This notion of having a child in school is turning out to be quite the new stage of life. And I’m not talking about Anna–she’s already adjusted to it–I’m talking about Jen and I. First of all, it’s a new thing that our child has to be somewhere every weekday at a given time. We’re just not used to that sort of rigidity. Further, there are all sorts of school-related activities–PTA, volunteering, fundraising… all the stuff that my schools used to burden my parents with. I suppose I should be thankful that the fundraising consists of writing a check and sending it to school. I’ve always thought the selling of candy bars/magazine subscriptions/gift-wrapping paper was a big waste of time and money, not to mention being a burden on one’s friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I remember going door-to-door selling greeting cards; cute as a button though I was, I don’t remember raising enough money to offset to the amount of humiliation and rejection I endured. I suspect it was all a ploy to build character.

Anna continues to love kindergarten and her teacher, and she’s been excited about becoming friends with the other kids in school. Most of all, she’s very anxious to learn how to read.

Tara continues to love reading as well. At bedtime, we read Goodnight Moon as well as Mercer Mayer’s “All By Myself”. Both books have mice on just about every page, which Tara points out at the turn of each page by pointing and saying “Mou.” The pages of Goodnight Moon which do not have the young mouse pictured she quickly assists to turn the page. No time to waste, there are mice to point out.

Thursday was Anna’s first day of kindergarten, and as with all change, there was some drama involved. She started out being excited, right up until the part that she realized that we were going to leave her new classroom without her. Most of the kids were patiently seated criss-cross-applesauce on the carpet waiting for class to start while the parents hovered and chit-chatted and took pictures. I needed to sit down next to Anna for her to sit in her spot. When the teacher sat down and began class, I could only inch away from Anna little by little. The teacher began reading a story about a raccoon’s first day of school and transitioned from the story into saying goodbye to the hovering parents. Anna was the only child crying when we left, but one of the teachers was comforting her and we knew she would recover quickly enough.

Today, dropping off at school was much less dramatic, and although she still needed some coaxing, there weren’t any tears shed. I went directly from school to Mission Beach to spend an hour with my brother and his family before zooming back to school to pick up Anna (kindergarten is scarely two hours on Fridays). When I picked her up, she didn’t want to leave. She really likes being with other kids and she adores her teacher.

The kids went to bed late again tonight. On Friday, we went over to our friends M. and K.’s house, and had some terrific pork chops from Bisher’s. I’ll be visiting there soon to pick some up for myself, I’m sure. Yesterday was mostly on time, after my brother’s family got into town and headed off to their beachfront rental. We got Japanese carry-out, and Tara demonstrated how much she loves the sushi. Today, we met up with my bro’s fam and went again for Japanese–Surfside Sushi in PB–and it was great, and reasonably priced. Tara ate like we had not fed her all day. Granted, she’s large for an 18-month old, but she ate: one entire edamame appetizer, three california rolls, portions of chicken katsu and vegetable tempura, and two orange slices. She was still asking for more immediately before we left, but we feared the worst. Anna had a bite of shrimp tempura and a few grains of fried rice.

Tomorrow, we’re off to SeaWorld; Anna loves the shows, so we’re buying an annual pass; since kindergarten is half-day, the nanny might also be able to bring her down there every now and then, and we’ll have all next summer as well. It’s odd thing for me to think that Anna will actually have some sort of obligation to go to school from now on; until now, our jobs have been the only attendance requirement we’ve had to deal with, and even so we get to choose our vacation days ourselves. I had forgotten what a bummer it was the have to go to school.

In other news, I got sweet revenge on Anna the other day by getting Saint Simon by The Shins (or as she calls it, “the la-la-la song”) stuck in her head by playing it for the 875th time. Take that, Raffi. Speaking of La La, I’ve been using it for a while and have mixed feelings about it. This whole trading thing is nice and cheap, but it’s a nuisance too. You have to acknowledge when you get stuff and frankly, I really don’t look at the mail more often than once a week. Also, you never know exactly what you’re going to get on your list, and the selection is biggest for college-type music. I’m afraid my taste in music just wants college-type music to stay off its lawn.

It’s been a week now since our nanny started and so far everything is going great. Today was the first full, unassisted day with both kids home. When I came home, the house was clean, and the kids were happy. I heated up leftovers while she watched the kids for a few minutes, then I sent her home and played with the kids until dinner time. I really am looking forward to more of that. We’re still getting adjusted, so I think it’s only going to get better. It’s really like having a third parent.

In other news, it looks the the summer will finish out with a visit from my brother and his family–with plenty of beach time, and finally a trip for me to Barcelona in a few weeks. I’m still working out details on that, but I’ll surely make some time for sightseeing. I’ll try not to make the mistake of overextending myself like I did with the trip to D.C.; that was really too much of a good thing.

Today Tara is 18 months old. At her checkup today, she clocked in at around 75% percentile for both height and weight, though we suspect the height measurement was a little generous. Last night we tried to think up how many words she knows; we counted at least forty, but I’m sure there are more. She loves music, and loves to sing. Yesterday, I was trying to get her to sing “Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me!” She said “yo-yo yo-yo” over and over, and even this afternoon she was still doing it in the car. I’m now trying to get her to say, “What up, dog?” as I figure it will go well with the “yo-yo.” She is a happy and healthy little girl, and although we can see the beginnings of the terrible twos around the corner, she is still an absolute delight.

In other news, the City of San Diego doesn’t seem favorable to the idea of putting fluoride in the water, but apparently poo is A-OK! On Saturday night, the mayor issued a “boil water order” because there was e. coli in the water due to a water main break on Tuesday. Apparently, we had five good days worth of drinking tainted water before they figured out what was going on. All the restaurants in our part of town were ordered shut down. Jennifer and I were out on a date when all this happened, eating dinner in a part of town that was not affected, so we didn’t find out about it until we picked up our kids on Sunday morning. That’s what we get for not watching TV nor reading the paper. Finally on Sunday evening the boil order was rescinded. I’ll be turning on all the taps now.

After two and a half months and eleven prospects, we have ourselves a nanny. She is (or was) a preschool teacher, and she’s just about perfect as far as we can tell. She’s much more energetic and friendly that some of the older nannies we interviewed, and much more consistent than the younger nannies who decided not to change employers or just didn’t show up for interviews. The girls love her. She’ll start on Tuesday, and I am so looking forward to it.

We met this weekend to figure out the transition schedule, as the girls still have another week of ESS and daycare; they will be splitting time to give the nanny a chance to get adjusted and to allow them to say goodbye to old friends.

The other afternoon when I picked up Tara from M.’s house, she said as I was putting her into the car: “I missed you.” Actually it was more like “Ah mist choo,” but I know what she meant. Even so, I did a double-take. “Did you just say, ‘I missed you?’” I asked. “Yeah.” says Tara. I believe this qualifies as her first official sentence, at a week short of eighteen months.