Success

Aimee handed us a little piece of paper this morning that said we were invited to a Celebration of Learning in her classroom at 2:45. Today. In my new capacity as CRN in charge of staffing, I approved my own absence and Trevor and I both made it on time. I'm so glad we did.

The kids had made board games to play with the parents. They were about magnets and involved true or false questions about magnets and "attract" squares and "repel" squares and rules and everything. It was so cute. But first, the teacher handed out a certificate to each kid. Each kid got an award for something specific to their personality and their achievemtns this year. Aimee's was for "perfectly precise printing" and she also mentioned when she was handing it to Aimee that she is a math whiz. Aimee is by far the smallest kid in her class. One of the moms said when she got up to accept her award, "Oh look at the cute little smoochie-poo". Aimee was a little embarassed when I reminded her of it later.

I am so proud of her. She used to be this shy little moppet prone to major screaming fits and generlal misery. Now she is a moppet who is a "math whiz" and a friendly little girl. She has successfully finished Grade One and she likes school. She has so much potential. I feel like I have closed a lot of doors in my life by virtue of decisions I made along the way (oh, if I only knew then what I know now...) but she has all those options, all those possibilities open to her. She has no limits. She could and can do whatever she wants, she can go anywhere. And yes, she is still prone to fits and misery, but it's predictable and, most times, ignorable.

I wonder where her interestes will lie. I wonder how her decisions will shape her future. It is possibly the most exciting thing about parenting... we need to hang in there until we see what happens. It's a long-term investment of time, but worth every minute.