Big girl

Two weeks ago, our Ellie turned four, and this number has been in hot debate ever since. For most of this school year, her closest friend has been a sweet girl who is six months younger. She and Ellie bonded at the hip, with an unfortunate result of a lot of undesirable-to-us younger behaviors in Ellie. Then, her friend was away on holiday for three weeks. Ellie spent that time playing more and more with some of the older kids. One of them turned 5 three days before Ellie turned 4. Since that day, she has been raw-ther insistent that she is FIVE. We'll take it, because before she was insisting she was THREE and man, some days I was so done with her being three, if you know what I mean.

Now that she is four (FIVE!), Ellie is invited to stay for the full day at school. The "half-day" runs from 8:45am - 1:30pm (they eat lunch together as a class and then play on the playground until pick-up). The "full day" runs an additional hour and a half beyond that. We're giving it a trial run on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ellie is so excited to stay with the big kids, but it is a long day. Last Tuesday was the first try, and she did great...though her tiredness was evident. On Thursday, she was teary-tired before we even reached the car. I kept her home Friday thinking she was getting another cold, but in retrospect, I think she was just worn out. I talked to her (wonderful!) teacher, and she reported nothing but enthusiasm and great behavior during the school day. With that in mind, we're giving it another go this week. Yesterday, she did fine. Although she was tired, she held it together really well all afternoon. Tomorrow will be the last full day before a two week school holiday. I can tell she is ready for a break!

We'll actually be enjoying a three week school holiday, because we sneakily planned a trip to Bali at the end of the two week break. All of the Aussies will have left, none of the Europeans will have arrived, so we should have the run of the place!