the girl cricket

Matthew and I met eyes across the table and giggled as we watched our radiant, bubbling, wiggly little girl hum "You're a Grand Old Flag" while rocking her bent arms to the beat. This went on for quite some time; all through dinner in fact (and sometimes there were words, sometimes just humming with eyes closed, sometimes determined-to-crack-mom-and-dad-up grunts to the beat). This is the new Merryhill-attending Abby--brimming over with things to share and feeling very confident! The after school barrage of new info. and ideas included the following (in no particular order):

"Momma, I held the tiniest snail today. Snails have just one foot. Just one body part! How many do we have? The snail slithered on my arm; it was tickly and soft. I was afraid at first, but then I wasn't."

"Mr. Runion timed me on the playground. I rode the bike all around the sidewalk part of the playground."

"I was in a play today. Lots of people were there watching! I was the girl cricket! The only girl cricket!" When asked what she did as the girl cricket, she replied: "I jumped!" We later found out that she was the beautiful girl cricket that made the boy cricket sing at last (the whole point of the play)! This was for a school assembly in front of parents and everything.

Other tid bits: The Jr. Kindergardeners will go to the Sacramento Zoo at the end of this month; next week is butterfly week in Abby's classroom (she's thrilled!); Abby started a new trend in her classroom--she requested a gold, puffy paint heart in the center of the (gold puffy paint) sun on her hat, which led to ALL the girls in class asking for such a heart in their suns. Abby is super happy about this. She's bringing her own flair to the class, for sure. She had a tough time falling asleep last night (for obvious reasons, I think), but I let her snuggle next to me while I graded papers and she was out in a matter of 5 minutes! Her later bed time did not hinder her from springing out of bed at 7 a.m. and saying: "I need to get to school; we're playing a game early today." Matthew told me she won the memory game tournament handily yesterday. Finally, I should mention that when we went to pick her up at 4:30 yesterday (giving her ample time to play after school, or so we thought), she requested that we go on ahead to the grocery store and leave her at school to play some more. We get the feeling she likes her new school.