Summer stuff

I wrote the very last day care check today, which makes me kinda weepy. It's been such a wonderful place for the girls, and they have grown so much because of being there around their friends and teachers. They've been happy and enriched and safe and comfortable there since they were four months old. Four. Months. Old! I know they will miss it, and I will probably miss it a whole lot more...I foresee some crying (by me) when we walk out of there for the very last time.

Onto happier news, Tinkerbelle is now fully settled in, and she is absolutely loving herself. I may have had a little apprehension about how she would react to a different environment and more freedom and new surroundings, but she is absolutely killing it. Just a totally and completely different kid than I have ever seen her before.

She gets herself up and ready and out the door every morning, and totally loves acting like a big kid to do it:-). She drinks iced coffee, rides the T, makes witty observations about her fellow commuters and carries unnecessary stuff with her to justify a backpack. She comes home every day tired but chipper and just generally very pleasant. She got her first paycheck and complained about the amount withheld by the tax authorities!

She has also very quickly totally adopted the "uniform" of the older girl camp counselors, which I find hilarious. Sleeves rolled on her staff T-Shirt (which is also notted near the waist), very short denim or khaki shorts, keys and ID on a lanyard around her neck, sunglasses, ponytail and either flip flops or sock-less running sneakers. She is sporting an absolutely killer tan:-). She's loved her weekends at the beach and is always thrilled to hang out with Munchkin and the older kids. There may be a boy, but that is nothing serious. Yet;-)

Mostly though, she is just a completely different, older, more confident kid. I swear she talks louder and more clearly than she did a month ago, she sits up straighter, and is entirely more capable of having "adult" conversations. Her Mother, who hasn't seen her in a month but gets Facebook pictures and talks to her every day, has told me the same thing...she is just really, really having a great time for herself and reacting very well to it.

So far, then, better than expected! There is still time for this to go terribly wrong, but the early returns are very good!