"School...Has...Begun!!"

I know it's like the worst day ever for kids, but for parents, it's time to rejoice! Emmy has begun 5th grade and Zach is now officially a kindergartener! He actually had a good week. No issues worth noting. None at all actually. Very proud of him. Emmy had a good week too. Glad to see all of the anxiety she had thinking this was going to be like last year went away. 4th grade was a lot like 1st grade for her. Not much fun and a teacher that didn't have much patience is not a good combination for her.

So how do we begin the first week of school? By a Chick Fil A breakfast of course!:




I think Zach likes his chicken minis!!


Me: "What's wrong Emmy? Don't you like your chicken minis?"
Emmy: "It's not chicken! It's goat!"
Me: "Goat!? I didn't even know that was an option!"
Emmy: "Bad option DAD!!"

After breakfast, we headed up to the school:


Hey, pretty good shot!


Zach found his seat and immediately noticed a table full of cool toys. Just like his dad ha ha.

Emmy didn't want us following her to her classroom and "embarassing" her...but we did it anyway:


Doesn't she look surprised!! I'm pretty sure she appreciated us checking on her.

The day before we went to Hawaiian Falls with her Girl Scout troop:



Awww...no, Zach didn't lose his bottom teeth...just biting on a grape. One of the disadvantages of the iPhone 3GS is no flash on the camera. Ah well.

Starting next week I'm amping up my workouts since I have some free time in the morning! Tuesdays and Thursdays the kids are having breakfast at school and I'm heading to the Y from 7:45 to 8:45. If I can keep this up along with my Saturday workouts then I may be able to do some positive things. Saturdays are about to be tricky with both kids starting baseball. Yeah, Emmy wants to play baseball! Awesome! Zach has one more season of t-ball to go then he'll be ready for the live pitching league. I knew making them watch all those Ranger games would pay off in the long run.

Zach has this funny song that he sang to me a while back, but now that it annoys him I thought I'd mention it. His friend Nicholas (whose parents have been great in inviting Zach over to play for like the whole Saturday) was cleaning up some toys in their pre-k class. Well, he found this doll, and before he put it up he held it like a baby and sang this song:

Night night baby, night night baby, night night baby...to you...
Night night baby, night night baby, night night baby...to you...

It's actually a very sweet song, but only one time has Zach been okay with me singing it to him before bed. Now he thinks he's being babied whenever I sing it and gets all bent out of shape, so I don't do it anymore. The truth is, part of me wants to baby him just a little bit longer before he becomes an actual boy and doesn't seem as sweet anymore. I was so determined to raise Emmy as a self-reliant person that I never really babied her much. Now I wish I had. It's a hard feeling knowing that part of your kids' lives are done with and now we must move on to more important things. When the day comes that I have grandkids, you better believe they'll get the royal deluxe treatment from me. I still read to Zach though, and Emmy will help out sometimes. She's such a great kid to have around. She may not always hang her towel up, or put her dirty clothes in her hamper, but she gets ready really great in the morning, and gets breakfast for herself and Zach whenever I'm running a little behind. She even went behind Zach to make sure he found his classroom okay! What a daughter. Makes me feel a little good to know that maybe I had something to do with it. Hopefully Zach will follow in the same path and stop screaming and crying and fighting every time he doesn't get his way or doesn't want to do something that's asked of him. But that's 5-year olds. I know now why parents buy something for their kid just to shut them up. They know it's wrong, but we do it anyway.