Lia's big day

For the last weeks Lia has been painstakingly practicing and polishing her kindergarten skills.

A certain someone is more than ready to leave the house...

And then comes December 1st 2009. Lia picks her pink kindergarten bag (it's all about options), poses for Mommy with a surprise goodie cone, and confidently marches to kindergarten.

Ready? Of course we are. No, not WE, but Lia. I am scared ****less, but that's just me, an overly worried mother who is not very good at letting her baby go. In an attempt to mentally prepare Lia for the new phase of life that is about to start, we have been reading books about kindergarten and talked so much about it, that Lia has started to think of herself as an accomplished kindergarten kid weeks before her enrolment. "Hello I'm Lia and I'm going to kindergarten!" "Ich geh schon in den Kinnagarten!" I think I've brainwashed her quite a bit. I simply wanted her to have an idea of what lies ahead of her. I've also told her a couple of times that the little girl that lives in our street will be in the same group with her. So on the morning of her big day I asked her: "And who will be in kindergarden with you?" And she smiled a big smile at me and answered: "Lorenzo!" And that's when I got all teary and my (still) two-year-old daughter told me not to cry. Quite the opposite of what some other families go through on their first day of kindergarten.

When I went to pick her up after her first day alone in kindergarten, I was so nervous that I was running instead of walking. Of course Lia was happily playing with the other kids and refused to go home with me. And this is her first masterpiece for mom to stick on the fridge: a sparkly nocturnal sky.

Peanut is now a real kindergarten kid. She's all ready to fight over toys and charm her new little and big friends. She is a member of the bear group, and hence a real, proper "group bear" as she calls herself now. "Ich bin ein Gruppenbär!" Hard to believe that our nutty Gruppenbear is turning 3...