That's My Girl

When Hannah and I returned home from her preschool this morning, we sat together on the couch to flip through her new 2007-08 yearbook, which includes just under 240 students plus teachers and staff from preschool through fifth grade.

A group photo of the fifth grade band was shown on one of the first pages. When Hannah quickly noticed Jenna in the picture, I specifically tried to gauge how many people she recognized throughout the yearbook. We found Jenna and Katie in some snapshots taken at the Fifth Grade Christmas Dinner, identified Katie's, Hailey's and Jenna's individual photos, and Hannah even named, from memory, some former classmates who had graduated to kindergarten. She surprised me.

Because the yearbook began with the fifth graders and ended with the preschoolers, it took several minutes to finally reach Hannah's class. Unlike the other classes that had individual photos of each child, Hannah's class only had a group photo. Hannah pointed to and named several of her classmates by first and last name before I finally interrupted her to ask, "Where are you in the picture?"

"Uummm..." Looking. Looking. Where was Hannah? I finally spotted her smack dab in the center of the group.

Why didn't I see her?

Because, the seventeen other students looked at the camera with cheezy smiles or straight faces and held their hands in their laps or down at their sides. Hannah, on the other hand, gave the photographer a perfect profile shot of her face with her arms folded across her chest.

That's my girl.

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Note: I am dying to post that picture, because, well, it really is worth more than the measly words I used to describe it. However, I don't feel right about posting other children's faces on the Internet without their parents' permission.