Fri-yay!

Woo hoo, it's Friday!  We survived another week!

This week Lorelei finally started Pre-K.  She'll go Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings (9 a.m. until 1 p.m.), and Chet will be able to drop her off on his way to school each of those days.  I pack her lunch, but she eats it at school before I pick her up, which is really nice for me (at her last preschool she only got a snack -- which I sent with her each day).  (At Sydney's very first preschool in Mississippi she ate breakfast AND a snack AND lunch at school -- all provided by the school/the state of MS, and it was glorious and I didn't appreciate it nearly enough at the time.  Sigh.)

Anyway, here's Lorelei on Wednesday, her first day (after school, since we forgot to get one beforehand, ahem):

I feel like this picture is more proof of how much I've grown as a parent/person than it is of Lorelei's old age as a pre-Kindergartener.  What I mean by that is that I would have never chosen that outfit for her to wear as a first-day-of-school outfit, and I wouldn't have chosen that lunch box to buy either.  (There's nothing wrong with her outfit, it's just not a first-day outfit in my opinion.  And her lunch box is adorable, but did she not see the lunch boxes in the Pottery Barn Kids catalogue?!)  But I'm s l o w l y learning that parenting (especially girls!) is less about how kooky you think they look/what other people may or may not think of you as a parent based on their kookiness and more about letting them make their own decisions (within reason of course!) and letting them choose things they truly love (no matter how tacky you think a particular item is).  I'm afraid admitting that makes me seem a bit shallow, but that's the truth for you.

Enough philosophy!  Here's a short series of my very favorite child, the one who always smiles at me and never argues with her siblings and lets me dress her however I want (my other favorite children are Sydney, Lorelei, and Ford, by the way):

Happy weekend!