Times are a changin'

Yesterday morning I dropped off the Emma I know for one of her last days of kindergarten. In the afternoon I picked up a new Emma full of all kinds of surprises.

At pick up, I was greeted by Mrs. Rosenkranz...the world's best teacher...who said "Do, I have some news, it's wonderful, Emma really got wild with a couple of friends in math and they had to sit out for a few minutes to compose themselves". Trust me, Emma can really pull out all of the stops at home, but at school, she's PERFECT, and Mrs. Rosenkranz made it her personal goal this year to make Emma comfortable enough at school so that she could be a typical 6 year old and break a few rules. It finally happened! I asked Emma about the incident and she responded "It happens" I had to turn my head to conceal my smile.

We had an errand to run after school which took us by Laurie's Shoes, on a whim I asked Emma if she wanted to look for some new tennis shoes. She has had the same shoes since August and has not been agreeable to new shoes, even though she REALLY needs them. Her response "Sure". I squealed into the parking lot eager although tentative about the ensuing event. With an ease I've never seen in this very particular child, she chose a blue and white running shoe, no sparkles, no pink (we did put pink shoelaces in), no velcro and is in love with them. The whole transaction took about 10 minutes, I'm still dumbfounded.

Then, this morning Emma came downstairs dressed in a get up that I would have never believed she would wear outside of the house. Until recently, she only wanted to wear pink or purple dresses. This morning she had on a tie-dyed t-shirt which she made at church, along with black shorts (usually worn under her dresses) and her new blue tennis shoes. She wanted her hair in two braids tied in the back. When she went upstairs to brush her teeth Ellie asked me, "Is today mismatched day, or what". I don't know about that but I do know my Emma is growing up.