Felicity in First Grade

Felicity is doing just great, seven years old for a few months now.  She is my grumpiest child, my worst sleeper but also super fun.  She cracks me up, she never just walks anywhere, she always skips or jumps or dances around.  She is doing VERY well in school, reading at a late second grade level, tra la la, she is just fine! She is addicted to the iPad which drives me crazy, I really don't think it's good for her. 

It's a real conundrum, the iPad situation.  I am so tired/busy/dejected/uncaring, that I don't want to spend all night talking about the iPad so I have gotten into a bad habit of letting her on it too much.  I have to think of other stuff for them to do but they are SO unpleasant when I don't let them on it, it just makes MY life miserable so why do I want to do that? I mean, I KNOW why I want to do that.  I want to do that so that she doesn't turn into a robot person but lord, they are all a pain.

You know, I was storming around my kitchen this morning, mad at everyone, and then when I was driving to work, I was regretting it, as usual.  On Mondays, I have to go to work too, so I'm trying to get myself ready for my busiest day at work, I have to bring lunch and a snack and it's just a long day.  Those girls are all just sitting around, playing on the damned electronics.  I SHOULD, I suppose, go and check everyone's jackets and make sure that their gloves are in their pockets and that they have one of the FIFTY scarves made available to them at the ready but I don't because I am racing around trying to get coffee into a thermos and get my lunch together.  So I told Felicity TOO LATE! Put your hands in your pockets because you don't have TIME to find gloves now!

But then I was thinking on the way to work, I'm probably so short tempered because I'm so old.  I work with a thirty year old who has a Felicity aged child and that child is so much luckier than Fifi.  And it's just not something I thought of, clearly enough, when I started at such a late stage of my life.  I foolishly thought that the hard part was having them, being healthy enough to bear them and feed them as teeny babies.  That was dumb, I see now. 

But what to do? I have to keep being her mom, so I have to make myself younger, or at least deal better with my old age.  I'm working on it.  Stay tuned, ha! 

Oh! I forgot! She's getting tubes in her ears on 12/10.  She had seven documented ear infections this year, that was just at the Minute Clinic, I think she probably had three more at the other clinic.  In other words, too many! So this should help, she will miss a day of school and she is nervous but I think it will be fine.  Think of us on the tenth!

Here's some cute pictures. 

Six Years Old

Felicity is six years old, she actually turned six on Tuesday but we had her party today.  A Tuesday birthday is a tough one! We had it at the K of C, Anthony doesn't have respite anymore so we just didn't think we could do it here, he is wont to put his fingers in the cake or whatever and he sometimes screams really, REALLY loudly and we just thought it would be worth it to pay $125 for the room at the K of C to just not be here.  Mike and Anthony couldn't come but otherwise it was good.  We played a lot of musical chairs and had some emoji face painting and had pizza and snacks and cake.  It rained and rained here today so we couldn't go outside or anything.  It think it was fine, it's over, in any case.

She is a pretty good six year old, I think.  Last night I work I saw a mom friend of mine from the girls' school and she has four kids too.  She was out with some friends and she said they had littler kids and we were all talking about how hard it sucks and I said for me, it really gets better and better the older they get.  Just the fact that you can walk out your damned door without 42 things in a bag is BETTER.  The one woman said she has to buckle three kids into car seats, I said UGH! I wrote a gospel song one time called In Heaven, There Will Be No Car Seats! I mean it is enough to make you crazy, really crazy.  My mom friend from school said, you know, no one really tells you how hard it is and I said I mean, sometimes I do but the thing is I think no one wants to hear it! Who would do it? It's TERRIBLE.  I much prefer being the mother of a 6, 8, 9 and 12 year old than a baby, a 2, 4 and 7 year old.  BLECH.

Today at church, Felicity's teacher came up to me and said I have a story for you.  I thought, yikes, because she had already sent me an email this week with a funny story. They were working on /it family words, kit, lit, fit, etc. Felicity was the quickest and the only one to point out that they better not ever add the SH sound to the /it family of words, which prompted a poor friend of Felicity's to PUT it together and then she said her first swear word, GREAT!  Ha! Anyways, she said that they were listening to Stevie Wonder on Friday afternoon and she was saying how great he was, imagine that he wasn't given the gift of sight but he could make such wonderful music.  Felicity said, I bet he wasn't very good at art.  Ha ha! She kills me.

Anyway, happy sixth birthday to our Felicity Rose.

That's That!

Well, Felicity has started Kindergarten, so that's everyone, off to school! My work here is done, ha! I have been back to work in so many ways since she was tiny, since even before I had her, so it doesn't exactly feel like the end of an era like it would if I had been all the way home this whole time, but still! Everyone is in school all day! Matriculating! It's exciting.

Now I have to figure out what to do for the rest of my life but luckily I'm so old it isn't too long, ha ha kidding.  I am happy to be teaching three days a week, and I am going to volunteer a little in the library at the girls' school and see Felicity a little this year, like I have the others.

So far, Felicity is doing great in Kindergarten. We have two wonderful teachers at our school, so I wasn't worried about options.  I was a little worried about how little she likes to not do exactly what she wants but so far so good.  She seems to be learning, she is adorable in her uniform, all signs point to success.

Old

The other night, I saw someone I follow on Twitter say how one of the reasons her husband uses for them to be "all done" with children is because they will be 49 when their oldest finishes high school.  It is so depressing when I think that I will be on the FAR SIDE of 49 when Felicity enters Kindergarten.  Now, she is my youngest and she will turn six shortly after she starts Kindergarten, but mostly it's the same thing.  I was 43 when I had her, some people are 33, if they are GETTING OLD when they have a child, more people are closer to 23, which is TWENTY YEARS younger than I was.  What was I thinking?

Today I was mowing the lawn and thinking about how bad my eyesight is.  I mean, it's just regular bad reading eyesight, but I remember CLEARLY when my mom's eyes started going bad and I was an adult.  I may have been in college! I don't know what I'm going to do.  The thing to do is to take better care of myself but I always think of this when I'm so sick, I can't do anything.  I have such a bad cold and I am paranoid it's going to turn into pneumonia or bronchitis.  Then I start thinking, what am I going to do when I am ten years older?

Sometimes, people say, they are over it.  They are done, they are MOMMED OUT.  Honestly, I was mommed out before Anthony was six months old! I feel unaware that it's an option, to just be mommed out, to be sick of it and that's a reason to not have more kids?  I'm happy about all the kids I have, Veronica is the nicest and it took until I had THREE to get to that one, ha!

I don't know.   I just hope I can be around and not humiliate these kids, or have their friends ask why their grandmother is picking them up from school when they are in sixth grade or something.  Ugh.

February

Things are clipping right along for old Fifi.  She knows how to spell her name and she doesn't believe it, but that means she can spell the word 'city' too.  She is happy and healthy and doing just great.  She is sleepy in the mornings before school but she takes a nap and then stays up late and then is tired and repeat repeat repeat.  Next year she won't take a nap so maybe it will get better.  Anthony isn't giving her nearly as hard a time lately, so that's good.  She is going to a birthday party at a girl from school's pool this weekend, and I think she'll like it, despite the fact that swim lessons are still a giant fail.  Last week at the very end of her lesson, her teacher dunked her completely underwater and she did great.  So who knows?  Here are some pictures!

October

Felicity is doing fine, she is still waking up in the night and coming in to me but what can you do?  It could be worse.  On her birthday, my friend and her godmother Marta took her after school and she went back to her house, they did a craft and made cookies and since then Felicity has had a taste of no aftercare and she doesn't want to go anymore! She also doesn't want to go with me and get Anthony so it's a trial.  I figure if I let her stay in with me a few hours a few nights a week, maybe it is all even steven, right?

Her birthday party was super fun, even though I got shingles the day before and I was DYING from the pain.  I plan to mention this 1000 times over the course of Felicity's life, ha!  She got a lot of great toys and gifts and had a lot of fun with her friends, including her very serious boyfriend Miles, who she goes to school with and who she loves.  We love him too, he is so cute.

I had her conference at school, she is doing okay.  Concerns include the way she holds a pen and her inability to let things go or not think that she is being personally attacked when things just don't go her way.  In the beginning of the year, she had some problems  with her friend Charlotte.  Over the summer, Charlotte and our other friend Rebecca and Felicity were playing together but sometimes, as is wont to happen with three little girls, Charlotte and Rebecca would be mean to Felicity.  It drove me bananas and there is so little you can do - I ended up spending a LOT of time playing with Felicity, just the two of us, which I didn't love but I imagine I will appreciate someday.  Anyway, Charlotte's mom and I are friends so we have been talking about it and they have been playing together in a nicer way and all is well, except that sometimes now when Charlotte is just normal with Felicity, Felicity thinks she is being mean to her. She has a persecution complex, I guess  is what I am saying, ha!

I know that I have contributed to Felicity being a jerk sometimes.  I say "give it to her!" 100 times a day because I can't take it, I can't take her crying because Maria rips something from her hands and then having Anthony scream and rush at her and knock her down.  So, here we are.  MOSTLY she is very good in school and lord knows she can amuse herself, which is a great quality.  She is also super bright and such a funny and wonderful talker.  Last week I was calling Mike from the car and I was running late, I said "I have to call Daddy, he is going to think I'm insane" because I was out doing stuff at the time I should have been going to work.  Felicity said, "is he right, Mommy?".  Ha!

Here's a picture of her holding that pen (the wrong way, according to her teacher) and decorating a pumpkin that we got at the pumpkin patch last Sunday.

Post Labor Day Post

Felicity has been in Transitional Kindergarten (TK) for four weeks and it's all going great, for the most part.  She doesn't always love her long days but we are mostly successful.  

Felicity didn't learn to swim this summer but she did get much, much better at being in the water. Last summer she would walk around in two feet (swimming in Chinese) but she would never be where her feet didn't touch the bottom, and she wouldn't even be held if her feet couldn't touch the bottom. This summer we went all over the pool but she was not content to be alone, so we spent a lot of time together. She liked to do this thing where we would mush up against each other and she'd yell, Falling in love! Then I'd push her away and she'd cry, falling out of love. She could do it over and over and OVER, seemingly never getting sick of it, or me.
She likes to sleep with us, because she doesn't want to be alone, she says. We point out she is not alone and in fact she shares a room with TWO people. She wants to sleep with a GROWNUP, she corrects herself. I'd say more than half the week she comes into our bed.
She is doing so well in school, this morning she told me, I want you to drive away now, before I could even walk her in to school. There is a little boy at the school where I teach who goes in EVERY DAY, screaming and yelling. Every day he has to be physically removed from his mother and then he screams and cries for hours. He's been in school for a month! I find myself so grateful that Felicity doesn't behave like that that I don't care if she can't swim or that she likes to sleep with a grownup, namely me. I think this might be the secret of happiness, just lowering and lowering expectations until they don't even exist anymore.