middle school milestone

to celebrate our attending the middle school orientation today i will share with you my incredible girl's name : ) heidi.

the hubs and i met in high school in germany, so when it came time to name our daughter he immediately came up with heidi (yeah, i know the fictional one was swiss but still). there was no question, we knew that was the perfect name for her.

today heidi and i went to her orientation (school starts monday). folks, i think i had more butterflies in my stomach than she did. it just does not seem possibly a) that i can have a kid old enough to be in middle school and b)that my sweet little baby girl can be OLD enough to be in middle school.

she would have been perfectly happy if i would have just dropped her off at the door and left but i couldn't. parents were allowed to "shadow" their kids. first it was home room. the teacher passed out their locks--first year of having lockers. i resisted the urge to laugh out loud because when she passed out those locks you would have thought it was christmas morning. i've never seen kids get so excited over something so small and normal. i can only imagine it's like the first time you hand the car keys to a 16 year old. then she gave them instructions on how to open the locks. THAT was funny. it's something we take for granted, knowing how to open a combination lock right? they spent A LOT of time practicing on that. their "homework" is to learn to open it quickly so then they can pick out their lockers on monday. that over shadowed pretty much everything else for the rest of the day.

so heidi has gym, advanced spanish (cos she had it in elem), math, science (they get to disect owl pellets this year, ooo, ahh), language arts, keyboarding (aka typing back in the day), orchestra (yeah, she's never played an instrument in her life but she wants to try) and social studies.

about 3-4 elementary schools feed into this middle school and she knows at least one person in all but science class. that might be a challenge. of all the teachers, that one was the worst. i liked all of the others, but the science teacher? remember ferris bueller's teacher? : ) yeah, it's a woman but total monotone and zero excitement.

this is the first year the middle school has smod--standard mode of dress. what can they wear? collared shirts (polos or button down) and khaki or navy pants or spirit wear t-shirts. yeah, i waited till the last minute on this and now we're having a bit of a time finding something other than khaki pants and white shirts. they can wear navy, gray or white.

so i had a deja vu moment as the kids were practicing opening their locks. the little boy sitting in front of me farted. loudly. thankfully the kids were excited about the locks and either didn't hear him or didn't pay attention. the poor kid looked around and i could see the back of his ears getting red w/ embarrassment, but nothing happened.

this was not the case when i was in 10th grade english glass and this guy we called fuji (he gave himself that name actually) farted quite loudly in class. people laughed of course (kids are so mean) and he got up and left the class and didn't come back. i think he went home because we didn't see him the rest of the day. jabba the hut--our teacher--didn't even acknowledge that he got up and left. we called her that because she really did look like jabba, except she had hair. long, gray hair that she pulled straight back in a partial pony tail. she had to be in her 60s or better and she either still had acne issues or she cut herself shaving because from time to time she'd have one of those mini band aids on her face. she was so not a nice woman. she threw an in box (you know those you have on a desk?) at me once. me! the hubs described me as a "parent's wet dream" in high school cos i was such a goody two shoes. i NEVER got in trouble. jabba threw the in box at me for talking.