Summer is in My Sights

 My head is so congested. I can't breathe. I'm mostly miserable. However, we have exactly 8 days of school left and I am hoping that Aliza does not get this cold because I do not want to have to miss a day of school! You see, I don't count days of school--we finish the curriculum. (But maybe I should count days because I think finishing the curriculum put us at less than 180)

Anyway, I've been feeling the tension increasing between Aliza and I. Last week Aliza became adamant that she wanted to visit a real school. In her words "so I can decide if I want to go to school in 2nd or 3rd grade." This brings up the interesting discussion of when a child reaches the level of maturity in which they can choose where to attend school. Aliza and I had a chat. I asked her what she thought she could do at school that she couldn't do at home. She said, "eat out of a lunchbox." It boiled down to a genuine curiosity of what was inside a school building. Fair enough. The next day I called and scheduled a tour at my preference of school. It happens to be where my high school diploma is from. Aliza, Anna and I visited the school last week and I was very scared that Aliza would manage to embarrass me with her behavior. I'm happy to say that she didn't! We visited with the principal and then spent a few minutes in the 1st grade classrooms. My impression was the room was very very quiet! The students were having individual reading time. I noticed that the students were all reading chapter books. Aliza noticed that all of the students had a lollipop! I assured her this was a special thing because they were reading for Library Week.  Aliza's comment when we got to the car was how big the building was. She didn't have a whole lot else to say. I decided I wouldn't ask a lot of questions and instead just listen to see what she brought up and what she told other people. As of now, she hasn't said another word about going to school.

Instead Aliza's focus quickly changed to learning how to sew. It came out of the blue to me, I'm not sure where she picked up the idea. Actually, she had a whole business plan originally which made me instantly want to clean bathrooms. Thankfully her plan included her Grandma teaching her how to sew. That's what happened. Grandma thought the best thing to do first would be to learn to sew a straight line. Logical. Aliza is NOT a perfectionist. She sewed a less than straight line, but it was straight enough for her and she was ready to learn curves. Ultimately Aliza wanted to sew designs on fabric. She took a pencil and drew a bride and groom (her aunt just got engaged) and proceeded to sew the teeny tiny shapes--at full speed--calling every 3 seconds for Grandma to rethread the machine or help with some other mishap. I have yet to get my sewing machine out for her! She had a ball and was pleased with the product.

After so much frustration the last couple weeks and moaning during yesterday's reading lesson, I was ready to fall over when, as soon as we finished said reading lesson, Aliza picked up a handful of books and headed outside to read--alone!--for fun!! It was a profoundly satisfying moment. One that gave me much hope for the future.