Parent teacher conference

I wrote this post right after Edie's parent teacher conference, so that would have been last Tuesday night. I'd planned to edit it and post on Wednesday night after putting Edie to bed. But then she claimed to be starving at 7:59pm shortly after brushing teeth and reading stories, but right before turning out the light and saying goodnight. In other words, she decided to pick a fight with me. Because we have a strict no eating after teeth brushing policy and she knows this. We even offer a bedtime snack at 7:15pm to avoid this exact scenario. Which she had turned down that night. So when I said no, she flipped out and acted like a total nightmare for about 20 minutes before deciding to be cool and going to bed exactly like nothing abnormal had happened at all. All of a sudden I felt less inclined to post this rave review of my amazing daughter and stellar parenting. But a week has passed and all is forgotten (or at least forgiven), so I suppose now I'll publish the post I wrote last week.

With no further ado….


We had our first parent teacher conference last night at Edie's school. This might seem ridiculous considering it's preschool, but they offer the chance to parents with children in the "5's" class to meet with the teacher and I took it.

I won't go into too much detail, but I wanted to write down somewhere for posterity what a proud moment it was for us as parents to hear what her teacher had to say. Because it was all just so lovely. Teacher Annette says she is very bright. On several occasions she mentioned that Edie is the only one in her entire class that can do certain things. For example, while quizzing Edie on the months of the year, she realized that Edie wasn't reciting them from memory, but rather was reading them off the wall where Annette has poster boards up for each month. She's in the most advanced reading group in her class where they divide the children into groups of 3, and she assured us that she would be at the top of her class in Kindergarten next year regardless of whether we went private or public. She said Edie is extremely gregarious and outgoing (shocker), and will not get lost in the larger class sizes at public school.

Perhaps even more important is that she is kind at school. And while she is entirely devoted to her BFF status with Shreya, Annette says they are never clique-y and always accept others into their group to play. The only not glowing remarks were:
 1. a passing comment on her chattiness and how it is only very occasionally an issue, to which Jeff replied, "I think that will be a lifelong challenge."  Ahem.
2. once in a while Shreya and Edie can be a bit "sneaky" about ensuring they are always put in the same group and paired together for activities.

Both made me smile because both remind me of my own childhood. I feel so, so lucky to be raising this charismatic, smart, and caring kid. Even if she does sometimes tell me that the dinner I made is gross. And by sometimes I mean every night that I don't make mac and cheese from a box.

Seriously though, the other night I showed up at school to pick Edie up and was stopped short in the little vestibule between the main hall and the music room where I knew Edie was. There was another Dad waiting there as well so I stopped, stunned by what we were looking at. In the music room (where the kids play at the end of the day), there were about 8 kids lined up with their backs to the lockers while one of the teaching assistants faced them. Edie was at one end of the line, closest to the vestibule where I was stopped and she was SINGING. Like, singing a SOLO. It's important to say that this has never happened - they are never singing when I show up at 5pm.

Everyone was just watching Edie while she sweetly (and totally out of tune-ly) sang 'Let it Go' from the movie Frozen. I died a hundred times. I was so many things at once - super confused as to what prompted this (did she ASK to sing? was everyone taking turns singing and I just walked in during Edie's turn?), proud (talent aside, my kid had the balls to belt out her favorite jam in front of everyone, including this random Dad looking on), a little embarrassed (did she demand everyone pay attention while she randomly sang her favorite song? And the music snob in me wondered whether she couldn't have picked something a little less predictable…sigh) but mostly I was just overwhelmed with emotion and protectiveness. She's so amazing and she's putting herself out there and it's just the beginning.

I discovered a few weeks ago that our street has been rezoned to a new neighborhood elementary school. The border for two schools was always in our backyard, but for the 2015-16 school year, it is being moved to our front yard. Edie will be going to a different school next year than I'd been picturing for the last year or two. I'm not sure it's really a bad thing, it's just a new thing. Both schools are considered good by big city public school standards and the principal at our new school is very well loved. So I guess we'll see. Crazy to think this time next year we'll be having a legit parent teacher conference with her kindergarten teacher.