Throwing the love around

Sarah just turned seven years old. She's grown so fast -- seems like just yesterday she was saying her first sentence ("Bye-bye, da bird!") and now she's a beautiful girl who loves playing Sudoku and Set, swimming, reading Junie B. Jones books, wearing headbands, and anything princess-related. She and I are looking forward with excitement and some nervousness to starting second grade in our new town, riding a school bus and making new friends. We recently heard that a widow down the road sold her house to a family with several girls, so hopefully there will be nearby playmates for both Sarah and Becky. But I am NOT projecting my social anxiety onto them, no sirree.

Becky is also looking forward to kindergarten, though I fear it will be more of a wrench for her because she will be in preschool right up until a week or so before school starts. So the transition from her old school and friends to an entirely new experience will be more sudden. I just hope she has less separation anxiety than she did on her second day of preschool in the South. The first day I think she assumed it was a temporary one-time thing, but when Ben dropped her off for the second day, it dawned on her that this being-left-all-day-in-an-unfamiliar-place deal was going to go on for a while. Ben said she cried and clung to him. If it had been me dropping off, I don't think I could have done it. However, she had no problem at all with starting preschool in the last place we lived.

Meanwhile, she's having a great summer. Yesterday when I picked her up, she was playing on the playground, which has mulch and dirt underfoot and was rather soggy because of a thunderstorm earlier in the afternoon. So what better time to throw herself on her back and make a "dirt angel" for the sheer joy of it? Other sources of joy are Red Sox games, when she squeals with delight whenever she sees David Ortiz (a.k.a. Big Papi), her favorite Red Sox player. She told me a riddle the other day: "Do you know why I don't like Big Papi? Because I LO-O-OVE him!" And just this week another object of her affections appeared. In the car I often have the radio on WERS, an excellent college station, and the DJ identified herself as Tina Gall.

Sarah: "Is that the same as the Tina on the Red Sox?"
Me: "No, that's [commentator] Tina Cervasio."
Becky (out of nowhere but perhaps hoping I'd switch to NPR): "I want Renee Montaigne. I want her."
Me: "Um, what would you do with her?"
Becky: "Love her."

Those kids, they make me loff.