Sadie

There's a kindergartner I watch in the mornings and take to school.  Her name is Sadie.

(Long background story ... her dad lost his job at the beginning of the year, found a job at a place that couldn't hire him, and had to find ANOTHER job.  All in, like, a month.  I didn't have Sadie while he was looking for a job, because he could drive her to school.  In November, while I was in Washington, another neighbor looked after Sadie.  Now I've had her back since December 1.  It looks like this new job could afford to keep him, and I hope it stays that way!!)

Anywho.  I love Sadie.  She's awesome.  I'm sure she's not particularly nicer or cooler or smarter or more interesting than your average kindergartner, but she's awesome because she's kind of mine, you know?  You love whom you serve.

She's the youngest of four in her family, so I think maybe she likes that she's the older kid when she's at my house.  Carmen loves having an older sister.  Yesterday, Carmen made a special effort to learn Sadie's name (it sounds kind of like "see"/"seedie"/"say") and just loved spending time around her.  We all made a trip to Costco with Dorie Joseph to order a cake for Jake Joseph's birthday party, and it's cool because the monster shopping carts have TWO seats.  Carmen beamed the whole time, chanting Sadie's name and putting her arm around Sadie.  By the end of the trip, Sadie looked at me pleadingly and said, "Can you PLEASE make her stop touching me?"

It was awesome.

Mark told me about two little girls in the older Nursery class who are good friends.  One of the girls, Izzy, is a bit more clingy than her friend, Kaylie (Kaylee? I don't know.)  We take the kids to Primary at the end of Nursery, to prepare them for Sunbeams next year.  Mark said that at the end of Nursery, Kaylie started asking Mark if he could possibly make Izzy sit somewhere else so Izzy would leave Kaylie alone.  Such a cute age!!  Dah!

Carmen cries whenever Sadie gets out of the car to go to kindergarten and I can't distract her from her sadness.  It's so cute.  "But Carmen, she has to go to school!  She has to go to kindergarten!  We'll see her tomorrow!"  "Nooooooo Seeeeddiiieeeeeeeee!"  "I'm sorry, she has to go to school!  Would you like to go to school, too?"  "Uh-huh!!!"

That must be what it's like for younger siblings to see their beloved older siblings go off and have exciting adventures at school.  They get stuck at home with boring ol' mom and the boring ol' cats and boring ol' laundry and cleaning and all that other boring stuff that goes on at home.  ROUGH.

More Sadie stories tomorrow.