Book Character Day
The Fourth Grade Spelling Bee
Earning New Belts in Karate
Fun Day (Field Day)
Dance Recitals (Hmm. I really need to get some photos of oldest child in her costumes, too.)
Blueberry Picking with Grandparents (not a school activity, but happened during the end-of-school crazies)
Colonial Day
Random Birthday Parties
And Kindergarten Graduation (even though we haven't graduated yet)
Amazingly, this time has not involved in major illnesses or injuries. But it's not for a lack of trying. Natalia in particular, seems to have a need to create chaos and drama when she is nervous. When Mike gets nervous, he becomes overly helpful. It can be a bit much, but I really won't complain when an eight-year-old decides to pack lunches for himself and his siblings. It may all be packaged goods from Costco, but at least he uses the organic Go Go Squeeze...
But not Natalia. She is something special when she is nervous. The emotional roller coaster is something to behold. And the day of her dance recital, she took the nervous fun to a whole new level. It began when I looked down at the grocery store that morning and noticed her hands were pink. And not just a little red. Bright, opaque pink like the child had coated her hands in Pepto-Bismol. Except they were dry. I foolishly asked what happened and which point she went into evasive mode. Now keep in mind the girls aren't allowed to wear nail polish for the dance recital because it is distracting, and the child looks like she is wearing pink gloves. So when we got home, I made her scrub her hands. Nothing changed. So I scrubbed her hands. Nope. Still nothing changed. So I got out nail polish remover and ran it over he hands. That helped. A bit. So after much alternating between nail polish remover and soap, the crazy pink was gone, and her hands were the normal pink of having just been overly scrubbed.
After that fun, I needed some time alone to stuff my face with brownies, and so when she asked if she could play in the garage, I agreed.
Side note: Most garages in Wilmington are teetering mazes of Christmas decorations and outgrown clothes and all the stuff that doesn't fit in a house that you can't quite part with. Garages don't actually hold vehicles or lawn equipment or anything I associated with garages when I lived in the Midwest. Our garage had hit teetering maze-level in the late winter, at which point I did a massive purge, and it was clean and spacious again. For about a week. And then it slowly began refilling itself. We are not at teetering maze-level again, but it's not exactly empty either, so while it's not a super dangerous death trap, it's not the greatest place for a kid to play either. (Which, I'm sure, is the major attraction.)
After about ten minutes, I went out to check on her. That's when I found her riding her brother's new bicycle around the piles of stuff on the floor. Of course her brother's bike did not yet have training wheels, and she has never ridden a bike without training wheels, and she was complaining about how difficult it was to ride. And she was wearing a long, flowing sundress. And no shoes. She was a broken arm waiting to happen, but miraculously she got off the bike in one piece.
Thankfully, the Natalia-related special events have come to a close and she is (somehow) going to be heading to first grade next year. Now we just need to make it through three field trips tomorrow, and a couple of class parties on Wednesday and Thursday. We can do this. And fingers are crossed that we continue to stay accident free.
