Last Day of School, Grandparents’ Visit
Although Maria’s last day of her first year of school was a few weeks ago, I haven’t blogged about it yet. Maria’s in a special needs preschool with 3- & 4-year olds. The older kids “graduated” at a little ceremony they had at school. They set up a bunch of chairs for the audience; the kids sat in chairs facing the audience. They sang some songs, which was both cute and hard. All the kids except Maria and one other little girl sang the entire alphabet, then counted up to 10 or so, and one or two others. The funniest one was a spider song, where they had a picture of a spider on the floor, then on their leg, lap, shoulder, face, head, then back down–very cute. The 4-year olds then got a graduation hat put on them and walked over a little bridge, stopping at the top to look at their parents for pictures, then down the other side to get a handshake and sit in a chair at the side. One little girl needed help, most of the other ones did ok. I can tell already that next year I’ll be a mess. Funny how emotional a silly little thing like this can be… One more year of preschool with the same teacher and aides, then she’ll be going to a different school (her home school) with a different teacher. I sure hope it’s a good situation, but many other things to fret about in the meantime.
Dad & Ida came to visit over Memorial Day weekend. The Monday before it hit 110 degrees, quite a bit above normal for this time of year. While they were here, it was down to the 60s or 70s in the morning and barely hit in the 80s, I think, during the day–they even had snow and rain on the drive over! It was quite pleasant for them, tho’ a little chilly for some of us locals. When they left, the temps started creeping back up again. Perfect timing for a visit!
As usual, we didn’t do much. Manolis cooked every night. We drove up to the outlet mall one day, to the liquor store/Babies R Us/somewhere else another day, ate at Chipotle once; other than that we just sat around.
Fortunately Manolis was home when they got here, because Andy & I were at the doc with Maria. As Andy mentioned, she almost landed in the hospital again, so it was a fairly rough weekend regarding Maria’s condition, but not too bad for a visit from the grandparents. Maria’s fascinated by her Grandpa. She constantly tries to grab his ears, face, head. Once she stuck her head in his arm pit for a good long time…. When Ida held her, Maria was mesmerized and just stared at her; kind of like what she does with Auntie Rose. I guess she’s trying to figure out who everyone is and where they fit in the family. It was a nice visit; too bad it’s such a long drive. They’re in the middle of trying to sell their house and move into a nice independent living place–quite stressful.