Around the middle of August, I started to try to make my last couple weeks of summer with the girls special.  I took them to bigger playgrounds, we went to restaurants, and I did my best to be as patient with them as possible.  One way or another, our summers will be different from now on.  Dee Dee is getting to the age where I assume and hope that she’ll have things that she can do outside of the house, away from our family.  Audio will still be around, but I see her being ready to wander away at a younger age than Dee Dee has.  On top of all that, I’m not getting any younger.  We didn’t do very many special things this summer, but we did get out enough to feel like we took advantage of the time together. 

When we got the postcards telling us who the girls had for teachers, both girls were happy.  Dee Dee had participated in a readers theater group after school when she was in first grade and the teacher who ran that group is a fourth-grade teacher who Dee Dee wanted to have.  Any time we’d discuss the idea of changing schools, Dee Dee would protest because she wanted to have this teacher.  So, we were all happy to learn that she would be in this teacher’s room.  Audio got the first-grade teacher that she wanted.  Her preference was based on how she thought that the other first grade teacher was supposedly too strict. 

It was a little sad that Dee Dee’s best friend is in the other classroom.  But, they are still able to see each other at recess and after school.  When we were able to visit the school and see what other kids would be in the girls’ rooms, they both seemed happy with the students they’d be spending the year with.  Over the summer, I talked with Dee Dee a lot about how she’s always changing and that other kids are always changing, too.  And that as kids develop interests, they gravitate to others who have similar interests.   Dee Dee got in a little trouble for talking too much with a girl who she was paired up with to work on a math worksheet.  While they were mathing, Dee Dee noticed that the girl was humming Life on Mars by David Bowie.  I told her to try not to get in trouble, but I also told her that I was happy that she would have someone to talk about music with. 

I asked Audio every day for the first two weeks of school if she had spoken with her teacher and she told me that she had not.  Her teacher is young and was the High Five teacher last year.  Neither my wife nor I were terribly impressed by our first conversation with her.  It seemed like she feels most comfortable speaking with four-year-olds and she really didn’t seem to know much about the coming year.  She put a lot of effort into explaining why she didn’t know what days Audio would have gym, music, and art.  Dee Dee’s teacher had that information printed and hanging on her wall.  So, the information was available. 

At the end of the first week, Dee Dee had a run in with the fifth-grade teacher that she will have next year if she stays at this school.  The long and short of it being that he was more concerned about her following the rules than her wellbeing.  So, we’ll do what we can to get her into a different school, if we can get her through this year.  But, for the most part, both girls are happy to be back to school.