Chicken School

There is this wonderful little children's story (by Carol Owens) online called Chicken School. It is about this chicken, Peep, who has befriended the farmer's daughter. They play together everyday and so, when the Chicken Soup Man comes to see if there are any old hens he can take for his soup, Peep overhears the farmer tell his daughter that Peep is safe because she is a pet. The other hens, however, haven't been laying enough eggs to "pay their keep" and to top it off, they make a game of pecking at and being mean to the farmer's sons. So, Peep puts the older hens in Chicken School, teaching them how to be nice to the boys so that they too can avoid being sent to the Chicken Soup factory. Her rules for avoiding slaughter are: 1. No Pecking; 2. No running away; 3. Snuggle when hugged.  In the end, the older hens realize how much more fun it is to actually play with the boys and the farmer doesn't send them away to be made into soup. Sorry to spoil it. Just reminded me of our week, kind of....

On Monday, I arranged to have Kurt and my in-laws watch the other kids so I could take Madeline to her new school, just the two of us. I wanted to give her (and her teachers) my full attention on this first day of her new adventure. As I was standing there telling her teacher about how tough the transition has been for her; about how her recent complaints have been "It's too cold! My bummy is turning into a frozen bum popsicle! I'm going to have a bum-pop!" she came up to give me a hug and kiss. I stood back up to continue my conversation. A few minutes later she came back, gave me another hug, asked if she could go color with the other students and went skipping away. A third time, she came back over, tugged me down to her eye level, hugged and kissed me and said, "Ok, BYE, Mom!"

She had a great first day (and second day) and then after her first play-date with a neighbor, whom she now adores, she hugged me and said she was glad we moved to our new house and she now likes the snow.....phew....

Aidan was next to start his new adventure. He couldn't start school until Wednesday (because apparently they think that it is necessary to have two full school days after getting the required immunizations for them to be effective....even if there was a full 2 week break since the shots....somehow I don't think 48 hours would make a difference with the 5th immunization of the series anyway, but hey, I'm not a doctor...) He was so excited to ride the bus,  he shed himself of his "family snail" title and was ready to go half an hour early. A little uneasy about how he would get from his bus to the classroom, he asked me to draw him a map from the bus parking to his room. We then walked out into the 11 degrees and snowing weather and froze our behinds off on the corner of the sidewalk as I tried taking a picture or two. The bus pulled up and Aidan shrugged away from me so as not to hold my hand across the street and in we went where the friendly driver asked if this was her new Aidan. She told him to sit in the first row, I said good bye and off they went. I don't know if it was supposed to be one of those mushy-emotional moments but watching the bus pull away had my eyes full of tears.  Then again, there was a sudden arctic blast that hit right as I exited the bus so perhaps it was the chill of winter that had me....

Lily has been quite jealous of her siblings, asking me everyday,  "When do I get to go to my school?" I'm not too concerned about this though because as she snuggled up close the last time I embraced her in a hug and told her she doesn't get to go to school just yet, her next question was: "When do we get to see the penguins?"

At least she has the snuggle-when-hugged part down....