Well, tomorrow is the start of a new school year and my cheesy little girl will be starting her sophomore year of high school. She is ready for school to start, so she says, I imagine by the end of next week she will have changed her tune. I can't wait to see what this year's theme's for Spirit Week will be. Abby is a participator and was the freshman winner on Patriotic Day.
Alex has been out of school going on 4 years now and is preparing for what I like to call Big Girl Prom aka her wedding. Where has the time gone?!Ray and I were blessed with two funny and intelligent girls that have kept us hoppin' for the last 22 years. What we didn't realize was that their abilities would often times be left to gather dust on a shelf while they spent their time picking and choosing where they directed their energies. They have many times underwhelmed me with their attitudes toward learning.
Alex could memorize every line of every Disney movie ever made and could sing any television commercial on demand and all this before she began kindergarten. When she began elementary school she did very well on her standardized test no thanks to me. Despite all the suggestions by the faculty to make sure our children get enough sleep and have a well balanced breakfast during testing week the fact remains that I could never keep up when test week actually was. She usually ended up eating ice cream sandwiches for breakfast because it was the quickest thing I could grab and I knew that at least she was heading to school with a full stomach.
As she advanced from one grade to the next we learned that her memorization skills were limited to items of entertainment value only and spelling words were not entertaining to her at all. In fact, reading was so far down on the list of Life Achievements that we are lucky she graduated by high school. Now, don't get me wrong, she ain't no dummy, she just could have cared less.
Abby, born a short seven years after Alex displayed her obvious genius in unusual ways. She didn't walk until she was almost two, because well, if she didn't then we'd all carry her and that required so little effort on her part as to be very appealing. She used to look at all the other kids her age in the nursery as if to say "Sit down you nut. They'll carry you if you'd just stop doing that!"
We spent the first three years of her elementary career thinking she had a learning disability and began the process of having her checked for dyslexia or anything else that could explain why she wrote her alphabet backwards or why she was so incredibly bad at the memorizing of her sight words sent home each week. I was begining to wonder if the sole glass of wine I had drank during my pregnancy with Alex had somehow carried over it's ill effects to Abby.
Boy did she fool us. Second grade CRTC scores alerted us to the fact that while Abby was unable to indicate to us that she could read anything other than the McDonalds Golden Arches sign as we passed it on the road, her test scores proved that she could actually read on a 6th grade level. Imagine that.
We ourselves weren't complete morons so it stood to reason they should have a clue and they do. Our two girls are so up to date with today's technology that I'm starting to realize how my mom felt when call waiting was first introduced.
In an effort to prove to that we were not too old to learn something new, as well as keep up with our girls and the technology they love, Ray and I decided to really go out on a limb and get Iphones. I have to say it was Abby's encouraging remarks that gave us the confidence to keep trying when we didn't have a clue what we were doing:
Ray: I wonder how I can send this picture to you...should I email it or text it.
Me: I think you should text it.
Abby: You two look like a couple of cavemen trying to figure out fire.
