She's a Runner!!!

Deciding to put Chloe in public school last year was such a hard decision but the spot that we were in with my health issues just made it necessary. And while I don't think that staying in public school is what she's going to do it has been great for several reasons. One of the biggest is that they push her farther than I've ever thought of. I don't know if any of you have noticed (wink) but we've babied Chloe a bit. Not on purpose it's just that her personality has made it seem like she needed to be babied. Now I'm not saying that she needs a drill sargeant because that would crush her but she does need to be pushed/encouraged. Could we make that a word? Like pushcouraged? It might take a while before that one's in Webster. But back to the story. Last year her whole school (actually probably every public school in the state of TN) did a mile run that was timed. They keep records of this so that you can read and article on MSN later on how out of shape or how in shape our kids are.

Last year Chloe came in dead last out of all of the kindergarten classes. She was teased and called a slowpoke by some of the other kids and came home devastated. And as sensitive and wonderful as Chloe is, she's also wonderfully stubborn. I think a switch clicked in her last year that said 'that will *never* happen again. Last year I didn't go to watch her thinking it wasn't a huge big deal but boy was I wrong! So I went today, determined to cheer her on. I thought she'd probably run some and walk some and be really tired so I decided to walk/run along side her to keep her spirit up. I could not have been more wrong! At the beginning she was in the last two because the other kids took off really fast but some of them pooped out pretty quickly. Chloe kept an even pace and ran and ran and ran. It actually showed me how out of shape I am because I had to stop running and walk. She kept saying "Mommy, I'm going to run the same as you" and I had to tell her "no, keep running, I'll catch up"! How embarrassing! She even sprinted at the very end and ran a whole mile in under 12 minutes! There were other kids that ran it faster, of course, but I couldn't have been more proud of her. She said that she was proud of herself too.