Coming Down

It's been a very tough week here. Amanda had a terrible virus that laid her out for Tuesday and Wednesday. It wasn't exactly my finest hour in juggling family with work and school, but we have survived and I am hopefully a bit wiser for it. Amanda's grandma is in town and Amanda is visiting with her at the McKenzie's house. (thanks again Tiff!)

I went to the open house for Lily's school yesterday and got to meet her teacher and her teacher's assistant. Ms Snoots (her teacher) seems like an excellent kindergarten teacher. I see why she needs an assistant with all the stuff they keep track of. They send home a weekly report of how the kids do with keeping their "promises" (classroom rules). They have to keep track of attendance and mark absences as either excused or unexcused. They have a way of keeping track of lunch money. They send a folder home with the kids each day and have to keep track of that stuff too. Not to mention they are always herding a class full of kindergartners! Learning about their recordkeeping reminded me of my summer of keeping score for mlb.com.

It's finally sinking in that Lily is in school and it's for real now. She can't just miss a day without an excuse anymore. Amanda has to notify the school next week when she takes Lily to the dentist. Taking Lily on a non-educational vacation will be considered an unexcused absence. It's kind of like work now!

One thing that struck me at the open house is that Lily is in a very diverse environment. One of the first things they had the kids do was a "self-portrait" where they selected a circle of paper, glued on yarn for their hair, and colored in their features. These are up on the wall. Most of the faces were a shade of brown rather than cream. This is in pretty stark contrast to how it was for me in elementary school. Hopefully she will just see people as people regardless of the color of their skin. Given that her best friend at school is black, I think we're off to a good start with this.