I am back to writing because the girls are growing up so fast and I am already forgetting some things. Today was the last day of school for Alera and Zelda - first grade and kindergarten. Zelda cried on the way home because she was sad about school being done. This, a few minutes after she had excitedly talked to her friend Allison about going to the pool and a picnic during the summer. Just a snippet of the emotional roller coaster she’s been on this whole year!
Alera has improved so much in her writing skills and the illustrations that accompany her stories are incredible. Her handwriting is starting to look like mine which I’m really happy about. Maybe she’ll be better than me one of these days and take over addressing the Christmas cards. She had such a great year in first grade, went to her first play, “The Grinch”, and had an important job of teaching the class a new word of the week. I learned some new words, like snuggery. She was so excited to show Zelda the ropes, so much that she may have just taken it a bit too far and got Zelda lost in the hallways the first week of school. She kept asking if she could go visit Zelda in her classroom so many times that Mrs Schmidt finally had to tell her that it was not ok to disrupt another class for a sister visit.
Zelda started out the year being very emotional about not having friends. She went into kindergarten with the expectation that she would have friends like her big sister did. Nothing we said about how other kids are also still adjusting to school would change her mind about the “no one likes me” feeling. I tried talking her through it, but hearing that did make me feel sad and hurt for her. I wondered if her having a hearing aid, being different from her classmates, was contributing to that. Could she hear the other kids in class? Was it all just too loud to understand speech? A few more weeks in, I realized that she knew the names of all the kids in kindergarten, even ones not in her class, but other kids were still learning some names. I reminded Zelda that she should continue to be kind and friendly because her friends are also new to school. Thankfully, all those initial icky feelings eased up eventually, though in true Zelda fashion, with her flair for the dramatics, we would occasionally hear about how no one wants to be her friend (just one friend said they didn’t want to play and that became a “no one wants to play”).
This year, I surprised both girls at school by joining them for a lunch. I met Zelda’s friend Finn and heard how he pretends to be Link and Zelda of course is Princess Zelda. I met Alera’s friend Lily again and her kindergarten friends who were in different first grade classes. They are such great buds and I’m happy to see that a change in classrooms isn’t keeping them from being friends.
The days are long. So long. The school year though, flew by and was over in what seems like a blink of an eye. I look forward to a summer full of fun with my three girls and Mitch!
- Di