On Monday evening, after what turned out to be a very long day at work for both Rhiannon and me, after Rhiannon lost track of time after her very long day at work and ended up staying at school working longer than she anticipated, after we realized that morning that we were not prepared to throw everything in the crock pot for the day and therefore had nothing planned for supper, and after Monday decided to follow Sunday (how dare it)…
After that, we both got home, ate a quick supper, and got everyone back in the car. It was dark. Brooklynn doesn’t care for rides in the dark too much because she can’t see anything and it was in the evening. We weren’t going to a game, and Dad wasn’t going to work separately and it wasn’t a weekend, so what were we doing.
We told her we were going to her school. All of us. Mommy, Daddy, and her. School, hooray, right? School is fun, you like school, and so we’ll all go and it will be wonderful.
Brooklynn cried because she thought we were going to drop her off at school and leave her there and, well, apparently her Monday had been long as well because school didn’t seem like someplace she wanted to be.
Before I forget to mention it, Rhiannon and I went to a parent-teacher conference on Monday. For Brooklynn.
Brooklynn is two. It seems weird to me too.
We sat and talked with her teacher, Miss Jenny. We talked about how she loves to sing and dance and do yoga. We talked about how wonderful it is that she’s fully potty-trained and how wonderfully ironic it was that earlier that day Brooklynn had an accident for the first time in a couple months.
We sat in very tiny chairs around a very low table and looked at an official looking report card. It had many sections and skills on it, most of which Brooklynn has mastered. This was noted by an “A” for Always, so Brooklynn go mostly A’s. Some of the items had an “S” for sometimes, which means that she sometimes does them. Things like tracing a circle and putting her own coat on.
Brooklynn likes to draw in strong bold straight line scribbles. Last night, she drew a plane that consisted of one teeny-tiny marker mark on the paper. The closest she comes to drawing a circle is when you ask her to draw a monkey and she manages to produce a sickly looking oval which is promptly covered by strong straight lines.
She doesn’t put her coat on. At 6:15 in the morning, we are typically trying to convince her to either finish her cereal by herself or that right at that moment would not be the best time to attempt to open a banana entirely on her own and that no, we’re not opening it for her, we’re just fixing it because the banana was broke. Heaven help us when “Daddy’s fixing it” is no longer a good excuse for assisting her. Waiting for a two year old to put her own coat on is very low on the priority list at that point.
So she doesn’t do everything on the list to perfection, but she’s close. We hear how she sticks up for her friends if someone is being mean and how she loves to read and play and dance. We saw her demonstrate the “upside down coat” method of putting her coat on and how she likes to hold on to something when attempting to stand on one foot.
In other words, we found out that we have a normal and seemingly well-adjusted two year old. And then we bought a couple books from the book fair to take home.
The past two nights, she’s taken her new penguin book to bed with her.
Last night, Rhiannon started working on tracing circles. We’re talking about giving her more time to make sure that she can try to put her own coat on.
Brooklynn, welcome to the next 16 years of your life. Try not to grow up too fast.
