Friday, June 8, 2012The Last Real Day of Kindergarten Started Out Better Than the First
Alexis haaaaaaaaates wearing a uniform to school. As in, she hates it more than I hate it when people like their own Facebook status, how much I hate empty peanut butter jars, and how much I hate Dora the Latina Whore COMBINED.
It's a lot of hate for one little person to possess.
I spent a good portion of the first half of the school year convincing her that wearing a uniform to school wasn't a punishment. It is just the rules. Right around the time she finally started to believe me, I found out that her school hands out "No Uniform Today" cards as rewards for various things.
So, it's not a punishment to wear a uniform, but it can be a reward not to have to wear one for a day. Go ahead and try to explain the logic in that to a kindergartener. It's super fun.
She who would happily set fire to every school uniform on the planet grew some Go-Go-Gadget-Brains when it came to earning those No Uniform Cards. She managed to amass a fairly decent pile of them and then she saved them.
And saved them.
And saved them.
Until last week when she figured out she was running out of days when she could use them. She got all sorts of kerfluffled trying to make sure she had each day planned out and enough cards to cover a bunch of sequential no uniform days. The only problem was that when I was helping her with the math on the whole thing, I forgot about gym days. On gym days the kid wears sweat pants and a t-shirt to school, so she didn't need a No Uniform Card to wear slightly less annoying clothes that day.
WHOOPS.
That's all to say it is 100% my fault that the kid had a No Uniform Card that didn't get used. You see, in my grand scheming, I set out to have her wearing a uniform on her last full day of school. PHOTO OP, PEOPLE. I need my photo ops. She could have worn shorts and a t-shirt to school today, but noooooooo. I hid a No Uniform Card from her and made her wear the exact same uniform she wore on the first day of school.
Because of course I did. We HAD to recreate that "Going to Kindergarten" photo!
And then I jacked up the photo op when her bus arrived earlier than I expected (But, hey! It showeed up! That's an improvement over the first day!) and I didn't check the settings on my camera before shooting.
Seriously. I completely jacked up the photos.
Thank goodness for PhotoShop. I kinda sorta almost saved it. You know, except for the part where I had the white balance all wrong, the kid on the wrong step holding the sign wrong, and I didn't put the backpack in the same place it was for the first day of school.
Whatever. Close enough.
The kid is a giant. She still has leprechaun feet, though.
On Kindergarten Graduation and Awards for Not Eating Glue
It's a good thing I figured out that the school year was coming to a close a few days ago because otherwise the reality would have slapped me in the face like WOAH when we went to her school's "Moving Up Ceremony" tonight.
Which, let's just stop right there. I thought preschool graduation was cute. I did. This thing where we throw a huge party for kindergarteners for "graduation?" I CALL SHENANIGANS. With preschool a party was warranted because we grown-ups were walking away from one hell of a giant childcare bill. In kindergarten, what is there to celebrate? That your kid managed to not get caught eating glue?
Don't even get me started on the fact that the Moving Up Ceremony was for the entire elementary school. Just ... don't.
As we sat through watching each and every kindergartener recieving a diploma, I started to look at the program for the evening. Awards were coming up after a song by the kindergarteners.
AWARDS.
So not only were we there to celebrate the fact that most of the kids didn't get caught eating glue, we were going to have the extra special joy of watching a bunch of them recieve meaniningless certificates for vague reasons. OH. YAY.
The first awards were given for perfect attendance. Good job, kids! I'm so glad you have a better immune system than my kid! Except, my kid didn't miss any school because of illness. She was remarkably well this entire school year. The only day of school she missed was because her mother is an idiot who missed the fact that parent teacher conferences were switched from one date to another. Apparently the three emails explaining the date change weren't clear enough. Ahem.
So, uh, thanks for giving awards out to all of the parents who didn't fail as spectacularily as I did at getting their kid to school every day. Oh, and thanks for calling and asking where she was that day. It's not like I would've taken her in late if I had known I had screwed up. ::hulksmash::
ANYWAY.
Once the Perfect Attendance Awards were done, we moved on to the Physical Education Awards. SPOILER ALERT: Alexis can just go ahead and give up on those NBA dreams right now because she did not win a Physical Education Award in kindergarten.
She can also go ahead and give up on the Harvard dream. No Mathmatics Award for her either.
But then ... then there was the award for Best Handwriting. YOU GUYS, LOOK AT THIS.
No lie, I can't write as neatly as Alexis can. That girl has got some seriously fantastic penmanship. SURELY she had that award in the bag!
She didn't. Go ahead and insert a sad trombone sound right here.
But! But! There was still hope! After the Handwriting Award was the Art Award. Alexis spends a very large percentage of her waking hours creating art. She LOVES to color and cut and glue and tape and she creates some really very interesting art.
I guess Alexis' school doesn't think she's the next Picasso. She didn't win the Art Award either.
It was right about then that I realized just how ridiculous it was to care about whether or not Alexis recieved any awards. Those little pieces of paper were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I'm certain that there is no correlation between getting an award in kindergarten and eventually becoming President of the United States. She can still become President (if she wants), even if she wasn't the winner of the Citizenship Award in kindergarten.
And then I heard her name called.
SPANISH AWARD, PEOPLE. MY KID WON THE SPANISH AWARD.
Apple, meet tree. I may not have started learning Spanish until high school, but my baby has absorbed some of it via osmosis! I certainly haven't had a hand in teaching her a single word. In fact, the closest I've come to teaching the kid any Spanish is the day that we argued about how to say blue. I speak REAL Spanish. Alexis has been learning the Latin American attempt at Spanish. I say azul correctly. She does not. She wanted to fight about it.
Other than that, her Spanish teacher gets all of the credit for her ability to count to 100, say the alphabet, name the months, list colors, and recite the days of the week in Spanish. I only get the credit for blowing her mind with an occasional sentence or two in Spanish when she asks me, "¿Cómo estás?"
Moving Up Ceremonies are clinically proven to be 5% less stupid when your kid wins an award.
(Fun coincidence: Earlier this week Alexis decided to dress like a Mexican. That's what she came up with. I think the Snow White shoes are where she really nailed it.)
