the girls and talked them through what they would do. They were able to sit onstage and play Taka Taka Jump Jump with everyone and sit through the Twinkles (they should have just let them play the Twinkles because they both had been practicing them in their group classes). Then, she led them to sit on the front of the stage and clap the rhythms for the more difficult songs. It was a good compromise, I think the girls felt a little disappointed, but overall didn't really know what was going on and were happy to be able to be onstage with their harps.

I'm still pretty annoyed about the incident and I don't know how it all started, but it is my good harp friends who run the whole shebang, so I'm definitely going to talk to them about it. One thing Pam mentioned was that they were going to be switching from right hand to left hand between Twinkle variations, and the pre-twinklers hadn't practiced that. Well, that's about the lamest excuse I've heard. Isn't Suzuki about including everyone and every child can? You're telling me that you are going to exclude two little girls who have been attending classes and practicing all week, (who can see their fellow classmates onstage!) because you're scared that they will mess up right hand and left hand? As if anyone could actually hear that?!

As you can see, it's a sensitive topic. It all worked out, but only because I pushed for it. I've been to so many of these things and know everyone, so I felt comfortable going up and asking questions and pushing a little. Poor Lydia's family is brand new to all of this. They had no idea what to do. They were just standing there blankly when we figured out that they weren't going to let the girls play. I told them to sit tight and then I went to find the right people to work it out. If I hadn't been there, they wouldn't have done anything and it would have been such a disappointing end to a fun week. Again, I could care less about one more Suzuki concert. Willa's part was small, it wasn't earth-shattering. If they didn't want the pre-twinklers to play in the concert, then they should have explained that at the very beginning. Willa would have been fine knowing that the concert was for older kids, but that she had a special role teaching about the bow and clapping the rhythms. She would have been totally fine. But to go the entire week in these larger classes talking to them about the concert and what they are going to play and how they will sit and act... and then to not let them do it? It was just wrong. I don't think it was anything nefarious, I think it was bad planning and communication on all the levels. I should clarify, Willa and Lydia were the only official "pre-twinklers" the other girls in their classes were a little further along in the book, but not by much, but enough to not be "pre-twinklers" and they were onstage. So it was very confusing for Willa and Lydia to see their classmates onstage ready to play and not be included, especially when they did play almost all of the same songs.

If the week hadn't been exhausting enough, I just had a sour taste after that concert. For a minute, when I first talked to Pam and thought they weren't going to let her play, I just sat down and started crying. Just those silent, fat tears that won't start coming. I think I was just so emotional and exhausted from the whole week that this straw broke the camel's back. Thankfully, I pulled myself together and then went to fight for them to play.

On a happier note, I really did enjoy my teacher training. We had a new teacher trainer, Kathy Kienzle instead of MaryKay or Delaine. She was great and I feel like I learned a lot. I always enjoy meeting the other teacher trainees in the class, and my friend Tara had come up from Vegas to take the class too.

A lot of the original ShruDe students were there as well, either doing teacher training or taking their kids to Institute. We all got a picture together with ShruDe.

From L-R:Makay, Bianca, MiKell, Kimberly, me, ShruDe, Nicole, Anamae, Cate, and Maria. Sadly, Alyssa - whose idea the photo was, got the day mixed up and didn't make it! I have so many memories of these ladies, it is always so fun to see them.

The Cabin, July 2016

Forgive me for the time hop, but I've skipped a lot of fun adventures the past few months that I want to remember in the future. This year, Ryan couldn't join us for the cabin, but we had the next best thing... the Thalmans! Robert had to work too, so Kim drove up with the kids. It was PERFECT. The girls had best friends to play with. That first night, we thought they'd never go to sleep.

We kayaked down the river. I took Willa in a double kayak, Kim took Bridgett, but then Abby took a single kayak and my dad was supposed to stay right with her in case she needed help, but he got distracted talking to people as we pushed into the river and so he didn't catch up with us until we were halfway through and past all the rough patches. Typical, if you know my dad and how friendly he is with everyone and also how oblivious he is to time :).

 We pulled out the mega tube, which is always an effort. The girls went without June earlier, this time she wanted to go...and lasted about three minutes. Willa wanted to get off too, and then my dad could really whip Bridgett and Abby around without the two scaredy-cats on board.

 On a cool day, we went and fed the fish at Big Springs and took a small nature walk. The weather was on the cooler side, but we did have one or two nice hot days for the boat.

The whole group as we were packing up and getting ready to head out. Kudos to Kim for driving back to Vegas on her own with three kids! It was a great, great trip, as usual. My girls were a lot more daring this year - they liked the four-wheelers, did the wave-runners and the boat with few complaints and sometimes even begged for them.

The new house

I haven't blogged in a while, I don't feel like cleaning the kitchen, Ryan is at track practice, so it seems like a good time to write a little bit about the house. Tomorrow will be our two week anniversary of moving in. We still can't believe we have this beautiful house and yard and live in this nice area. The move went well, we hired a couple of guys to come help Ryan. They loaded up the entire house, drove to the new house, and unloaded all in about four hours. It was money well spent. Why not use the EQ after Ryan has helped and organized countless moves during his 2+ years as EQP? Well, we had tons of moves in our last ward and lots of time it was crazy stuff like once a lady drove into the church parking lot on a Wednesday night with her UHaul and said she just arrived from Colorado and a friend said if she came to this church parking lot on a Wednesday night people would be able to help her unload her truck. What?!! Another time, someone called for help and he asked when they were picking up the truck and they were like, "Truck? I need to get a truck?" He planned on just asking a few close friends to help, but then I checked the price on movers and it was reasonable and we ended up moving on a Tuesday morning because we were delayed getting keys to the house, which delayed the painters, which delayed the carpet cleaner and regular cleaners, which delayed the pest control guy...." Plus, Ryan has been super busy at work so I wanted movers to do the whole move in case he couldn't even get off.

Anyway, the first night we were excited and pumped and had trouble sleeping, especially with all the new house sounds. There was a huge lightening storm during the night (I was awake, but Ryan had fallen asleep) Ryan woke up later and was really paranoid because he could hear this major drip and thought that something was leaking on the house. I told him it had just rained, so he went out on the balcony and there was a tiny hole in the rain gutter right there. Ha.

We are still living in total chaos, I feel like. Ryan's dad came out right in the beginning for over a week and just tinkered around. He fixed a leaking toilet, got all the outlets working, and mucked out the yard that has been neglected for 2+ years. Very importantly, he fixed all the sprinklers and found some major leaks and repaired those too. At 9:00 pm one night he was still working hard, using the dremel to carve down a piece of metal to insert into our shower door. My parents also came too and my dad spent an entire day pruning down the yard even more. They also brought a small Uhaul trailer of everything from my bedroom at their house. Sheesh, you'd think after 35 years they'd be resigned to keep my stuff forever.

Willa also started kindergarten! Yay! I'll post about that later. The pool as been the perfect after school activity. We come home and she has some time to swim and unwind from it all. Having a pool is very awesome at the moment. The kitchen sink looks out at it through the backyard and it's so peaceful and nice. I love that the girls can jump in and swim without having to pack anything up and go anywhere. Plus, the previous owner built a little shower outside, so we finally hooked that up this weekend. When they are done swimming, we just wash them off and wash their hair right there and then straight into pajamas. It's so efficient!

We are still mostly furniture-less and will remain so for a long time. It's a struggle to make things fit when they don't really fit, if that makes sense. The toys are all over the place right now. I need new systems and a routine. I try to clean and tackle the last remaining boxes in the garage but sometimes I just stand in a stupor unsure where to start. But, we're almost there. We love everything so far and even though it's a new part of town and new neighborhood, we find that it's very nice and actually prefer it up here because it's so quiet and peaceful.

And that's enough procrastinating for now, I've got to clean the kitchen. Plus, this post is already longer than I expected it to be!

After just a few days of swimming in the pool, June is already doing so much better! She can almost swim the width of the pool. Ryan was doing "swim lessons" with her on Saturday and she decided she was "tired of kicking" and just liked to float instead. I love that she's getting a good feel for the water.

Dinner after swimming.

What we've been up to

I need to post the pictures from the cabin, but so much is going on right now. Like...we are buying a house! And, Willa had eye surgery on the day we ended up signing! Could life get more stressful and/or exciting? Long story very short, we put an offer on a short sale wayyyy back in November 2015. There were multiple lenders on the property so the whole process was much more complicated and drawn out. One lender would get around to doing something and finally send it off to the second lender, then something would go stale before the second lender got around to approving something, so there would be a setback....repeat this over and over until the end of June when the two lenders agreed on everything except $400!!! One lender wanted $400 more and the other refused. Finally, our realtor said that HE would pay the $400. And then we had a deal!

There have still been setbacks and we don't have keys yet, another long story. But hopefully in the next few weeks we will be enjoying this:

The house has been vacant for a year, so the vegetation needs a lot of TLC. We had to get the pool cleaned up and fixed... which is another long story. Basically, the bank told us they wouldn't approve the loan until the swamp pool was cleaned up. But the buyer was walking away, so we had to pay for it ourselves. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as expensive as it could have been. We had a scare when we called the pool repair guys, apparently this type of pool should never be emptied and there was a chance that the pool could be a total loss! They filled it up asap and then did an inspection and said it was still in really good condition. Even though it was annoying that the bank required it all to be fixed, we are grateful because what if we had bought the house and had found out we had worthless hole in the ground!

On the other side of the excitement spectrum, we had a regular eye exam for Willa two weeks ago. We usually go two or three times a year to check her alignment. Her one eye always struggles to straighten as much as the doctor wants. It starts straight but as the doctor stresses it, it starts turning inward. There's a condition where this just happens when the eye is fatigued and it's not a big deal, but with Willa we noticed that she was losing her depth perception, which is a sign that it's turning inward most of the time. When we first started going to this doctor two years ago, Willa could identify almost all the 3D images. Now, she gets the one big one, but hardly any of the others. Last appointment she just got two and that was good for her. So we would go back every few months and check the eye and tweak the prescription, but finally we are at the strongest prescription she can have and it still wasn't great so the doctor recommended surgery. (Ryan wonders if her eye was worse because she spend so many summer hours in the pool without her glasses on.) It was a 60-90 minute procedure and the doctor went in and loosened the muscle that was pulling the eye in. Sometimes she does two muscles on one eye, but more often she does one muscle on each eye. Why did she need to do two muscles? I'm not sure, but something about balance in the universe. 

I wasn't sure what to expect with this surgery except that coming out of anesthesia would be bad. I was hopeful that recovery would be easy because the doctor said Tylenol would be enough and didn't prescribe narcotics for after the surgery. Well....after experiencing it, I'm going to go ahead and say it was way rougher than her broken arm surgery. The eyes are just so sensitive. The arm was really painful the first time and she did need the narcotics. But with the eyes, they are just irrititated and scratchy and it's not an area where you can really comfort her. Plus, we have to do antibiotic eye drops four times a day for two weeks, which is pretty miserable for a five year old. She's getting used to it, but still hates it. I think she's starting to realize that the drops help her eyes feel better. If she would take regular eye drops it would be way more comfortable for her too, but she was NOT interested in additional drops. The main comfort is a wet cooling cloth that she keeps by her side. When her eyes really start to bother her she presses it on her eyes and it provides some relief. Pre-op:

For being so brave and going to surgery Willa finally earned the Elsa Frozen Fever Lego castle that she has been eyeing and earning a job chart for for months. It ended up being the best distraction the first two days since bright lights and the tv were irritating for her eyes. The prize for two weeks of eye drops? A mermaid fin. I feel so bad that she's been through so much at such a young age. When I told her about the surgery she started crying and asked if they were going to put a mask on her face again (for the anesthesia). It's so sad that she remembered enough from the previous surgery two years ago to be afraid of specific things. Since she had just turned four for her last surgery and she's still five, she asked me if she has to have a surgery for every year old she is. I hope not!!

Driving home from the surgery center. Her eyelids were all swollen :(.

Day 2, almost finished with her Legos. It was such a great distraction!

Her eyes are really bloody on the inside, but today she complained the least amount so far and didn't need her cold cloth nearly as much. The sad news? No swimming for a month!!!! I wanted to get the surgery done before kindergarten but if I had known about the swimming I might have waited for October! Oh well, we will survive. But pretty ironic that we signed for the house with that beautiful pool the same day as the surgery.

Yearning

Odd Squad: The Movie came out today. For those unfamiliar with Odd Squad, let's just say it's the best show ever in the history of children's television. Even I like to watch it. It's brilliant!

Anyway, it finally came out (on PBS kids) and I turned it on for Willa. She was so excited she told me, "I have been yearning to see this!!! That's fancy for really, really wanting something."

So this post is dedicated to Odd Squad and Fancy Nancy for fun shows and fancy words.