Ellie woke me up at 5:29am yesterday morning for rehearsal.

I don’t recall agreeing to this but when someone is shaking a fist in your face in the wee hours of the morning, it’s amazing how easy it is to manipulate me.

Ellie did a few dry runs of her Family Tree presentation before being taken to school to perform in front of her grade two class.

I remember when Hanna did her Family Tree presentation at that age. She would ask me random questions over a series of days, “Mom, do we have any relatives in Sweden?” or “Mom, did any of our relatives do anything really interesting like Abby’s Grandpa who killed Hitler?”

I realized too late she was putting something together and had no interest in participating in any dress rehearsals in front of her family.

I guess the most interesting thing for me in all of this, as a parent, as a homework helper and research assistant is that someone’s Grandpa in Ellie’s class killed Hitler too.