It's the night before kindergarten....

...and I'm just not sure how to feel about all of this. Vinay and I have both been marveling at how she could have possibly gone from unable to get her fist to her mouth for the first month of life to ready for kindergarten and yet, here we are.

More important than our feelings are her feelings and she is good to go! Here and there she will make a complaint about not having Miss Amina for her teacher, but we think she'll like her new teacher very much.

In an effort to make the most of this last week of freedom (because really, when has someone outside of our immediate family dictated our schedule for 80% of the calendar year before? That's what I'm struggling with the most, but I digress. Again. I know.) we planned a week full of fun and merriment.
Monday morning at the aquarium. We saw fish, sharks (mammal? fish? not quite sure), turtles and penguins. We also purchased one plastic manatee that has not left Kev's side yet.


Tuesday we spent the whole day at Fort DeSoto beach in St. Pete with Amiya's original playgroup pals. It was a really fabulous day - the kids played together well, the little guys are old enough that they're (mostly) not eating sand and the sun played hide and seek with the clouds, so not too hot. The trench that you see was built by the kids - and the help of Ms. Sherri - and they were very proud!
It was bittersweet for us Moms - we're all pretty good friends who met because of the kids and now they're moving on.



Amiya and Kev in a moment of sibling harmony Friday night. Did you catch that jump? That's right, we've skipped from Tuesday right to Friday. Wednesday was chock full of playdates at our house and then the horror of Kev's toe. Thursday was a very rainy day in Tampa, so we laid low and watched Kev carefully.

This picture was taken at the restaurant we went to Friday night to meet long-time friends Paul and Yvette from Illinois, along with their two children James and Daniel. We had a very nice dinner with them and Amiya came away very fond of both boys.
On the way home from dinner out, both kids fell asleep just as we pulled into the driveway. Amiya had me in tears for most of the drive because she was requesting all the songs we used to sing to her as a baby. It just rubbed a bit more proverbial salt into the wounds I've been licking with her going to kindergarten. Vinay laughed, I cried. Amiya caught on to me and seemed to be encouraging the sobfest. Ah, classic Amiya.

In retrospect, I guess it's very, very sweet that she's big enough to go to kindergarten but still young enough that she wanted Mommy to sing her a few songs to help her fall asleep.