Farmers and Ninjas

Last Friday was Pressley's Thanksgiving program at school. She was supposed to dress like a farmer. Still not really sure why...but, given the fact that the child does not own anything but dresses (her choice) and refuses to wear pants, this was sure to be a problem. But, I tried. I went to The Target on Thursday and picked up a denim skirt for $7 on clearance. I made sure to keep the receipt, in case she refused to wear it. My plan was two-fold: first, I'd be really excited about the super cute skirt I bought just for her today, and second, I'd promise she could wear her tights and her boots with the skirt if she wanted to wear it to school the next day.

Last year, I would have never thought any two-pronged plan that involved tights would ever work. That is because last year, if we tried to put tights on the child, she acted like we were trying to break both of her legs. I'm not kidding. But, now, she prefers tights to socks. It is a wonder we ever get out the door in the mornings. The rules are constantly a-changin'. But I digress.

My plan worked and she wore the $7 denim skirt to school with the brown boots and looked just a teeny tiny bit like a farmer (well, not really, but at least anyone who knew to look would see that I tried). She knew all the words to Harvest Time, despite the fact that she only goes to school two days a week and they presumably practiced it five days a week. She even said "Happy Thanksgiving" at the end, which appears to have been in the plan for everyone, but I don't think anyone else said it. Just in case you didn't get to go to a children's program during this Thanksgiving season and you were worried that your holiday just wouldn't be complete without some unintelligible poem-reciting by some cute kids, I've included a video clip just for you: [Edited to add: I tried and tried to upload the edited version that is about a minute shorter, but I am technically challenged. Sorry about that. If you want to skip the first 45 seconds, it won't hurt my feelings.]

Then, on Saturday, Evan had his first karate test. He's been taking karate lessons since August, and this was the end of his first session. So, we all trekked on over to the Dojo on Saturday morning to watch about a hundred kids test for either stripes for their belts or animal patches. Evan is apparently still too new to be ready for a "rank" test, so he did one of the animal tests. His particular animal test was the crane test, which is about balance. He learned a series of move involving wings and beaks and shrieks and then had his test. He earned his new patch. I'm very proud of him, but not very excited about having a new patch to sew on the uniform. After all, last time I injured myself by jabbing the dull end of the needle underneath my fingernail trying to force the silly thing through all that thick fabric. Did I mention that sewing is not my strong suit?

I've included a couple of photos of Evan posing for me before the test and kneeling to receive his patch after the test. There are tons of photos of the warm-up and all the crane maneuvers in the November album. There was even a video of some of the warm-up, but it was really boring - even in the eyes of a mother - so I deleted it. Does that make me a bad mother or a merciful blogger -- or both?