Story Teller

It has now been a full week that Belle has been going to school.

She still loves it.

Everyday I have left work a bit early to pick her up at her Latchkey (after school care) earlier than it will be normally. Even with me getting there by 3-3:30 she has a really long day. I drop her off by 7am. Today I have to work until 4pm. I am really not at all thrilled about that.

Everyday I also ask her all about school. What did she do, eat, play, etc. Yesterday she told me that she went across 5 monkey bars on her own (something she has yet been able to do 1 of), she went down a really long pole (picture a fire station), played like she was a princess trapped at the top of the playground by a mean ghost and even told me who the ghost was and who rescued her. She went into details. I didn't think anything of it except that I was extremely surprised she was able to do the monkey bars but hey you never know.

She also told me at first that she stayed on the green on the behaviour stop light in her classroom but later told me that she was on yellow for talking during rest time. She didn't want to say that in front of daddy. She really only confides in me. And yes I love that but that is a whole other story.

She is so wound up after school it takes us awhile to get her to calm down. She is literally bouncing off of the walls. It isn't like she gets all sorts of sweets to get a sugar energy boost.

After dinner last night we were sitting down on the couch because I was trying to get her to calm down and she tells me (and only me) that she made stuff up that she told me. I looked at her and asked her what she made up to which she replies the monkey bars, the pole and the story about the ghost. But she said that the part about the being on the yellow was true.

This really bothered me because I don't want her to feel like she has to have these great accomplishments to tell us everyday. I made her sit on my lap and look at me. She doesn't always like to look you in the face when you are talking to her and I am always stressing that with her. But anyway, she sits on my lap and I tell her that it doesn't matter what she does during the day. Even if it seemed boring. That I am just interested in hearing about her day and what she did. That she doesn't need to make up stories because she thinks we would rather hear that. I also told her that I wanted to be able to believe everything she tells me but if she keeps making up stories that I won't know when to believe her and when not to. So we will see what happens when I get home today. I told her no more telling me made up stories unless she tells me first that it is made up. We.will.see.

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On a more somber note, it is really difficult for me to go to work on this day. I work in our city's downtown area and I always feel weird about going downtown on 9/11. I can only imagine how people feel in other areas of the country. Especially those who lost someone on that day.

I had to explain briefly to Belle about what happened in case her school recognizes it in some way. I left it very very vague because she doesn't need the details at her age. Not yet. I just told her that some people did a very bad thing to our country which killed a lot of people and now we always remember what happened so that we can try to make sure it doesn't happen again. Don't you know that my dear husband then tried to explain that it is kind of like war but it happened here in our country. I could see the look on her face. I kept trying to tell him enough but no. He just couldn't stop himself from trying to have her really understand how important this is. I even had to pull out the laptop and bring up a map of the country to show her where we live and where NY is. She then wanted to know where other things are at and what the states names were. He kept trying to tell her to pay attention to what we were talking about. And that it didn't just happen there but in other places too. I wanted to scream SHUT UP but I bit my lip. Sometimes he just doesn't get it. Good thing I told him ahead of time that I wasn't going to tell her any details including the fact that they crashed planes. UGH.