First day of 1st Grade

Today is Abbie's first day of 1st grade. Where did the summer go, you ask? I have no idea. It truly flew by. Abbie is definitely excited to be back in school, but also a little bit nervous about being a "grader", which is what they call the lower school kids that are no longer in Kindergarten. It is supposed to be an honor to be a "grader", but the word always sounds funny to me - like something derogatory. Anyway, Chad and I went in and met her teacher yesterday and she seems really great - she is calm, and very caring and genuine. We are really optimistic that it is going to be a great year.

Abbie, who now is asserting her independence by asking her teacher to call her "Abigail", seemed really happy when we dropped her off this morning. Getting ready and getting out the door was a bit of a challenge, but slowly we will get back into the old routine. Of course, the excitement and the nerves meant that Abbie did not sleep very well last night, and for some reason I also had trouble sleeping and was having dreams about Abbie's first day of school. So strange. I have an odd feeling, though, that both of us will sleep well tonight!

iPhone Follow-up

In my last post, I talked about how Abbie has adopted the old iPhone as her own. Since that time, I learned from Uncle Greg that, even though we don't have phone service for it, we can still connect to wireless networks with it. Chad and I had no idea that this was possible, and I assumed that the same was true of Abbie. Obviously, we kept this information to ourselves. Then out of nowhere, here is the conversation that Abbie and I had this week:

Abbie: Mom, I need to ask you about something in my phone settings. See this thing that says "Wi-fi"? Should that be on or off?
Me: Off!
Abbie: Why?
Me: Because if it is on, then it will be really annoying because all these wi-fi networks will pop up all the time.

At this point, I am feeling all proud of myself for being so on my toes - I can keep the wi-fi off and I can give a good reason to do so. Case closed, right? No, of course not. This is Abbie we're talking about. Without missing a beat, this is what happens next:

Abbie: Oh, I figured you wanted it off so that I wouldn't be able to watch YouTube videos and download things from the App Store.
Me: Uh . . .

So, not only was I shocked to be asked about wi-fi networks, I was also shocked to find out that she knows what they are good for. Nice. As for the picture above, it is from her art show in June, but I think it goes perfectly with this story because it really seems to capture the clever mind that we are constantly trying to keep up with.