Miss Anna Turns 5

Anna turned the big 5 on Thursday.

And we celebrated in style with a lavish family party and about a three-hour visit with Mr. Chuck E. Cheese.

She received her second American Girl doll, thanks to her Mimi who loves girly-girly things and is a bit of a doll collector herself.

Chrissa also came with two additional outfits, a little sporty get-up and a pair of pajamas, into which Anna has been diligently changing her every night for bedtime. So now Chrissa and Baby Anna (the first blonde doll she named after herself after receiving it for her 4th birthday) are either sisters or best friends (not sure their relationship has been officially established yet). Or both!

Anna also received a number of Barbie kitchen items thanks to her Paw Paw.

She's been really getting into the Barbies lately, changing their outfits, putting them in their Barbie bed and such. After setting up her new Barbie kitchen she promptly packed her Barbies food into their new picnic basket, loaded them into their Barbie convertible and took off for a picnic lunch.

She also received the new Leap Frog Tag reading pen wand thingy and about four books to go with it.

We're hoping Alexander will take to the Tag system as well and get more interested in learning how to read. He likes being read to and knows letters and sounds and can spell his name, but his interest doesn't seem as great as her's was at this age. Anna is already reading extremely well, and Alexander right now is a lot more physical.

I know he's a boy. Is it really true that boys are slower about this sort of thing than girls or is that just a stereotype?

In all, it was a great birthday and she suddenly seemed so much more mature (maybe it's because she looks so tall in this dress, doesn't she?). Even the way she opened her presents showed a non-frenzied sort of dignified restraint, I remember thinking at the time.

Now that she's barely beaten the Sept. 1 deadline, she will begin kindergarten this week.

We go to "meet the teachers" on Tuesday, and then she attends with only about six of her 24 classmates on Thursday. She won't start the regular schedule with her full class until next Tuesday, Sept. 8.

I'm, I mean we all are, very excited about her transition into big-kid's school.

By the way, kindergarteners attend in small groups that first week for an easier transition.

The same for Alexander and his school, except not so much to the extreme. He will attend his second year of Montessori preschool on Tuesday with a smaller group for a slightly shortened morning. Then he'll return on Thursday and Friday of this week with a regular schedule.

This is shaping up to be a very busy week around here.

Both children have a dental check-up on Thursday immediately after I pick them up from their schools. Hopefully, we'll get some good results.

They've been rinsing with fluoride for a while (though the dentist told me they need to rinse for 2 minutes for it to really be effective. Obviously that's a looong time for kiddies.) We've also recently started flossing on a regular basis.

Plus, my own college classes start back up.

And I'll be driving to the main campus in Spearfish, which is an hour away, on both Wednesday and Thursday, which means child-care issues must be sorted out. After this week, I'll have to drive to the main campus just once a week for the next month. Then that particular class will be done.

All my other courses this semester are either online or an evening face-to-face here in town.