Off to Kindergarten!

Well, it is official, we now have a kindergartener in the house. Today was her first day and what a day it was! Last night the school had an open house for the families to come and drop off school supplies, sign up for various events, meet the teacher, and get familiar with their new classrooms to help ease first day jitters. It was helpful for Olivia to have some sort of idea what to expect today. She woke up bright and early this morning and was really excited to go, but for the first day the second half of the alphabet was only going in the afternoon from 1:15-3:45, so it was kind of a long morning for her. Her normal day will be from 8:45-3:45 every day. As the time for her to get ready got nearer she grew more and more nervous and truthfully so did I. Once we got in the car to drive to school she started getting nervous and said, "I don't think I am ready for kindergarten." "What if I don't know what to do?" We reassured her over and over and tried to calm her nerves. Once we arrived she joined one of her friends from preschool in line, but just couldn't hold back the tears. She cried a little and told her teacher that she was feeling nervous. Olivia's tears opened the waterworks among the mothers waiting by for their kids to march off into the building. The moms were on the brink of crying just trying to hold back and as soon as they saw Olivia crying they couldn't hold it back anymore and well with Olivia and moms around me crying, I was toast too. ;-)

Soren had a great afternoon without his favorite playmate. He actually fell asleep for the first time in a long time during rest time, I think he actually let himself rest knowing that Olivia wasn't there. I think sometimes he just gets down right exhausted trying to keep up with Olivia. After he woke up we went outside and waited for Olivia to get off the bus. The bus driver pulled up and gave Olivia instructions on how to safely cross the bus. She was half way across the street and we noticed she didn't have her backpack, so we yelled, "Don't forget your backpack" and I think our yelling scared her, like she thought a car was coming or something. But she ran back to the bus, got her backpack and came running to my arms and collapsed into her safety net and let out some of her anxiety in the form of tears. Once we got in the house, had a popsicle and heard about her day she was very excited. We had her favorite dinner, spaghetti, and heard all about her day. Everything from the songs they sang...thumbs up, bottom out, tongues out...to Mr. Monkey, a stuffed monkey that the person gets to hold when they are talking during sharing time, to super stones for super behavior. I love how Olivia not only includes the activities in her retelling of events, but also her personal narrative about what was happening in her mind. "Well, I felt a little nervous when we were walking down the aisles (hallways ;-)) but then I got into the classroom and put my stuff away and then we started to do fun things and I thought, well, this is going to be a lot of fun. When we started singing all my nervousness just went away." We are so proud of you Olivia!