30th of January

First day of Year One!  Harriet was most excited to get back to school this morning.  We're hoping this year is going to be a much MUCH better year than 2011, which was fraught with educational disaster and emotional despair.  Onwards and upwards!  We've spoken to pretty much every level of authority at the school, have an IEP in place, she has established friends and her new classroom is only a couple of doors down from the Year Two class where she will be spending a lot of her time. Fingers crossed.  Next week she begins her trial at Montessori too, so she will have the opportunity to directly compare the two educational environments.

Ted was in a downward spiral while we were dropping Harriet off.  Crying, writhing, desperately demanding Ah-Moe and hitting me all over the face whilst doing so.  *sigh*  Then it hit me (like a small, sweaty nearly three year old's hand) - he hadn't had any food at all.  I threw out his untouched toast as we were walking out the door; the poor child was starving.  And so it was that after some watermelon and rice snacks courtesy of the canteen, he was restored to cute, smoochy Tedalicious.  I'd like to point out here that there is sun in this shot.  SUN!  If I wasn't doing dates for title posts I was going to name this post Sun, Sweat, School and Saltwaters.  But I am.  So I didn't.

Because Ted has been waking early, it means his sleep is early too.  He crashed halfway through listening to the latest PJ O'Brien cd (which has some fantastic photography on the cover *cough*) and I took that as a cosmic sign that I should drive to one of my favourite op shops. 

Check out the seersucker!  The green, mustard and blue flower materials are all seersucker and I especially love the blue floral tablecloth.  The pink floral sheet is looking funky for a skirt I think.  Oh the possibiities!  Wow to me being much more confident about my sewing after completing my skirt!  We also found a book about cricket that Ted fell in love with and was very excited about showing to Papa.  In fact at the shop he held the book aloft at the counter and said "I'm going to read this with my Papa cos he likes to watch cricket".  The old woman behind the counter said "Oh you like Pepper?"  to which Ted, happy with segues of any kind, even ones as random as that, replied with "Oh yes I do like Pepper".  I guess when you're two you believe everyone shares your personal universe.

Picking Harriet up was a relief - she was happy.  Very happy!  Of course she's been happy at the end of every first school day of the year, so that wasn't really anything to go by.  But the way she described her discussion with the Yr2 teacher sounds promising in terms of challenging her mentally, and she made a new friend from a new student as well as being able to introduce her old friend who is a new student to the school, Matilda.  All in all, a good day.

We also stopped off on the way home to buy some saltwater sandals.   Ted chose red (most disappointed at there being no purple and that the pink was glossy), Harriet chose navy and I then went next door and bought some adult red ones.  Where I saw a woman pick up a layby.  And being a nosy parker I looked at the name on the side of the bag and it said Aziza.  And I had to ask her if she is the Aziza that had just moved in to my street.  And of course she was.  And it was all very serendipitous.  Her daughter Beatrix was there too, so Harriet launched into her description of her Baby Entertaining Club.  Have I written about that here yet?  I must, if not.  Perhaps sometime after PAD is over.

Of course, she is still Harriet. When Ted balked at having Blue Baby involved in her bunk bed camping game (pictured here, the top of the table was the top bunk and Your Doll is in the sleeping bag on the bottom), Harriet had a minor meltdown.  But given that it was finally a hot day today, and the first day of school, and all sorts of shenanigans, we worked it out.  And finished the day with a cold, cold bath.  Lucky children, I think I need one of those myself.

Last PAD entry tomorrow!