First day...first grade

Today is Emma's first day of first grade. Here's a picture of Emma with her friend Amy in their new clothes and maryjanes on the first day of school...


And here's my happy little girl...she's so thrilled to be a first-grader at last!


I indulged in my usual first-day-of-school ritual...I dropped Emma off in her classroom and then burst into tears on the way back to the car. Even though you go through this year after year, it's still hard to believe how fast your child is growing up. The first day of school just brings it all into focus for an intense moment.

UPDATE: Just to reply to a couple of the comments...yes, Emma does go to a French immersion school. After one year of kindergarten, she's pretty fluent...it's amazing to someone like me who struggled with through three years of high school Spanish and still never really was comfortable with it!

Summer's last blast...

Emma starts school tomorrow (finally!) I wanted to spend a little time with her before the official end of summer, so I took the afternoon off and we went to visit one of our favorite places, a local farmstead. I don't have anything spectacular to report...we had a nice time on a beautiful late summer afternoon. I did take a few pictures, of course...














This evening we went to the school's open house to see who Emma's teacher is and who is in her class this year. Much to my relief, her best friend Emme is in her class again this year. I met her teacher briefly. She is a new teacher from Belgium...I hope we end up liking her as much as Emma's kindergarten teacher.

Teething again

The older your child gets, the more you seem to forget about her baby years. For example, I know I changed Emma's diaper thousands of times, but she's been potty trained for so long, I really don't remember the dirty diapers. She sat in a high chair to eat for at least two years, but I don't have any real tangible memory of it and I don't even know what happened to her high chair (we probably sold it or it's down in the basement somewhere.)

I also have only a vague recollection of Emma cutting her baby teeth. I mean, I sort of recall the drooling and fussiness and low-grade fever. But she's had all her baby teeth for so many years, that memory has faded as well.

So when Emma complained yesterday that her mouth was hurting, I thought maybe it was a cut or a sore or something. So imagine my surprise when I looked into her mouth and saw a tooth way in the back of her mouth peeking through her gum. It was pretty inflamed and even bleeding a little. But a little ibuprofen seemed to help and she hasn't complained about it since.

It sort of slipped my mind that kids cut more molars at around age six and usually another set around 12. I do think Emma's dentist is correct when she said there just wasn't going to be enough space in Emma's mouth for those additional teeth. I can't imagine two more sets of molars fitting in that tiny mouth. Orthodontia is definitely in our future, I'm afraid.

The good thing is that Emma has become kind of obsessed with oral hygiene of late. She brushes her teeth diligently and swishes her mouth with fluoride rinse. Then she spends about five minutes flossing her teeth (just like her mom - HAHAHAHA!) I am glad she wants to take care of her new teeth...let's hope she keeps it up!

Anky's golden!

Emma and I have been completely enthralled by the Olympics...we have both thoroughly enjoyed the swimming, diving, gymnastics and beach volleyball. But the sport we have both been looking forward to the most is the equestrian competition. Unfortunately, it doesn't get a lot of coverage, but the Oxygen network has been playing the highlights every afternoon, so I've been DVR-ing it and we've been able to catch the eventing and jumping competitions.

Emma's very favorite is dressage, though, and her heroine is Anky Van Grunsven, the brilliant equestrian from the Netherlands. Emma has spent countless hours watching videos of Anky and her magnificent horse, Salinero, on You Tube.

Well, I was so thrilled that Anky came from behind to win her third consecutive Olympic gold medal in individual dressage today...I can't wait to tell Emma and watch it with her when we get home.

I'm sure this will be of interest to about zero people out there, but here is Anky and Salinero's golden performance at the Olympics today...maybe this will be Emma in 20 years? You never know!

A little housekeeping

Since she was a little girl, Emma has always been eager to help me around the house. She was always begging me to let her dust the furniture or sort the laundry. She would beam with pride when she had straightened her room and put all her toys away.

However, I am beginning to think her enthusiastic attitude toward house cleaning is waning. I came to this conclusion on Saturday morning when, as I was furiously scrubbing the bathroom floor, Emma yelled from the living room, where she was watching TV, "Mommy can you stop that long enough to get me some juice?" GGGRRR!!! You can imagine what my answer was. Instead, I snapped off the TV, ordered her upstairs to clean her room. After about three minutes, she came downstairs and said she was done. I went up to check and found that she had merely moved one pile of toy clutter from one side of the room to the other. I strongly suggested she give it a little more effort and eventually her room met my not terribly high standards. Needless to say, I know one child who will not be getting her allowance this week.

We did have some fun this weekend, however. On Friday, we went to see Momma Mia! Emma absolutely loves Abba, but I was hesitant to take her because it was a PG-13 movie. But I checked on one of those movie sites that reviews films for parents and they said with the exception of a few "Oh my God's" and a shot of a man's bare behind, it was pretty tame. Needless to say, Emma loved every minute of it - she had a big smile on her face the whole time. I'm so glad we went. I downloaded the soundtrack on ITunes when we got home and we've been listening to it all weekend.

On Saturday, Emma went to her friend Macie's 6th birthday party. Their good friend Pacey, who moved away a couple months ago, came to the party too and it was so wonderful to see the girls together again - they've known each other since they were 1-year-olds in preschool...they seem like such young ladies now!


And we squeezed in a trip to the pool this afternoon - I suspect our last of the summer. The water was really too cool for me, but Emma had fun perfecting her cannonball jump into the pool.

Hope everyone had a great weekend as well - enjoy your week!

Notice anything different about me?

Need a hint? Look a little closer. See those tiny golden balls on my ears? Yeah, my mommy let me get my ears pierced this weekend! Can you believe it?! I never wanted to get my ears pierced before, even though a lot of my friends have pierced ears already. But last week, I decided I DID want pierced ears and asked my mommy. She said I really needed to think about it for a week because it's a big decision and that I would have to use my own money to do it. So I thought about it some more and still really wanted to do it. So on Saturday, we went to Libby Lu (my favorite place in the world!) and these two nice girls pierced my ears (they do both ears at once.) I didn't even wince a little! The girls said I looked 10 times cuter than when I came in (I think they have to say that!)

So I love my pierced ears and I'm always looking in the mirror at them. I can't wait til I get some new earrings in six weeks!

Between my mommy letting me do this and her actually considering letting me do some modeling, I pretty much think she's lost her mind - but I like it!

My dilemma

Sorry I haven't posted anything in awhile. Like so many of you, I have the late-summer blogging blahs! Sometimes you just need to take a break.

Anyway, I am really struggling with something right now. First, a little background...

I am a magazine editor and work with a lot of very talented professional photographers. One of my favorite guys to work with is Gabe. He's a great guy and a super-talented photographer. Last week, Gabe and I were hanging in my office before we went out to do some location scouting and I showed him a photo I had taken of Emma. He really praised the photo, which made me feel so wonderful...I really respect his opinion. Then he said "You should really think about letting Emma do some modeling." I just kind of laughed and said "Yeah, right!" I mean, I know Emma is cute, but modeling...come on! Gabe said there are thousands of adorable kids in the world, but you can be cute and not necessarily photogenic. He thought Emma was extremely photogenic. But I just kind of laughed it off.

So a few days later after we wrapped up a shoot, Gabe asked if I had thought any more about the modeling thing for Emma. I said I really didn't think it was for us, that I didn't want to put Emma in the position of going to cattle calls and being judged by a bunch of strangers for her looks. Plus, I thought modeling agencies were just scams to make people pay for modeling classes and expensive portfolios. He said he understood that completely and there certainly are a lot of scammers out there. But he said he works with a couple of agencies in town that he would totally vouch for and they never ask for any money from their clients. He suggested when it gets a bit cooler that he could take some photos of Emma and I could submit them to these reputable agencies and see what they thought. I told him I would think about it.

So now I'm starting to think...is this a totally insane idea or would it be a good experience for Emma? I made the mistake of asking her what she thought about it and, of course, she's thrilled about the idea (I guess I shouldn't let her watch Project Runway with me!) I don't know...I mean one of the things I can never fathom is mothers entering their kids in those idiotic child beauty pageants. Is this all that different? Am I being a total hypocrite? Would I be exploiting my child? Is this communicating to her that looks are more important than anything else?

Plus, there's the money. Gabe says some of the kids he has worked with get $500 or more a day for print modeling. The idea of stashing more $$ away in Emma's paltry college fund is appealing. I'm never going to be able to afford Stanford at the rate I'm saving now!

And I have to be perfectly honest...the idea of her being rejected is devastating. I would be so distraught if I did decide to pursue this and had Gabe take some photos and submit them and then have the agency turned her down.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do...any advice is welcome. I'll probably have Gabe go ahead and take the photos...at the very least, I'll get some really cute photos of Emma from a great photographer for free.

Anyway, here's a photo of America's Next Top Model...maybe!