"Edward Tulane"

Haley's 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Hinrichs, reads them lots of books in class. The most recent was "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo. Instead of homework for the week they were to create Edward. She sent home a white poster board with only one requirement, it had to be 3 feet tall. Well, Haley decided she wanted to sew Edward and make him as real as possible. I said great, I love to create things and she does too. However.... she did not realize how long it would take. So after some excitement, laughs, and many many tears Edward was finally created.

This is a picture of the last few stitches. She was very happy at this point. But don't let this picture fool you, many tears were shed in creating Edward. Haley struggles sometimes when things get hard. She is very smart and almost everything comes easy to her, so when something gets a little hard she tends to want to give up. We have talked about this and are working on it together. That tells you right there how mature she is for a 7 year old.
The finished Edward. It was so fun to see her great satisfaction after completing a big project like this. She did it all herself, with only minimal guidance from me. I will admit it was hard to let her do it. I got very frustrated at times (probably even said some not so nice things), but I let her do it. I think that is one of the hardest parts of being a mom is letting your kids struggle and learn to do things on their own. You so badly want to just do it for them. I have to tell myself to step back sometimes.

She even slept with Edward!

Edward became part of the family. In fact, when I went to read in Haley's class the other day, Maddy went with me and when she saw Edward on the wall in the school, her face lit up and she said, "mom LOOK it's EDWARD!"

This was "Haley and Edwards miraculous journey" to school!