Baby Steps

As you may know, K started first grade this year.

I remember once when she was still quite small we had lunch with a friend of mine who had two pre-teen girls. I expressed worry that I would never be able to stop kissing K's feet, the tiny toes of which I thought looked like rose petals.

'It'll be so embarassing when she's a teenager!' I exclaimed. 'What if I can't ever stop??' My friend smiled with French urbanity (she's French) as she sipped her coffee and said, 'I wouldn't worry about it too much. Eet... changes as zey get older.'

And so it does. I no longer feel any uncontrollable desire to kiss the bottoms of my 6-year-old's feet or refer to them as 'petal toes,' although other parts of her are less secure from physical expressions of maternal adoration. But I'm still awfully proud of my grown up girl and the way she's adjusting to school life.

There's a little notebook the teacher uses to communicate with parents and you have to check it every day. Typically there's some request for the next day, such as: 'Please create a such-and-such out of a match box and send your child to school with 10 pressed Autumn leaves by tomorrow.'

What am I, McGiver??

Today there's a Fall Festival at school which parents are invited to attend. This morning we told K how excited we were to see her in her first play.

K's response: 'Oh, please, I'm just holding up a dumb piece of paper the whole time. It's totally lame!'

Alrighty then. She's only 6 but she's already lived in two countries and vacationed in several others. I guess you can't expect her to get all excited about holding up a piece of paper in the school pageant.

I tried again: 'Well, I'm sure you'll be the best paper holder upper ever!'

K's response can't be captured in print because she just rolled her eyes at me.

Ah, yes, our lifetime journey of parental dorkiness begins. She will never believe I used to have an iota of coolness in me. . .