Today was the regional spelling bee, held at a DC elementary school on Capitol Hill. I picked the girls up from school at 11:30 and we headed downtown. M submitted her paperwork and randomly picked her number… and got:

She did a fantastic job today. There were about 40 kids spelling, and she came in 8th. Her first word was PREMISES, then MARSUPIAL, then MACHIAVELLIAN (!), and then DELUXE. She hadn't seen DELUXE before and left off the final E. 

It was so sad because the top 6 kids are going to the next round, which will be televised by NBC-4. And M was two away from that. 

It was a weird bee – it opened with a lot of very hard words, and then moved into a bunch of easy words, like MANICURE and EASEL. We think the announcer got her pages out of order. It explains why so many kids were eliminated in round 1. The three Lafayette kids made it all the way to when M got out, and we are waiting to find out what happened with Christopher and Sammy.

We are so proud of M, for her skill, her poise, her nerves. She had to spell first!

The girls are finishing their afternoon ballet class, and then we will head home and do homework and try to catch up on 2 weeks of Hebrew School before tomorrow.

On another topic, N seemed happy at school today! He has been saying things like "Temple Sinai is NOT GOOD" and things like that, which has been alarming, but he seems happy there when he's there. Imogene said that he seemed very hapy when she came to get him, and he said "Nana, I had fun today." I am Shabbat Parent on Friday so I can observe…

We are looking into some speech therapy for him so he will be a little easier to understand. He's so smart and has a huge vocabulary, but people sometimes have a hard time understanding him.

Shoutout to A, who was so supportive of M today, quizzing her on words and giving lots of moral support at the bee. A is a great sister to M, just as M is to A, and both girls are to N. We love our kids so much!