Its My Favorite Time of Year!

I love this time of year - with autumn soon arriving, you can feel the change in the air, if not during the day, certainly at night when the sun goes down.

My girls will be heading back to school next Tuesday; Dakotah in grade 10 and Paige in grade 5.

We've had a pretty good summer, filled with lots of rain, lots of baseball, a balloon festival, a trip to a drive-up zoo, a drive to NH, and lots of other fun things that have kept us busy and made the summer fly by.

Paige's surgery is scheduled for early November; so this winter will be a sort of deja vu of last; but it will be behind us eventually, and we'll be all the better for it, save a few more scars for Paige and a bit more gray hair for me.

Summer has seen Dakotah's hair go from dark blonde to brown to brown with lots of highlights in it. I did manage to escape the "Marilyn Monroe" lip piercing she wanted - so far. She is excited to go back to school, and has been busy with some end of summer parties lately - and boy, the parties are evolving from girlie sleepovers that she had in 7th grade, with lots of giggling and eating junk food to more grown up parties with - gasp - boys and girls - and "hanging out."

Hanging out generally means lots of doing nothing, but makes this mom nervous sometimes, as, contrary to her beliefs, it wasn't all that long ago that I was a teenager, and I can remember all the trouble we could conjur up when one or more of us were gathered with nothing much to do.

Paige could have had surgery as early as September 16th, but I elected to put it off for a few weeks to allow her to have some back-to-school time with her friends, and to get some of those appointments we missed last year in - dentists, pediatrician, eye doctor, etc.

She has a cute little outfit all ready to go back for the first day - she has started looking more grown up over the summer, and her teachers and her aide are going to find a big difference I think.

Anyone who ever said she would be my little girl forever was sorely wrong, as she is starting to blossom into a young lady too. She will be returning to school wearing her first bras - cute little striped pullover-the-head ones and ones with flowers and bows and all things precious on them - its absolutely too sweet and too cute to see them on her.

I was very surprised a couple of weeks ago when she got her first period. She is just a tiny thing of 62 lbs, and is just 11 - I thought it would be a couple more years before that arrived, but surprise! She is actually earlier starting than Dakotah was, even though Dakotah was nearly twice her size at this age. I guess not everything is delayed when you have T21 ;)

We've been school supply shopping - my favorite kind of shopping to do! I love new pens and pencils, and markers, and notebooks and all the fresh new things that hold the promise of a brand new year full of learning for everyone.

Hi ho hi ho - its off to school they go!