Oh yeah... last night, Berit comes upstairs wearing her Hogswarts robe and a red-haired wig with a tiara, and in a 6 year old's idea of an English accent, informs us that she is the Queen of England. Rowan follows shortly in a poodle skirt and pointy fairy-godmother hat. She is (of course) the princess. They greet us by saying Hola! and leave us with Adios!, Berit insisting that the Queen of England speaks Spanish.

I had knee surgery last week, and have been out of work. On Monday, I volunteered in Berit's first grade classroom.

There's a part of me that wants Berit to be the smartest kid in her class, which she's not. See those 3 kids in the table in the corner? Yeah, those ones. They are the smart ones. Ridiculously smart. They're over there challenging each other with multiplication problems while the rest of the kids draw pictures of animals that add up to 12.

That's cool. Berit is SMART. I know she is. Last night she wanted to practice word problems, read two books to me, and wrote in her journal. In between, we stretched. She has often memorized entire Dr. Seuss books, and she was reading, speaking writing at an early age. And I am going to let go of this competitive idea that she needs to be the best. :)

On Wednesday morning, Griffin and I are having a bath. He gathers up all the yellow rubber ducks, one at a time.
"My ducky," he says as he picks up each one. He's hoarding duckies.

I had my ACL surgery yesterday, and so I'm going to be doing a lot of lying around the house. I think Berit's psyched about it, and has proferred her help in keeping Griffin off of my knee.

I think Berit felt bad about it, but she is emotionally mature in the telling.
"Maggie has turned Katelyn into a monster."
Pam and I pressed her for more details - what exactly does she mean by that?
"Here... I'll show you," she holds up each hand's index figure bent at the middle knuckle, the universal finger puppet. She bends each to make them talk.
"Hi Maggie.
"Hi Katelyn.
"You want to play?
"Sure, but let's not play with the others."

Berit is obviously upset about the situation. Pam and I advise her to play with the nice girls. Pam goes further than I to advise that she give Maggie and Katelyn a chance. I am of the opinion that she dismiss them utterly, but I don't say this. I don't imagine I've any skill at elementary school aged female politics.

Berit's been doing great at soccer. No, she hasn't scored a goal in either game so far, but neither have her teammates. She has run the ball all the way down the field a couple times - one time ended in a face-plant, but I felt that she recovered rather quickly from that. Now, I play the proud father out there shouting for her to kill the 6 year old girls on the other team.

Rowan did a face-plant of her own last night. While running through the house, she tripped and bit it into the floor. This morning she had a nasty little fat lip. Poor girl.

I've been less and less patient when Griffin hits Rowan... because he hits her all the time. It's like there's a magnet in his hand and one in her head, so that anytime he even comes near her, it's BAP! Yesterday, I grabbed him and yelled at him not to do that anymore. Pam doesn't agree, but I think it would be good if we taught Rowan to just hit him back. I think he'd stop, then.

Then there are days like today when the first few hours with my three children in their various stages of meltdown about drive me over the edge.

However, in this case, I send them off, pray for patience, regroup, and rejoin them at Berit's soccer game. And boy am I glad I did that, instead of going to yoga. Because you know what? Her team didn't score a single goal out there - but man, she looked good, tearing down the field with the ball in front of her! Like the other girls, she always seemed to stop just shy of the goal... progress not perfection. And then there was the one bad face-plant as she was taking it down... ouch! But she recovered.

Rowan started at her new preschool yesterday - easing into it slowly, so they were just there for an hour or so. It sounded like she did just fine.

Griffin parrots everything now so I have to watch my mouth. This morning I greeted him by saying, "Hello Mr. Babaloo!" and he said it right back to me in his primitive little toddler way.

I surprised Berit by showing up at her school today. She sat with some other 1st grade girls at the back of the cafeteria. I thought that she looked quiet and alone - not her usually social self. We spent a while chit-chatting about school and about the HUGE monkey-bars blister on her hand before the bell rang. I casually commented that we wouldn't be able to play on the playground before she had to go back to class, and Berit broke down in tears. I felt terrible. She was sad because I was leaving, and I consoled her, promising that I would go to class with her for a short while.

As it turned out, we had a few minutes to hang out on the playground together before we went back to her class. Once there, I was asked by Ms. Cohen to read a book to the class, which I did. Berit seemed all in good spirits again when I finally left.