Dispatch from the First Day of School

For what seem like pretty good and fairly obvious reasons, the teachers at Violet's school (probably most schools) like parents to make themselves scarce pretty quickly after getting a kid into their space. It was a little strange to leave shy-of-strangers Violet hesitating and silent in the doorway to a room full of new kids and a few grown-ups, but we did, and she was fine. When I picked her up at the end of her day, her teacher told me that she'd done well for her first day - no sadness, just quiet reservation. The first thing Violet wanted to tell me was that she hadn't painted. Guess she's looking forward to that activity :)  She liked playing outside on the playground and she liked the "singing thing" but she did not herself feel like singing, according to her. I think she's looking forward to going back tomorrow. Hopefully they'll get to paint sometime soon!

Preschool: First Day

Getting ready:

Big girl. Though the sign isn't totally accurate  - Violet's one week away from 3.

Climbing near Rivermarket

Jason and Violet both love to climb. Fortunately for us, there's some great climbing to be had near the Saturday morning farmer's market on the river here.

Just feet in that one, but you get the idea.

Triumph(ing).

Moving

Click here to see a few pictures of our moving process. A lot of them are dim and hard to make out but they give you some sense of where we are for the time being:  Picasa Moving Album

Feeding ducks

A duck-feeding excursion with Nana and Dziadzi (Dziadzi not pictured) one or two days after our arrival (August 13, to be exact):

Berkeley was in the backyard when we started our walk and, not terribly surprisingly to anyone who knows her, quickly escaped, caught up and dove into the lake to chase some ducks.

We weren't thrilled, but we also couldn't blame her. Little Rock's recent heat wave hasn't been kind to our dog whose coat is best suited for something closer to Arctic tundra. Tomorrow though, she gets shaved.

Violet has a school!

They have an opening in her age group and she and I went to check it out today and both liked it. She'll be in half days Monday through Friday and, amazingly enough, will start this coming Monday! Given that I anticipated a long wait or at least a long search, I'm pretty thrilled that this has worked out. Hopefully it will prove to be a as good fit for us as it seemed today.

Cookies!

Sunday afternoon activity (pictures from August 22, 2010).

Violet really wanted to make cookies with shapes. 

We had stars and hearts and moons and flowers. And then it was taking too long to roll out the dough and cut new shapes with the remaining scraps so we had a few sheets of just squares :)

Here she is enjoying the finished product...

And explaining her dunking process. I don't remember the details but it was something along the lines of liking to dunk her cookies into milk but not liking to drink the milk once it had all those crumbs in it. 

There's an aphorism in here, right?

On a walk around the lake behind our house, while navigating some tricky terrain:

Jason: Violet, watch your step, there are a bunch of tree roots up ahead, you've got to keep an eye on your feet.
Violet: But I don't wanna. I wanna look at the pretty stuff outside!