Parenting Is Not For Sissies

School spelling bee today and, as usual, I may be more nervous than The Peanut is.  The words on the practice list this year are so ridiculously hard and obscure -- it is as though the spelling bee folks went out of their way to find difficult to pronounce gems to weed people out from the get go.

But each year her vocabulary grows as she learns new and more complex words, and I could not be prouder of her.

It's just awfully tough to see her standing up there on the stage, a bundle of nerves, hoping and fretting from the cheap seats while she digs deep into her brain for the next word.  And the next.  And the next.

Parenting is not for sissies.

(Above YouTube clip is from the magnificent Akeelah and the Bee. Love, love, love this movie.)