And So It Begins...

It seems sort of ridiculous to say "I can't believe" my baby is in Kindergarten since we have been talking about and preparing for this day for the last five years - and a few months ago went through the insane and stressful process of selling our house and buying another one just because this very day was so close on the horizon. But still. I can't believe it.

This school district, while completely awesome, is also a little quirky (much like our little girl I suppose!). There are several elementary schools in the school district and they all send their kindergartners to one Kindergarten School. All the kids then go to their neighborhood school for 1-5 grades. This program is also only half day, so in the mornings, Elise will be in a kindergarten enrichment program (which is located in a building on the kindergarten school campus) called the Explorers Program and in the afternoons she will be in Kindergarten. After Kindergarten, she will be in After School Care. It will mean a lot of new people, new teachers and lots of different routines (which will then all change next year when she goes to the neighborhood school) but I think that she's up for the challenge.

The day after we moved into this house, Elise had her assessment at the kindergarten school. The principal showed Elise some flash cards with pictures, letters, words and such and asked questions about them. She didn't seem intimidated by the process and was very excited about being in a REAL school building. Since then she has been talking about how excited she was to go to school, and especially to have her very own hallway cubby to put her backpack and snack.

Tuesday was Orientation Day, which meant that I took her in to meet her teacher (Ms. Owens) and take an official tour of the school while I filled out endless amounts of paperwork (to add to all the paperwork I already filled out this summer!). As I expected, she was a little shy and more quiet than usual, but very attentive, interested and extremely excited about seeing and doing everything. She left declaring kindergarten "awesome" and her teacher, Ms. Owens, nice but not what she expected. Apparently what she expected was for her to be "young" and apparently mid twenties doesn't qualify as young to a 5 year old. Go figure.

Wednesday was her first ever day of school. I was a little nervous for her, dropping her off at Explorers with all the new faces and controlled chaos, but she recognized a few faces from her summer camp and immediately started playing UNO with some kids, barely saying goodbye. She was going to be fine. When I picked her up that afternoon, the first thing she told me was that she'd made a friend, Hailey, who was in Explorers AND Ms. Owens class AND in afterschool care with her. And Hailey came running over and asked me for my phone number so she could call and set up a playdate with Elise. That was fast!

On the way to pick up Lucas, I grilled Elise, who was being surprisingly tight-lipped about the details of her first day. She gave vague answers like "it was good" and "we played and read and stuff". It was a bit like pulling teeth to find out what actually happened, but most of the details of the day came out eventually. She did have fun and was looking forward to the next day. And that was what I was hoping for most of all!

So, week one of school was very successful. She loves her class, loves her teacher, loves Explorers and loves after school care. What could be better? And there were no tears - from either of us - all week.

Win-win.