First Things First

First Day of School, Wednesday morning:
Here is Claire, ready with a smile for Kindergarten. So VERY excited!


And here is Davis.....let me just say, this First Day of School morning did not have the warm fuzzy, picture taking moments that you would hope for. Davis was up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. By 6:45, he is getting dressed, and by 7:30, he is crouched by the toilet saying, "I think I'm going to throw up." The poor kid; I have never seen nerves get the better of him. I guess I underestimated what a new school in a new town would do to him. I mean, when has anything ever scared my son? Even though we had visited the school and met his teacher, he was not emotionally prepared. Throw in the exhaustion from lack of sleep, and things went from bad to worse. His friend showed up to ride bikes over with him, and when we told him that Dad was taking them to their first day of school, he came unglued. Hence the lovely pictures of him. Throw in a parental spat/difference of opinion on something between Dave and I, and we were one, big happy family, let me tell you.

My children did come home happy and healthy and willing to talk about school; I'm glad they have short memories.

To go along with our firsts, here is Claire finally getting brave and learning to ride her bike without training wheels.

Let me just say that she has fought this for MONTHS. I could tell she could do it; she would balance completely on her tires, and the training wheels wouldn't even touch the pavement. But she is so hesitant and fearful, she only tried a couple of times and was bawling the whole way. I stopped because of the nasty looks my neighbor kept throwing me as I'm running down the street behind her saying, "Don't stop pedaling, Claire, or you WILL fall down." while she is howling away. But this last weekend, I told her that if she wanted to ride her bike to school with Davis, it had to be without training wheels. So while she wimpered and whined, we got her on, and after exactly 10 seconds, I let go, and she rode around the cul-de-sac. A couple of wobbles later, and she was ripping around the street like she had ridden for a year. Now she rides everywhere. Yippee!

Finally, Davis got his first orthodontia today; a retainer that will semi-correct his crazy top front teeth so they don't completely ruin themselves. I don't have a picture yet, but it is quite funny listening to him try to talk around it and slurp his spit off the roof of his mouth. I hereby apologize to all my family, especially my mother, for all the excessive talking I must have done with my spacers/retainers just to hear myself with a "Cool" retainer lisp. Turnabout is fair play.

So, now we just need to get used to this 4-day school week up here. It makes for a very long school day, but man it was nice to let the kids sleep in this morning and not have to run anywhere....and we still have Saturday tomorrow. If we can survive Monday-Wednesday nights, we just might like this.