Elena 
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We also went from having her about 30 hours a week to maybe 15 hours, at least this week. That with the cut back in my other job has given me so much extra time that it feels a little …weird. Weird enough that I put in 3 hours of flute practice in one day where as before I would have to grab time to practice. This change in life is certainly going to be an adjustment.
2. Miss C. is getting to be very vocal and articulate. I took her to the zoo yesterday.
When we were coming back from the zoo, I asked her if she had taken a nap at her dad’s house. She assured me that she had, but somehow, I kind of doubted it.
“I’m gonna call your daddy just so see if you need a nap C.”
To which she called my bluff and said,
“Go ahead grandma, call him!”
Turns out, she didn’t take a nap, but I applaud her poker face and chutzpah in throwing down a dare like that at only 3 years old!
When I was putting her into her car seat to leave she said, “Grandma, look at my legs!” She proceeded to squish her thighs to show me big she could make them. Then she tried to squeeze her hand between her chest and the car seat strap.
“I’m getting big grandma! I think I need a bigger car seat.”
The thing is, I know that. I also know that less than 8 years ago I bought a big-girl car seat for Rosie and I don’t know what happened to it. I might have even thrown it away, which just kills me.
Anyway, it really is getting harder to buckle her into this seat (which someone gave us as a hand-me-down when she was born), so I went ahead and ordered this one from Evenflo. 
3. Is it wrong to feel such satisfaction at watching Abby Lee Miller go to prison this week? I don’t think so. I re-watched the first couple of seasons of Dance Moms earlier this year and felt such revulsion at how she treated her students that it seems just to me that she is punished somehow for something.
I had abusive dance teachers back in the day too. The worst was not aggressive and abusive like ALM. Her torture was more nuanced, and subtle and really more like neglect. Maybe part of my gratification in watching a dance teacher go to jail stems from my own unsettled issues.
4. The big Grad Party is this weekend! I haven’t heard from everyone I invited so I took a shot in the dark with food and stuff. We’re either going to get cleaned out, or have tons of leftovers for the next week.
This is one thing I dislike about the Facebook event thing – you can invite individuals, but it’s hard to get a count from that. When I invite a mom, of course I mean her family. Likewise, when I invite Izzy’s friend I mean to invite her parents too. That’s all a little fuzzy with Facebook!
Anyway, I’m sure posts and pictures will follow next week!
5 If you’re interested in my free book form for listing your textbooks and reading books for the NCAA you can still get that here. I’ll share a secret – the main reason for the form is to remember to capture the ISBN number on the textbooks. I had no idea that was even going to be a requirement and I spent a good amount of time last tracking those down when I was trying to get Noah NCAA eligible. A form like that would have saved me a lot of time!
One of the things I struggled the most with was doing the science experiments. We could read the textbook and answer the questions, but I was really bad about ever doing the experiments and that was what the kids liked doing the most! Well, I’ve certainly solved that problem for this coming year, because I am going to be the General Science teacher at our Co-op – so it will be my job to actually prepare and DO THE EXPERIMENTS every week with my daughter and the other kids in the class. I guess that’s putting my hardest thing first!!
If you didn’t get to the webinar yesterday at the HomeScholar about 12 Keys to High School Success, there’s another one today! 11 a.m. Pacific time.