Another day

Daria: "Mom you’re the best mom in the whole university." Apparently I’m still in the schooling phase of motherhood. I’m glad I’m the top in my class.

Dustin finally rode the bus today. I think he was more excited to ride the bus than going to school. It was painful for him to wait. He’s asked every day. We have a long tradition of walking to school, which the kids love. Sometimes they walk, sometimes they run. Sometimes they pick berries, other times they play games. Most parents like to get their kids on the bus the first day of school to get them used to it, I wasn’t falling into that trick. The first week of school is always a crazy bus schedule. This year proved no different. I had friends whose kids weren’t getting home until 5pm! That’s par for the first week of school. Dustin felt the wait to ride the bus was unbearable. I reminded him that he will be in school for about fourteen years. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to ride the bus. This idea didn’t help. I did however remind him that most of the day he is sitting and that riding the bus is just more sitting. Walking gets the wiggles out. Our plan is to actually ride our bikes but I have yet to go buy another bike lock. It’s on my list.
When he arrived home today (at 4:20p, as opposed to 3:43 when I can pick him up) he jumped off the bus and did some sort of jiggly dancing yelling hooting and hollering jive, to show me how fun it was to ride the bus. Good for him!

Dariator…..I’m borrowing that nick name from a friend (you know who you are). Daria is such a loving sweet caring, fuzzy wuzzy little girl….usually. Since starting third grade she is Dariator. In fact starting third grade has been an experience sort of like visiting a different planet. She’s been a big blubbering ball of tears, worries, “what-if”, “school is hard”, “what if the bus doesn’t drop me off” you name it. It’s caught me off guard to say the least but I’m sure this stage will pass. Luckily she came home today in a great mood (as opposed to the tears this morning)

I don’t blame her. Kindergarten through 2nd grade is a breeze here. Third grade is intense compared to three years of learning your letters and colors (ha, ha). Thanks to the No Child Left Behind, Daria’s already taken one pre-test for TAAS (I think that’s just for the teacher to see where she is at) and 5 days into school and she’s already received another “practice” test for next week. So teaching to the test has already started! Tell me why a third grader needs to know what a “minuend” and “subtrahend” is already? Hello people IT’S THIRD GRADE!

Dustin is well, slightly over prepared for Kindergarten. That’s ok, it will all even out. Last night at orientation we were given the Kindergarten site words to work on with our children. There are 30 of them. Dustin already knows 28 and the other 12 he can already sound out. I did not teach him the site words, I had no idea which ones they were. I did however teach him how to read which makes all the difference. Ooops! Well, as soon as he turns those in he will be working on the 1st grade site words. It doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact he has no idea he’s ahead of the game and I’m sure not going to tell him. He’s so stoked for class that no matter what he’s asked to do he loves it.

There are a lot of fun things about growing up, most of which I’ve experienced as a parent. There are a lot of things I missed out on as a kid, mainly due to my lack of self confidence or motivation. In this case my huge aversion to balls, or any sport that includes balls. I dislike them and the balls dislike me. When it comes to sports I think of things like mountain biking or figure skating. No balls! I can’t remember a time where I’ve played a ball sport and not been clobbered by the ball. Fast forward 20+ years. The ladies in the Relief Society at church have a volley ball group. Once a week starting at 8:30pm and they play until they decide they don’t want to play anymore. My friend Mary encouraged me to go. This made me laugh. Of all the ball sports volleyball is the one that I really try to avoid. But being an adult now I have a slight sense of control and figured I would try it out. She promised me it was just for fun, no competition. True to her words it was fun. There are a few ladies who played volleyball in college, very good players but they are there for the fun of it. The rest of us are not very good at it but it was worth it. We played until about 11pm. I think we laughed ourselves silly, and all of us got a great workout. For the first time of my life I didn’t run or duck from the ball (well, except when Tia was serving) and I actually scored about 8 points total. The best part about it was the other ladies are so encouraging. They gave me pointers and would always tell me when I did well. Being an adult is much more enjoyable than being a teenager. I like that I can re-live some of those spots from my childhood and live it without all that peer pressure to perform.