All About Little Girl

So far, first grade is wonderful! Such an improvement over the very sad kindergarten year Little Girl had.

Her first grade teacher had heard stories of Little Girl's supposed behavior problems in kindergarten. I'm not sure what she was expecting from the reports, but it's not what she got. She reports that she has no idea what the problem was last year, but Little Girl is very well-behaved and she hardly even knows she's in the room. She occasionally doesn't pay attention, but all the teacher has to do is say her name and she's right back on task again. She loves to do her work, and as soon as it's given to her, she reads the directions herself and gets started. And she says she's very smart, which even the kindergarten teacher had always admitted to, but apparently hadn't bothered to share that information with the first grade teacher, only the bad behavior comments...

How wonderful to hear such a positive report after all the negative ones from the kindergarten teacher. We had long suspected the problem was with the teacher rather than with Little Girl, but it's nice to see that our suspicions were confirmed, and we weren't just in denial. :)

And I discovered we can no longer discuss things in front of Little Girl by spelling that we don't want her to overhear. My sister was reporting all the good things the first grade teacher was saying about her, and I said, "I'm so glad she doesn't have a bad t-e-a-c-h-e-r this year." Little Girl looks up from her play and immediately says, "Teacher?"

Oops. :) I really had NO idea she could decode that, and in conversation when spelled so quickly too! There will be no more spelling in front of her!

The last time I was in, Little Girl was very concerned about Baby Boy's spiritual status. "Is he saved?" she asked. We answered that he wasn't yet because he's so little but we're pretty sure he will decide to do that when he's big like her. "Does he even know about God?" she asked. "Oh, yes," we answered. "He has his own little Bible that his mommy and daddy read to him, and he goes to church every week too, you know." "But does he love God?" she says, the horror of the thought of someone not loving God evident in the tone of her voice. "I'm sure he does," we answered. "But how do you know if he loves God?" she asked worriedly. We told her to ask him and see what he said.

So she turned to him very seriously and questioned, "Do you love God?" "Yeah!" he responded happily, thus quelling her fears and putting an end to the worried questioning.

The other day in the car, she picked up the roll of wrapping paper I had back there to wrap Baby Boy's presents, and held it up to her eye. "Arrrr!" she says in her best pirate voice. "I spy the treasure!" She used it to look around at things for a minute, and then pointed it at me and said, "I see your heart! Do you know why your heart is a treasure?"

"No, why?" I said absentmindedly, too busy driving to really be paying much attention to what she was doing.

"Because Jesus lives in your heart," she answered. Awwwwwww. Isn't she the sweetest little thing ever? :)