Colouring and Coffee with a Caribou

I suppose there's one good thing about not having internet at home - you can justify sitting in a coffee shop while your son colours because it's the only place you can access wi-fi. Except for late at night when the computer is perched *just so* on the coffee table and you can "borrow" someone else's.

Well, I estimate I've unpacked 1/2 to 2/3 of the boxes. I kept tripping over boxes marked "books" and so I finally had to give in and start placing them on the shelves. Usually that's the final job; I save my favourite task for last, making a nice big cup of coffee and spending as much time as I deem necessary deciding whether to put all the anthologies on one shelf or two and snickering about the proximity of Foucault to J.K. Rowling.

If you think of it, could you send up a prayer for The Girl? She hates school. There are a lot of things going on: being the new kid (tough under any circumstances), struggling with not understanding her teacher, and feeling the higher expectations of grade one compared to kindergarten. But the biggest is a self-dictated but excrutiating giving up of Mom Teddy.

Now you all know how The Girl is about MT. I challenge you to find a picture of her without that beloved and bedraggled bear under the crook of her arm. MT's essentially been velveteen-rabbit-ized. Heck, even I consider her to be a third child, and include her in every pre-voyage checklist. Everyone has shoes? Check. Everyone been to the bathroom? Check. Mom Teddy is here? Check.

However, The Girl has decided that only "baby kids" need to hug their stuffies at school. So every morning involves an agonizing farewell. MT sits in the locker, and I've told The Girl she can always go and give her a quick hug on her way by, but The Girl is determined. I don't get a sense that she's being teased; I think she's just putting pressure on herself to conform in order to fit in a bit better.

Each morning seems to be worse than the last; today her teacher had to physically pull her off my leg. I think her actual days are fine, but she dreads going and works herself up into quite a tizzy when it comes to me actually leaving her. She has a best friend at school already (there's even a secret handshake) and on the playground after school she seems to have made lots of connections, but some prayers to ease her anxiety would be much appreciated by us all, as would any words of advice from anyone who has been the new kid in school.

In other settling-in news, we had a fabulous time on Tuesday enjoying a Twins game (tickets courtesy of The Husband's work). I have realized that baseball becomes *much* more bearable when you get your hands on one of those very large beers that I've always seen everyone else slurping. The kids did not have the benefit of alcohol, but the promise ("threat" from my perspective) of a potential pop fly coming our way and providing a souvenir kept them quite intrigued.