I have always grieved a little at how much Andra is like Phil.  Not that it is a bad thing to be like Phil, but because she is not like me.  She looks more like Phil - she has his green eyes and his olive skin and is getting his dark curly hair.  She is more serious, like Phil, more sensitive, like Phil, and on more than one occasion I have caught her making lists and tallies and spreadsheets, like Phil.  But I think I found a way she takes after me...

This morning as I was getting her backpack ready, I found her weekly progress report.  It has her reading on it, and a box for each day for me to sign.  There was a note in red pen from her teacher that said "This doesn't look like your Mom's signature?"  Maybe because it wasn't.  Andra had used her budding skill at cursive to initial the boxes for me, apparently.  Now, since I hadn't signed it yet, she really was just trying to get it done.  And I really can't get too angry, because I think she gets it from me.

In junior high we lived in Seattle where it was rainy and muddy, and I had to walk to school.  When it was really rainy and muddy, Brenda (my neighbor) and I would get a ride from my Dad.  The first time we were late, he wouldn't write us a note.  Try getting that past the control freak attendance clerk.  The second time we were late, he took a pencil, and a napkin, and on the bumpy Volvo dashboard wrote "Jenine and Brenda are late.  Please excuse them. Jenine's Dad." Try getting that past the control freak attendance clerk.   Like if I were going to forge a note I couldn't do better than that.  And turns out, I could do better than that.  After that, I just wrote my own notes.  

So I can sign my Dad's name.  And sometimes I need to sign Julie's kids up for basketball camp, so I can sign her name.  I don't have any reason to (except maybe to mix up the parents excusing me) but I can sign my Mom's name too.  So see?  Finally, something she gets from me.  Don't they say forgery is the sincerest form of flattery?  Something like that anyway.