Who needs a Blackberry when you have a Maren?

So, things have been outrageously busy around here. It's always one thing or another...a phone interview, an interview, a job offer, a job rejection -- and the cycle continues in our house. So, we've done a lot of rescheduling.

Monday night I realized that we blew off speech therapy. I rescheduled it to begin on the Monday after Spring Break and forgot to type it into my Blackberry, so it never synced to google calendar where Jon and I try to maintain controlled chaos.

So, I turn to Jon in horror and say, "UGH, we missed speech and didn't even call Betsy." He looked at me and said, "Oh, Maren mentioned it on the way home and I thought she had her days wrong." Looks like she's more reliable than the Blackberry. And, of course on Tuesday when she told Jon she had Ballet (moved from Thursday), he listened :-).

Note to Self: Maren has great day of the week skills! Check that off of any future IEP.

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Not a stranger, a H__M __ ___

I've been meaning to post about this for awhile, then forget. So, here it goes.

For a long time, I've been worried about Maren and her trusting nature. She's never met a stranger, but if you've ever met me, you'd realize that it may be in a chromosome other than her extra 21st. When I was 5 or 6, my parents spent several frantic minutes searching for me at a state park. Each time they'd ask someone if they had seen a little redheaded girl, they'd inform my parents that I told them I was hungry and they gave me food and I headed on my way.

Finally, they found me in an RV with a nice family who was again feeding me and trying to figure out how to find my family...How I made it through childhood, I'll never know.

Anyway, Maren has that sense of familiarity with the world, and obviously, I'm terrified that in this day and age, she could become a victim of some unscrupulous and horrible person. So, we work a lot on strangers. To no avail. We talk about strangers. We talk about stranger danger. I warn her.

So, we were at Publix and my Little Miss Magic begins a conversation with a cute college-aged boy in the front of the line. They start chatting and before you know it, he adds M&Ms to his order. As he's leaving, he hands them to her, and she beams and gives him a HUGE THANK YOU! Ugh. At least she knows her manners....

After he leaves, I take them away and tell her we cannot take candy from strangers. With a look of disdain and contempt, she stares me down, "He's not a stranger; He's a HUMAN!" And, she stomps her foot.

Alas, he's a human. Too bad we can't all see such sameness in the world.

Too bad I can't rely on the fact that all humans are kind. The world would be so beautiful if the humans could act the way my daughter believes they will :-).

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Maren's Field Trip

This week Maren went with the entire first grade class to Barnes and Noble, and then to the Children's Hands-On Museum. I've made it a point not to chaperon her class field trips thus far because I've wanted her to interact with her peers outside of class, and I know her well enough to know that I were there, she'd probably hang out with me and introduce me to all of her friends and drag me along with them. (***And, I know the teachers and the other moms very, very well and know for a fact they would never, ever let my daughter out of their sight!***)

Last year, they went to Shark Tooth Creek, and she was fine! This year, again nothing to report. YEAH! She had a great time; the mom in charge of her group gave her a huge hug and said "I had a great day Maren," and that's it. I love these moments more than anything. Maren will always have an extra chromosome; it is never, ever going away. But hey, what a great and typical life she can have ~~ field trips, dance lessons, soccer practice, concerts and plays, and someday (not too soon I hope), dates!~~

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