Ana got her school pictures today, so maybe we can update this icon!

She also brought home the monthly newsletter, which illustrated a few things:

1. Ana is incredibly photogenic.

2. Ana did indeed receive the Dolphin Award (for just generally being a great person and consistently being compassionate and helpful) at assembly last week and not just the attendance award. If they'd bothered to tell us this beforehand, I would have been there. Gah.

3. There is indeed a pajama party at school next week (in two weeks?) as Ana said. We didn't believe her because, again, this is the first official communication about it. Gah again.

4. The person who edits that newsletter is totally incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence. There is never, ever, ever going to be a need to put together seven exclamation points at the end of a sentence! And, for that matter, putting an exclam at the end of every single sentence just makes your work sound weak and childish. Save it for unusual emphasis. And on *that* note, quotation marks do not add emphasis - or, at least, not the kind she thinks. I want to know, if she is "thanking" us for this and that, what she's really doing? Mocking us behind our backs, perhaps? (Yeah, pot, kettle, but my post only reflects badly on me. Her abysmal writing skills reflect badly on the entire school.) And at least twice this person switched topics randomly in the middle of a paragraph! That's not even the half of it....

I suggested to Jenn that next PTA meeting she offer up her, mine, or our mother's services as proofreaders. But in some tactful way, not like I just did.

Oh, and Ana had BIG NEWS today.

I'm going to attempt to write this up in the order that she told it, though it's too much to ask me to get her actual words.

Ms. M - her science teacher - woke up and something horrible happened. She was sleeping, and the first thing she saw in the morning (later clarified to "when she got into the classroom") was the stuff that the hamsters use to keep warm and hide in (the bedding) was all over the floor and the hamster wheel was flat. After she swept up the bedding, the HAMSTERS were GONE. And she couldn't find them. They'd rolled on their wheel, and the cage fell off the shelf. And they escaped. And the whole class tried to be quiet like mice, but they didn't hear the hamsters. And Ana is worried that they might get cold, or eaten, or caught in a trap. (I reassured her that, with any luck, they'll come sniffing around again once they realize they're hungry - and that even if they don't they could very easily still be alive and well, just in the walls. Yes, dying is a possibility, but it's not the only one, I explained. I didn't get into probability yet.)

That is a pretty horrible story, but did you see how neatly her narrative - mostly - followed the events? That's a big skill. A lot of kids her age start with the important stuff and then taper off, and she did a little of that, but she worked hard to keep things in order.

Oh, I meant to post this a week ago, and was just reminded by toastedtuna

Read this article about the new toy safety legislation
And this thread offsite here (you may have to be a member to read, I'm afraid).

Please, contact your representatives and tell them that this is a bad idea, that it puts an undue burden on small businesses. It's true, anyway.

There's another article with a form letter here, and still another post here.