My late report on Logan starting first grade, is that it’s a success. Logan walked in confidant with her snack basket and hair braided with yarn ribbons in it. She wore the same dress as for the last day of school, her first grade star, and carried the brand new purse I gave her in honor of her first day of first grade. She reports that first grade isn’t as much fun as kindergarten because there’s more sitting and less playing, but she looks forward to it and enjoys it. For all who’ve asked, yes it’s still half days. Waldorf figures the change from play to academics and desks is a big enough one without adding in a long day. Next year she’ll have two long days and three short days.



No, it’s not all academics. In amid straight and curved lines (the precursor this month to numbers and letters), there’s outside structured play (red light green light was the game I heard about), Spanish, Handwork, Eurythmy (a kind of dance similar to Tai Chi), painting, drawing, coloring, and in the next week or two they’ll start playing Recorders. Once we order them. They also still have circle time every day, which I suspect includes singing of some sort — Mr. Wilt the teacher is reported to like singing. Since school started they’ve also baked, made clay figures, and bees wax figures on respective days.



Once Logan’s day is over we eat lunch, and then do afternoon things — swimming lessons one day, grocery shopping, play dates, and so on. Then close to 3:00, or 3:30 on Wednesdays we pick Jasmine up and hope to head home. (we’ve had extra stops some days already). During morning and afternoon drive time regularly half to three quarters of the car falls asleep. I’m fairly used to that from Logan sleeping on the drive home in past years. Xia and Jasmine haven’t adapted to the early awake early to sleep schedule yet, so I presume napping helps to make up for it.



Mango-kitten has settled in well. She has her food and litter box in the down stairs bathroom, and a second litter box in use in the upstairs bathroom. She also has toys in the down stairs bathroom, although I’m not sure how they came to be there — but she goes in and out playing with them happily. She’s free to roam the house during the day now having resolved the difference between dog beds and litter boxes. At the vet appointment for shots yesterday we found she’s gained at least a pound since we got her, and is slowly getting over her rhinitis infection. With luck once she is over it she’ll stop sounding like a pug when she grooms.



John had his 39th birthday on Wednesday, the same day the pump and well man came out to give us a (way too much money) estimate on filtering and purifying our irrigation water to help solve the problem of our well running short if we dare to do our laundry or wash very many dishes at home. For something around $1500.00 that will get set up, and we won’t run short. I made brownies for John’s birthday, and we had a good meal and presents. I took pictures especially for Wilma, but I don’t think she has this blog address.



Today, once we actually get out of the house (John fixing the screen door and the towel racks in the bathroom get priority. I cleaned the bathroom so there was space to work and significantly less cat litter on the floor. Now I just have to find out if the mop migrated to the cabin.) we’ll start again on firewood. Progress is slowly being made, but the rain season is approaching too, and the sooner the wood is in the safer we’ll be.