joe ferrare's blog

Yesterday was Alexandra’s first day of school. Kindergarten started a couple of days after the rest of the school, because the teacher does home visits. Anyway, it was a big deal around Haus Ferrare, as you might imagine. We got the girl up, she watched a little TV and then it was time to get ready. She chose her own clothes (the night before) of course, and had her new backpack and lunch box. We stopped to take this photo on the pedestrian zone, which is right outside our house.

She’s really taking to this well (based on a single three-hour day, mind you). She decided she wanted to take the bus (insisted, really), had fun at the Kindergarten visits, seems to like the teacher and so on. The Kindergarten has 17 kids, which will soon be 18 when another family arrives in October. Alexandra knows about half the kids, as she went to pre-school with them. So it’s not that big a move up for her, not like it was for me. Back then we went right from playing in the the dirt outside the cave to the first day of Kindergarten, so it was all quite a shock. She was in hourly day care, then pre-school, and now the big K. So for her, it’s just “big kids’ school.”

Besides, she got new clothes, a new desk and chair (which she’d been after us about), the backpack, lunch box, school supplies… So it was not unlike Christmas for her.

I’m going to put up a separate page in a bit with several more photos.

I’m still setting up this page. I was going to do more — put names to those generic menu tags, for instance, but I was called away to an emergency session of Dora the Explorer Bingo, immediately followed (perhaps inevitably, if you have a 4-year-old) by a session of Dora the Explorer, the board (in this case mat) game. So all I’ve done is get the database and WordPress working, and swap out the photo that came with this theme.

Actually, I’m almost certainly going to upload some different themes from this theme browser. But this one, called Jakarta, is very nice. I especially like the little icons on the upper right that allow you to increase the font size. I also like how they’ve done the archive calendar, and the overall color scheme is nice. I think I’m going to have to kill the flag (headline, whatever) and put the name of the blog in the photo. It just looks kind of odd to me. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

I guess I should post something about Christmas, even though I haven’t told anyone we’re blogging this site yet. Today’s the first day back to work after a four-day holiday, and the tree is looking a touch shabby. Seems natural to post a summary of the holiday.

It’s all about the girl, of course. She got about 20 presents, large and small, and that’s not counting her main present, this doll, which WalMart and the U.S. Postal Service chose to take their time getting to Germany.

Of course, according to these guys, and these guys, too, we’re better off without one. Personally, I think Alexandra has more imagination than the authors of either of those two articles, so I’m not worried. Plus, with all the crap she’s got, the doll will be just one toy in her mighty arsenal.

As for Sue and I, we did the procrastination thing. We went out to get a few little things on Christmas Eve, then basically let ourselves buy something for ourselves in each other’s name (if that makes any sense). Sue got a new ski jacket on the way, and I’ve got a backordered set of computer speakers. From Christmas Eve she got a ring and earring set (more or less), and I got some cologne (which I needed after breaking my cologne bottle while TDY to Skopje, Macedonia earlier this month). We also got gifts from her parents, of course. I got a nice cashmere sweater and a very nice journal. Sue also got me the new Beck and Offspring CDs. I’ve yet to listen to them, but I’ve heard a couple of the singles.

So this is Christmas…