Jessica Makes the A/B Honor Roll

This afternoon I went to the awards ceremony for the first nine weeks of school at Jessica's school. Jessica's been dreading this for days, fearing that she would have to get up on stage to receive her certificate.

Well, she did get an award--she made the A/B Honor Roll for having all S's or E's on her first report card--but Mrs. Elrod walked up with her, and she didn't have to go up on an actual stage (though she did have to stand in the front of the cafeteria with all the other kids who made the honor roll).

She was nervous, but she survived. I was nervous too. I also survived.

Jessica Coloring Hello Kitty on a Sick Day

Jessica has had a bad cold for about a week now. Today she stayed home from school sick, which meant she missed her class's field trip to Washington Farms in Watkinsville, GA, but since she went there last year with her kindergarten class, she wasn't too upset.

After we took Elyse to school, we stopped at Target to get a couple of things, one of which turned out to be a Hello Kitty activity book. She spent much of the morning and afternoon working on it:

(Trying to decide how to decorate Hello Kitty's dress) 

("Prass" spells Princess, according to Jessica.) 

Stone Mountain Park Grist Mill

This morning while Jessica and Elyse were both in school, I went to Stone Mountain Park to take some pictures. Here are three pictures I made in the Grist Mill area:

McDaniel Farm Park

This afternoon we went to McDaniel Farm Park to do some walking in (or at least near) the woods. Here are a couple of pictures I took there:

Jessica Among the Pines

Fairy Woodland

Family Portrait

We made this family portrait at the beginning of September to give to my mother and Anna's mother for their birthdays:

A Day Off for Elyse

Elyse has had either a cold or allergies lately; she's been coughing a lot--though mostly when she's sitting or laying down, and not so much when she's up and doing things--and her nose is running like crazy. This morning she said she didn't want to go to school, which she says pretty much every morning, but this morning she really seemed to mean it. She fell asleep on the way, and she was snoring pretty hard by the time we got there, so I just let her sleep in the car and went in and told Mrs. Quick that Elyse wouldn't be in school today--but I might be bringing her back for ballet, depending.

So Elyse and I took a car nap on the edge of the church parking lot until she woke up, right around 10:00, and then we went and had a nice morning together. We went to the McDonald's in Lilburn and had hotcakes and sausage (and hash browns and chocolate milk), and then we went to the City of Lilburn park and played and walked around for over an hour. ("I'm too sick to go to school," Elyse said, "but not too sick to play on the playground.") We had a good time.

I did take her back to school for ballet at 12:15, and she did fine. Her nose was still running, but I think the other girls' noses were running too. She's really excited about ballet, and wanted to be there.

We hope she gets better soon, but it was kind of nice to have a morning with Elyse today. She and I haven't had that in a few weeks, now that school has started and she's going five days a week, and I miss it.

Stone Mountain Village Details

This morning while my girls were in school, I went to Stone Mountain Village to take some pictures.

What I found I was most interested in was the texture, shape, line, geometry, pattern, and color of what I found there, but not necessarily "representative" art. These aren't abstracts, I don't think, but it's not important to me that you know that, to pick one example, it's a picture of a window in the old train depot; I just want to focus attention for a minute on the geometry of the frame, the texture of the granite and the wood and the cracking paint, the contrast between the color of the stone and the color of the wood, and the shadow that seems to be slithering up (or perhaps down) the window and onto the sill.

It's about details that are easy to miss, but when you do notice them, they're really quite beautiful.

(This isn't true of every single one of these fifteen pictures, but it is of most of them.)

Snaggletooth!

Jessica lost another tooth! This is the third tooth she's lost, though it's been quite a while--like two years, I think--since she lost the first two. It's one of her front teeth this time. It came out in the middle of the night, but she says it didn't hurt at all.

(She lost the tooth in the middle of the night on Thursday, September 5, so that's how I'm dating this post, regardless of the fact that I'm actually writing this a whole week later.)

Stone Mountain, and Visiting With Baby Ada

Today Elyse and I went back to Stone Mountain for one last time before she returns to preschool (five days a week this year!) next Tuesday. We didn't ride the train this time, but we did take the Skyride up to the top of the mountain and walked around for about an hour.

The view of the lawn and Memorial Hall from a cable car coming up the mountain:

In this picture you can also see the reflecting pool (and its fountains) that's under the carving, the train tracks, and the hotel. If you look really closely, you can see the red car going down as we were going up in the blue one. That little touch of light color amidst the trees about two-thirds of the way up is, I think, Mount Carmel Christian Church in Stone Mountain (the city, not the park).

Here's a shot of the red cable car nearing the top of the mountain:

Elyse did a little ballet dance performance at the top of the mountain:

I'm not sure what she's doing here; possibly pretending to hold someone's hand:

These are my two new favorite pictures of Elyse:

After we left Stone Mountain, we went to Granny and Pa's house because my cousin (first cousin once removed, to be exact) Lauren was coming over with her almost-six-months-old baby Ada, and Elyse loves babies:

(Elyse and Ada are, I believe, first cousins twice removed, in case anyone is keeping score.)

After Lauren and Ada left, Elyse said to me, "Daddy, I love babies." Then she shook her head and said very sadly, "But they leave."

Stone Mountain with Daddy and Elyse

Elyse doesn't start school (the Threes class at Bethesda) until after Labor Day, so we've had a lot of time together, just me and her. Yesterday we took advantage of our time and went to Stone Mountain to get in one more non-weekend train ride. (At this point, the Stone Mountain train still runs on Fridays as well as on the weekends; after Labor Day, the train runs just on weekends.)

The first train ride is at 11:00, and I had intended to get there early enough to ride the first one, or maybe the second run at 11:40, but Elyse had other ideas. So, after laying on the sofa and watching "Busytown Mysteries" for half an hour, we finally headed out at 11:00. We did get there in time to buy some candy (a pre-train tradition) and get on for the 12:20 trip around the mountain.

After the train ride, we rode the Skyride to the top of the mountain and walked around for a while, shared a bag of potato chips and a bottle of water, and then went back down. I'd intended to leave the park at 2:15 so we could go straight to Jessica's school to pick her up, but we didn't even get on the Skyride to go down until 2:20. After a bathroom stop, we were in the car and headed out at 2:35. I was afraid we'd end up parked halfway down the street at Jessica's school, the last car in a long, long line, but when we got there at 3:07 we were only a car or two farther back than where we usually end up when we get there right at 3:00. (Apparently cars don't arrive in sudden droves right after 3:00 as I'd feared, or else Fridays are slower.) By 3:35 we had Jessica in the car and were on the way home.

Here are some pictures from the time Elyse and I spent together at Stone Mountain:

Relaxing on the train, eating a Hershey's Kiss:

One view from atop the mountain:

"Daddy, I'm so tired!":

Not so tired after all:

Outside, climbing on a guard rail:

Other Mountain visitors:

Playing with the Souvenir Pennies machine while waiting to catch the Skyride back down:

The view of the lawn and the Crossroads area from a Skyride cable car coming down the mountain:

She's Not Real

This morning, the first thing Elyse told me about was how last night she had to be left alone in her bedroom for a while as Mommy read to Jessica before bedtime. (I was at school at the time for the first night of my Java Programming class.) She said she wanted someone to rub her back, but Mommy couldn't do it, so she cuddled up with Tiny Baby instead.

"Did Tiny Baby rub your back?" I asked.

"No," Elyse said. "She's not real and she can't rub me."

She's not real and she can't rub me. If you've ever wondered how much of her play and make-believe Elyse actually believes, I think that gives a pretty good answer.

Poor Elyse.

School Update and Recent Portraits

Jessica's been in school for a full week now, and it's going pretty well. She still has some anxiety about the end-of-the-day procedures, and I think she cries sometimes during the day, but there are also a lot of things she's very excited about. Like her new friends, Alanni and Hannah, and a couple of other girls too. She even has good things to say about school lunch (sometimes, anyway).

The day before school started last week, I took a whole mess of pictures of the girls and a couple of myself, too. Here are some of the best of them:

(Note the purple bubble wrap, or "poppers" as she calls it. It's one of Elyse's hobbies.)