First Post

February, 2009. This month, my 5 year old starts kindergarten full time, and I start a blog. She is starting halfway through the year, because she kept begging us to go full-day. She said it would be "like having a play date all the time." So far, she likes it.

This is our life in our new (since June '08) house, just south of Denver.



Halloween '08. I didn't cut Papa Bear's eye holes big enough, but he was a good sport.



This is my R., feeding a lorikeet at the zoo last week. She is an Animal Girl. She wants to be a vet when she grows up.



She even likes goats.



This is my favorite baby picture of her. She was quite a baby. She kind of knew it all already. She was self-possessed and had a strong sense of her own dignity, but then she would lose it in epic colicky episodes. She had night terrors where she would stand up in her crib and scream and point into a dark corner until the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. It was always unsettling to catch her looking at you like this.



Here is the note she wrote to me last week, to say thank you for sending her to school full-day. Not bad for a five year old, sounding it out on her own!



Here she is with my Dad in December, this past Christmas. They have the same sense of humor but they like to talk about serious things too.



This is her best little school friend. They go to Catholic school and love to have free days where they don't have to wear their uniforms.




Now that R. is full day, I pack her a lunch for the first time. We used to sit at the kitchen table together while she ate leftovers from her dinged-up Peter Rabbit plate. I read that Japanese mothers pack elaborate bentos to show their love for their children. I don't think I will ever be making lifelike anime characters out of pepper strips and colored bonito flakes, but I love to make it healthy and appealing for her to eat. I miss her in the afternoons. Last week I volunteered in the art teacher's room, and she said "Oh yes, I cried the first time I ate lunch by myself."

I started taking pictures of her lunches, and it made me want to start a blog.