Friday, December 31, 2010

Goodbye-Vacation....

"Back To School". Perhaps the most dreaded, most malevolent phrase in all of kid-dom. With Christmas Vacation winding down, it's time to bring out that phrase around my girls. It still strikes fear, as it always has. Two little faces are crestfallen at it. Every time.

I remember way back in the day, when I was the school-goer of the house, living for breaks and days off. Of course, this was back in the 80's and 90's, which meant that school got "way uncool" and "super-lame" after all of the new sweater dresses, leg warmers, banana clips, Skidz apparel had made the rotation; and when all the "totally awesome" school supplies had either been broken into and were rendered now "uncool" (i.e color change pens), OR had been banned by the teachers (i.e the stack of Cool Shades notebooks filled with colored paper: pink, yellow, blue, purple).

In other words, we began counting the days till the next days off on September 1st.

Two weeks is just enough time, it turns out, to somehow convince yourself that you must have heard things wrong. It's not two weeks off; it's two months. One need not worry. One will be off for a long time. One can be happy.

Breaking the truth to my girls has been a delicate procedure. "It's not time to go back to school! No! We're still on vacation!" That vehement denial turned into desperate pleading, "Pleeeaaassseee make vacation longer. Please say we don't need to go back! We're smart! We're good! We don't neeeeeeeeeedddd to go back to school!" And now we've finally morphed into the final phase of 'reconditioning'--meek acceptance; "Today we're not going to school, are we? This isn't a school day, right?" Followed by a heavy sigh.

Christmas Vacation was good. Fun was had by all. Now it's time to pack up and get this second half of the year done. Up and at 'em, kiddos. (And I think they'll be ready to go on Monday.)

Ashlyn said it best the other day: Caedance was complaining about not wanting to go back, saying, "I don't want to go. I don't like school." Ashlyn put her arm around her twins shoulder, stared her in the eye and said, "Oh, but it's okay that you don't want to go and you don't like it. Because you'll just have to do it anyway. Might as well smile about it."

Wise words, little girl. Wise words, indeed.

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