Reading Night

Tonight was M1’s First Ever reading night at school. Some of the teachers do this a few times a year and the last one of the year they open up to the following year’s kindergarteners. She’ll have a bunch of stuff to process over the next few days. Me too.

The actual learning stuff (talking about abc’s, making her own abc book, finding things that started with letters, etc) went really well. Her teachers rock. I think she’s going to do really well with her all-day kindergarten teacher, I liked her bunches. And the library is just so fucking cool. Um. I might be a little bit biased about the library. But P totally agreed with me so I couldn’t possibly be… ;) Also apparently there are “family math nights.” I said to her, “Oh MARIAN! Family math nights!” and she said back, “That’s SO cool!”

Unfortunately, while we were in the brief parent’s workshop, there were two mean little girls who told her they didn’t like her name, they didn’t like her sister’s name & “butterflies aren’t really your style.” (She was wearing her Easter butterfly dress & sparkly butterfly necklace that is currently her favorite). I don’t know who is more crushed, M1 or me. Dammit, school hasn’t even *begun*! Little monsters. But Marian is processing, and I guess it had to happen some time. We talked about how some people are mean because they’re jealous. We talked about different ways to deal with it (”I still like butterflies because wearing them makes me feel GOOD!” & “That’s not nice {and walking away and finding nice people to play with}”)… And we talked and we talked and we talked… Learning curve ahead.

The good news is, even though there were two mean little girls, she is still totally excited about school and didn’t want to leave tonight. The little girls seem to be entirely separate from school in her mind. I’m not worried about school, I know she’s ready for it… I don’t know if *I* am ready for her to have to deal with mean little girls though.