Doesn't That Hurt?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Will and Hallie's (and Tom's) first day of school. Now, a few weeks in, school's going wonderfully for everyone. Tom and Will are having great semesters, and Hallie has discovered that school is in fact her favorite place on the planet.

Hallie talks about school ALL THE TIME. She begs me to drop her off there (I probably hear "When you drop me off, Mama?" every hour or two) on the days she's home with me, tells anyone who will listen that she goes to school (which she pronounces "skoal", so no one ever has any idea what she's referring to), and talks a mile a minute about what they did in class once I've picked her up.

Hallie is a little bitter about the fact that Will gets to go to school four mornings a week and she only gets to go two mornings a week. That first Wednesday, when we dropped Will off and then walked past Hallie's (dark and empty) classroom, she burst into tears and didn't stop crying for more than an hour. Later that day, while shopping at Lowes, Hallie picked out two women who somewhat resembled her teachers (whose names are Holly and Andrea), pointed at them, and yelled, "You are NOT Miss Ha-wee! You are NOT Miss Andwee-a!" The women were very confused.

The playground at the kids' school is pretty awesome - lots of play structures, sand boxes, and bicycles - and both kids consider recess a highlight of their day. I already knew, since Will attended this school last semester, that the play structures are surrounded by small pebbles. I'd periodically find a pebble or two on our carpet or in Will's shoes after he'd taken them off, but for the most part he'd clean out the pebbles and sand at school when they got to the point of bothering him. Apparently Hallie either doesn't know how to take off and clean out her shoes or has a considerably higher tolerance for pebbles underneath her feet - here's what I found in just one shoe right after she took it off.

This might be the only downside to skoal.