A big day

Last night was Anne's first night at AWANA. I can't believe she is big enough to be a Cubbie! We spent all day yesterday talking about it; me trying to psyche myself up for it and Anne excitedly trying to understand what she was going to be doing. She was so excited she could hardly fall asleep at nap time, she kept calling me in and asking me questions about it. I tried to teach her the Cubbie Bear motto, "Jesus loves me", but she couldn't ever get the "me" no matter how I tried to explain it. I said, "Jesus loves me," she said, "Jesus loves you." If I said "Jesus loves YOU, so say 'ME'" She said, "Jesus loves us." We went around and around and I finally gave up. When we were on our way home from AWANA, Tim and I were talking to her about her evening. She was completely worn out so it was a funny conversation. We asked her if she had fun, she said "yes!" We asked her if she wanted to go back next week, she replied in a sad little voice, "no." But, she continued to talk about it like she was planning to go again. Then she said, "Am I still a Tubbie?" To which we replied, "Yes, you're still a Cubbie." Then very quietly, "Am I still Annie?" Poor girl. We explained, "You go to AWANA and your little group is called Cubbies so we say you're a cubbie..." Ha! I don't know if she thought Cubbies was such a big deal that it was going to change every aspect of her life- including her name- or what exactly caused the identity confusion.

Yesterday was also her first day of school. I set the timer for 15 minutes thinking that was all I'd get out of her but we were in the middle of things when it went off so I set it for another 15. She lasted about 13 more minutes before staring into space and ignoring everything I was saying. Guess we'll try to make it 20 minutes today. She learned how to circle things, draw a line from one item to another, and we worked on her name and some numbers. She is very excited to be "doing stool" finally.