Moving On

MZ had her first graduation! Her fabulous daycare provider gave a graduation party on Monday for her five departing preschoolers. She had hats and leis and gifts for them, and lined them up for photos and hugs.

As is my practice with anything new, I've been talking to her about leaving Ana's, and she's been okay with it till yesterday, when she announced, "When I'm done with preschool I'll go see Ana." I promised her we'd visit.

I also got her two books about going to preschool and somewhere new where her parents don't come along. It was so long ago, developmentally speaking, that she started at Ana's that a reminder that we always come back and always love her even when we're not together seemed almost as necessary as talking about the activities of preschool. She asks for these books all the time and talks a lot about how we love her all day long. She seems genuinely pleased when I remind her of this at random moments.

Today Miriam went to camp. My Gym offers two weeks of camp at the end of the summer, and we had hoped to send her there on consecutive Wednesdays so she wouldn't have to miss her favorite activity of the week, or her days with her various caregivers. We got one day and decided to go for it, it would be practice for leaving her somewhere she wasn't used to, for both of us. Since I've only left her a few places in the last 2.5 years, the thought of doing the transition again is putting me into something close to a severe state of distraction.

In the days immediately before her camp day, she seemed breezy about being left, but yesterday she started asking me to stay with her, so I wasn't sure how this was going to go. She clung tightly until I asked if she wanted to go play or to wait for her friend Suzu, and she chose to go play. When I returned with Suzu, she was playing by herself, looking a little uneasy, but they held each others' hands and walked into the gym as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

Get back on the horse, dammit!

It's time to climb back on and start writing. Whatever malodorous dirges run through my mind, it's time to just chat about MZ. Forgive me my rusty prose... Who'm I kidding? My five readers simply crave the MZ update, so here you go...

The thing I find most challenging about raising a girl is how to let her just be, not withholding princess-dom and not proffering it either. This is a girl who loves purple, pink, fire trucks, diggers and cars (preferably comportables), in that order. She's still talking about the fire woman at Station 7.

For months she's been commenting on my toenail colors. Mommy's toes are orange with pink underneath, Miriam's toes are pink with orange underneath. How's that for a concept? On Saturday, her good friend Gabriel had blue-painted toes. I think this was the first time it occured to her that she might also have colored toenails, so the next night we painted them pink. And lo, she did not don a crown and a ruffly skirt and speak volumes about the House of Princess. It might still happen, but it didn't just then.