Teach me something!

Even though the leaves are steadily changing colour and dropping from the trees we’ve been having a beautiful stretch of weather. It’s so warm during the day that we’ve even stopped putting on sweaters. At night it gets so cold, though, that the girls wear footed jammies. I love fall, but, oh, how I’m dreading the winter.

Rachel has been a restless sleeper lately. I think part of it is due to how excited she is to be going to school. On Thursday she woke up too early and excitedly told me, “I woke up before the sun! How cool is that?!” Then a while later she started sobbing uncontrollably and ran into my arms screaming, “Mommy, hold me! I’m a little bit grumpy and I can’t stop!”

On Tuesday she woke up at 3 AM and asked to go to school. I told her she couldn’t because it was three o’stinkin’clock in the morning. She reluctantly went back to bed and then woke up “before the sun” once again, begging to get ready to go to school. Since Daddy was already up and bustling about I couldn’t really tell her to go back to bed. It was obvious it was an okay time to be awake. Not a great time, but an okay time.

When I put her to bed tonight I specifically did not tell her that she has school in the morning. It will just have to be a happy surprise.

We went in the backyard today where we played Mulan. When we were finished reenacting that we played school.

“I’ll be Sophie and you be Sophie’s mom, okay? Teach me something!” she said.

Sophie is Rachel’s friend and Sophie’s mom is Rachel’s teacher. Sophie is also, obviously, in the school, and is a few years older than Rachel and acts like a peer tutor—reading her stories, helping her with projects and so forth. The teacher decided to put Rachel on kindergarten curriculum since she is so eager to learn.

We got out the sidewalk chalk and had a lesson about rainbows. That’s one of Rachel’s favourite things to learn about. We talked about mixing colours and also drew some patterns.

We also talk a lot about the changing seasons since she’s never noticed the seasons changing before. She knows the word deciduous, which shocked Daddy at breakfast, and can correctly identify an evergreen from a deciduous tree, though she prefers to call them “the trees that lose their leaves” because deciduous is obnoxiously difficult to pronounce.

Both the girls had fun doodling on the sidewalk when we got tired of playing school.

Miriam’s usually pretty good about remembering only to draw on the sidewalk but sometimes when I get too caught up in helping Rachel draw flowers to remember to check on her she also tries to draw in her mouth.

You should have heard the noise she made when I took the chalk away…she can be quite vocal when she wants to be.

I will miss days like today when the snow comes.