"I have a lot of laughs inside, Daddy"

Today was Maia's first day of kindergarten. Though she's been going to preschool for the last three years, I think of it as her first day of school.



This has been a very difficult time for her. Her graduating class at the preschool has dwindled down to about half a dozen children--the rest of them have gone off to kindergarten or been taken out of preschool for the summer. It was sad and scary for her. Coming home from school on Monday, she sang a madeup song as she often does. This was about going to kindergarten--how she was going to be leaving all of her friends, but how it would be okay even if she didn't have friends at kindergarten, and that she wouldn't be scared.



Her ear has preoccupied her, too. I think it is connected with the issue of going to a new school and meeting a new group of children who will ask her about it and probably tease her about it. Kristina brushes her hair in the morning and can never get it right. "I don't like it," Maia will say, crying unconsolably, and I can't help but think it's really her ear she's talking about.



One day, I showed her before and after pictures of operations done by this doctor in California. Really quite amazing. Not long after that, she wanted to know when we were going to go to California for the doctor to fix her ear. And when her new bottom teeth started to come in, and Kristina said she could show her friends, Maia said, "And when I get my ear fixed, I can show my friends, too."




She is tall for her age, and I asked her not long ago if she liked being tall. She said, "Yes." I asked her why, and she said, "Because they can't see my ear." Her "born ear," she calls it, because we've told her to say that she was born that way. "I don't like my born ear," she said to Kristina one day.



The night before last, she tossed and turned till about 9:30 probably. Very late for her. She's usually asleep by 8:30. Last night, I slept with her till about 3:30. When I left for my bed with Kristina, she woke up and joined us.



But tonight it was different.



It had been a good day at kindergarten. She had been wary. But she liked her teacher, and she liked the other children. She had kept her hair down, instead of up in its usual pony tail. Maybe that helped.



"You know two boys were fighting," she said, when we went to pick her up at about 12:30. It was half the class for half the day. "The police came and took them away," she said. "Really, Maia, or are you tricking us," Kristina asked. "I'm tricking you," she said.



Tonight, she wanted Kristina to play Hokulani with her in the playtime that the two share just after bathing. "Hokulani" is the name of her school.



We went to bed early. "Come sleep by me," she will say to me when she's ready. Kristina had been hurrying her along this evening because she wanted her to get a good night's sleep. It was a little after 7 and still light outside.




We played in bed. I thought it would help her to get to sleep. She was making nonsense words and cracking herself up. She gets into giggling fits about things she says, and I was encouraging her this evening. Finally, she was pinching my nose shut to make me snort. I began turning it down then because I didn't want the play to get too rough. But it was hard to bring her down.




"I have a lot of laughs inside, Daddy," she said, explaining, and still laughing.

"That's very good, Sweetness. It's good to have a lot of laughs inside."

John, Wednesday, August 1, 2007