So cutiepie

Preschool started yesterday. B paused momentarily on the driveway for a quick snapshot. There she is, making her trademarked "What - a picture? Sure, get a picture of this facial contortion. No? How about this?"

She loves being photographed. She hates being cooperative.

And she loves her school.

She is going to the same school where she attended day care over the summer, and she has the same teacher. She goes five days a week for about four hours, during which she and the other children engage in nose-grinding Montessori "work" such as putting lentils in a glass cup, stringing beads onto a piece of yarn and transferring water from one bowl to another with an eye-dropper. On Tuesday, when we walked in the door, one of the boys in her class was in the blonde-wood playhouse wearing a pretty floral dress-up frock and holding a plastic pan.

When I arrive to pick her up in the afternoons, the children are always eating their lunches at their little tables. When they're finished, they take their plates to the sink, which is built and plumbed at the perfect height for 3-year-olds, scrape their trash, then retrieve a sponge to clean their tables. If they've had something particularly messy, they grab a tony broom from the tiny caddy and sweep up the raisings or pasta or grape tomatoes that have fallen onto the floor.

Today, she wanted to bring in a photo of her sister to show to her teacher. She took the smallest photo from me - the one that's about an inch square, and she showed her teacher before marching around the room to proudly thrust the photo in front of all her classmates.

"This is my baby," she says.

"Your baby sister," I emphasize lamely.

"See? That's my baby. Isn't she so cutiepie?"

Oh, she is so cutiepie. Terrifyingly so.

Some people are amazingly well-prepared for these types of Life Events. They've made the lists, done the shopping and trained all the relatives.

Me? Not so much. Not this time.

Yes, we'll want clothes. She will need to wear something. And even though I have plenty of practical hand-her-downs from Buttercup, we will want her to have some things that are all her own.

However, we have no idea when we will meet her. There's no way to correctly choose sizes or seasons. I'm thinking that costumes might just be the answer.

Seriously, follow that link, and please reassure me that the "Future American Idol" is as disturbing as I think it is. And the Princess Leia costume has me locked in its tractor beam!

I've started making lists of baby gear and medicines we'll need to take with us. I'm getting my homestudy updated and ordering B's passport.

But I'm realizing just how much I don't have in order. I have no diaper bag. I've seriously neglected to
plan the logistics of bringing a 35-pound drama queen to China. I cannot decide whether to use B's crib again or sell it and buy a new one.

I worry that seeing another baby in her bed in her parents' room will make an already difficult situation even worse for our Little B.

What a shame that I haven't had the past, um, two years to think about these things.

Comments

[moreena]

The Future American Idol costume is terrifying. Of course I was thinking that the best part of it was the microphone. I was thinking that could make for some interesting candy solicitation.

But then, in big red letters, MICROPHONE NOT INCLUDED.

Without the microphone, it's just little girl in an Olivia Newton John video costume, right?

[Lila]

I wish the lady bug costume came in size 334 mos.

[An' Beckay]

Oh, Bettie. You've always been a "Velvet Angel of Light" to me, costume or not.

[Peripateticpolarbear]

buttercup will be fine....after all, it's her baby.

[Marie]

Buttercup is SOOOOO cutiepie! Sans costumes! Ditto for her baby, I'm sure. Freaky, really.