five!

here's violet in august, one month before her birthday, on her first day of transitional kindergarten! it's already funny thinking back to how tormented we were by the decision between keeping her in preschool one more year vs. starting her in TK at our local elementary school. i was so worried, losing sleep, not sure what to do, and while probably either decision, once committed to, would have been "the right decision," this was, you know, the right decision. isn't it nice how that works out?

for those who don't know, many los angeles public schools offer TK for kids with birthdays between september 1 (the current start date for kindergarten) and december 4 (the former). violet is in a classroom that's a TK/K split. her teacher seems wonderful, and most importantly, she is loving it. one total surprise to me is that she particularly loves the after care program at the local rec center. she has made several bigger girl friends who fawn all over her and love to play "family" with her as the baby. one day kevin saw them carrying her in a "chariot" and calling her "queen." many days kevin arrives to find that "she's still herself," playing make believe or doing art in the art room alone, but whenever she tells us about playing with her friends, it's a positive report. in the beginning, the counselors said that she was very tentative about the group games, but she has been growing bolder. one day they were playing a trivia game where each kid who answered a correct question won a cookie. (example: who was the bird in the lion king? answer: zazu.) violet piped up that she wanted to ask the question, and the counselor let her. "who's seen alvin & the chipmunks?" violet asked. apparently half the kids raised their hands, and she exclaimed, "you all get a cookie!" our little oprah.

i wish i could say that we decided to start her in TK solely based on our belief in her readiness, but in truth the two biggest factors were 1) the money saved not paying for full-time child care, and 2) the proximity to our house. the idea of driving her the 45-minute commute to preschool everyday during maternity leave was ludicrous. down and back, down and back = 3 hours/day with a newborn in the car = obviously not happening. even if kevin did half, it would have been a nightmare. now we can just walk down the street with the baby in a sling. the biggest thing we gave up in leaving the day care (besides knowing she would have been safe and happy in that cozy nest for one more year) was sibling priority for the baby. let's just hope he gets in anyway come spring. we're on a few other group care wait lists, but they're all long shots, not to mention impractical. i may have said this after violet was born, but when i was pregnant, i would never have guessed that far and away my #1 stress after having the baby would be child care. we've gotten lucky so far, but it's about to get a lot more complicated. at least this time i can plan for that worry, right?

i took a recent belly picture in the mirror, but violet photobombed it while stark naked, so here's a shot she took that showcases my obscene outie and inappropriate midriff.

her short person view of the world always entertains me. it must be so strange down there, and it's easy to see why so many things are intimidating.

backing up a bit, we made a couple of good trips to san diego for summer fun with my family. here is one of my sister's favorite pictures, taken on a pool day at her place.

the upside-down goggles are the best. we had violet in swim lessons at the ymca basically all summer, but she still can't swim. swim lessons when you can only take your kid on weekends are a giant money pit. i'm hoping to get her in daily lessons for a couple of weeks while i'm on maternity leave. on the upside she loves the water and loves swim lessons, and she does seem to understand that the ultimate goal is she learns to swim without froggy.

speaking of frogs, violet got to take auntie's fairytale ballet class on its final day, when the girls were treated to a tea party afterwards. auntie asked them to name one thing you should always bring to a tea party. most girls of course said "cookies." violet, however, said "frogs" (because in a max & ruby episode, that's what max wants to bring to grandma's tea party, despite ruby's protests). "i should have known my niece would be the weird kid," auntie said. real nice, auntie. you'll never be a goonie.

also here are my favorite nana and poppy pictures from the san diego fun times:

at the birch aquarium violet most enjoyed the moray eel, the jellyfish, and the leopard shark, but that all paled in comparison to the shark photo booth.

on violet's actual birthday morning, a friday school day, she selected her tiger dress since she was born in the year of the tiger. i was recently telling her that her brother is going to be born in the year of the sheep, so she'll need to protect him. i think she's taken it to heart.

she was very excited to turn five, and to dole out her goody bags of pirates booty, halloween pencils, and glow rings that had a lot of 5-star amazon ratings from ravers. kevin went to class for the birthday celebration in which violet's teacher asks each classmate to offer a wish for the birthday kid. wishes ranged from "love" and "candy" to "a monster truck."

for her actual party, we rented a canopy tent at the annenberg beach house and invited a small handful of her friends and their families. violet had asked for a boogie board, which we got for her, and while no kids had any interest in using it as an actual body board, they did enjoy "surfing" on it in one-inch-deep water while squealing and clinging to auntie courtney. unfortunately i didn't take any pictures on my phone, but auntie has some on her camera that i'll get eventually. oh wait! lisa had sent me this one of cupcake time. thanks lisa!

violet's gift from nana and poppy was her new big girl bed

which she is very excited about, especially her penguin sheets. while she seems to understand that she is meant to sleep in it, she will tell me on occasion, "i never want to sleep without you and dad." we've been talking up how fun it will be to share a room with her brother (they can have bunk beds someday!), and while she is excited about this, we'll see if she actually SLEEPS in there. we'll see if HE actually sleeps in there. we'll see if he actually sleeps AT NIGHT. both the bed and the crib are currently serving as toy storage bins. i'm going to start by reading her bedtime stories in her bed (instead of our bed) and trying to at least get her to sleep the top of the night there.

violet also got her first big girl umbrella. right before the first (and so far only) rainy day of the school year, i realized, yikes, she has to walk to the rec center after school, and she doesn't have an umbrella. i dispatched kevin on an emergency target run, but as they didn't have any kid umbrellas, he returned with a smallish but nonetheless button-operated adult umbrella that is an actual weapon in the hands of a five year old. she loves it of course.

last week her school had its (big PTA fundraiser) "harvest moon festival."

each class built its own scarecrow, and here she is with "super charlie," who is looking very hobo chic in kevin's hand-me-down house shoes.

her favorite part was the haunted house that the fifth graders created. she was pretty scared the first time she went through it with me. inside were a few stationary sets involving skeletons. but by the end of the festival, she was brave enough to go through it with her sweet friend christopher. when kevin picked up violet at the rec center the other day, the older girls were like, "violet wants christopher to be her boyfriend." OMG. i'm not sure violet even knows what a boyfriend is yet. she tells me frequently that she never wants to get married or have kids and only wants to live with me and kevin forever. she recently asked if kevin and i were going to have grandkids, and i said, "well, maybe if your baby brother ends up having kids." she replied, "oh he doesn't want kids either, but i think your third baby will. or maybe your fourth one. i think you'll have twins."

despite not wanting kids, she has also started telling me that there is a baby growing from an egg in her tummy. in response to her birds-and-the-bees questions, i told her that every girl is born with lots of eggs in her tummy that are so small you can't see them. luckily her line of inquiry hasn't gone further yet. "my baby has legs now and he's kicking," she'll say. (edited to add: her baby's name is "flotsam.")

in other conversations that we've bumbled through lately, violet has a lot of questions about death since my grandpa's recent passing. i honestly thought she'd be interested but not terribly upset, and we spun the news with the positives, i.e. "he's so happy in heaven now with your great-grandmother." it took a beat, but then violet's face crumpled and she started sobbing. it was really hard to calm her down, and another reminder of what a sensitive kid she is. she will occasionally (and seemingly out of nowhere) get weepy and say she wants to go to heaven at the same time that kevin and i go. "can i fly there with you when you die?" she asked. i said i didn't think that's how it worked, and she said, "okay, but can you fly me with your angel wings to auntie's apartment? we can start a family with kids." i said, "sure, and maybe get some more cat friends for winn-dixie?" violet nodded solemnly and said, "we can get some dead mice for them too."