1st day of school

1st day of school, 2016

/ Shane / Leave a comment

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Portrait of a 3rd grader and a 1st grader

Yesterday was the first day of school, and the kids were pretty excited. For Ollie, it was not just starting 1st grade, but having a new teacher and new classmates (he’s been in a looping class for the last 3 years). For Evelyn it was moving to an entirely new set of buildings, and adding new kinds of classes (particularly French).

Neither kid has ever had any particular issues with separation anxiety (now THAT’S an understatement!) so there weren’t any first day jitters. In fact, all Evelyn wanted to know is when she could start walking to school by herself, now that she’s in a different building.

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Just to make sure the day wasn’t entirely pedestrian, Oliver went ahead and lost his FIRST tooth on the FIRST day of FIRST grade!

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By the time they got home today, everything was old hat and they hardly had anything to say about the day. In other words, after a long summer, things are back to normal.

1st day of school!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

It’s finally that time of year again: back to school time!

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Is it me, or did he age about 5 years this summer?

With all of the summer camps and various scheduling house of cards we had going over the summer, I am so relieved to be getting back onto a regular schedule again. On one hand, it feels like we did nothing this summer; on the other hand it seems like we were constantly busy.

Oliver is in a “looping” class, which means he has the same teachers and class again this year. They pretty much picked right up where they left off, almost like the summer didn’t happen. Ollie was VERY happy to be back at school again. I think he didn’t realize how much he missed it until he didn’t have it anymore.

And can you believe, Evie is finally a first grader?

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Evie is essentially the opposite case of Oliver: new teacher and almost completely new children (with the exception of her two very best friends). I think she was as excited to start school as she is about Christmas morning. She could hardly sleep for days.

I haven’t had much of a chance to get to know her teacher or the other parents but, as usual, Evie thrives in these situations. She’s already making some new friends and she loves learning new routines. I’m sure she’s going to have another great year.

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First day of school

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Yesterday, our big boy had his first day of school.

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It’s so funny how each kid is a little different. With Evie, she didn’t want us hanging around, she wanted us to get out of the way so she could start meeting people. With Ollie I’m definitely experiencing a little bit of the “how am I going to leave this poor, little boy on his own?” On the other hand, I never really had one of those, “Oh my little boy is growing up!” moments. Maybe that’s because the whole thing was just too chaotic, with so many people starting today and figuring out a new school, etc. Or maybe that’s just being the second kid again.

I do know that Ollie is going to have a BLAST at school. I’m so excited for him to have so much dedicated playing time. This boy *loves* to play. I’m so glad he’ll finally have a chance to make some friends of his own (as opposed to Evie’s friends), explore his own interests (as opposed to Evie’s interests), and just to be his own person. I just know he’s going to grow and blossom so much this year, and that’s really exciting.

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At this point, the whole thing was kind of old hat to Evie. Yeah, yeah, kindergarten, so what.

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She might have acted blasé, but I could tell she was excited based on all the extra energy she had. She’s always excited to meet new people, but I think she was actually more excited about Oliver starting school. She was a little disappointed that she had to go to her own class this morning, rather than watch him. But she did meet some other kids, and her and another girl “robbed a bank”. So, you know, I guess the teachers know who to keep an eye on now.

I’m not sure how different kindergarten is going to be from preschool. But her classroom definitely seems more like a “real” classroom, with a lot more responsibilities for the kids, and her teacher seems a little more old school. It seems like a really good environment for Evie, but then again, school just seems like a really good environment for Evie. She’ll just absorb up everything they throw at her, and then re-forge the entire school the way she wants it, like she always does.

1st day of school

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Yesterday, Evie had her first day of preschool.

Everything was sort of disastrous. First off, it so happened that Sara and I both had dentist appointments scheduled for that day. We spoke to the dentist and I rescheduled my appointment and they promised to hurry Sara’s. However, because Sara had this appointment, she ended up having to leave this morning before everything was ready, meaning I had a lot of running around to do, and she didn’t get to take pictures like she wanted.

Finally, we got out the door and met Sara at the school on time. However, something was wrong, nobody else seemed to be there. It was a ghost town. I went inside to check, and it turns out that the first day (which is only an hour to sort of get her used to it) started at 10 instead of the regular 9. So we were an hour early! So much for all our hurrying. I could have gone to my dentist appointment.

So it was sort of anti-climactic because I had to leave for work, and Sara had to go kill some time. Evie was disappointed too, because she was excited to go to school and didn’t want to be told it wasn’t time yet. It was like we were building up for this big moment and then…nothing. Oh well.

It sounds like Evie took everything pretty well. She insisted that she wasn’t going to play with anything because she, “didn’t want to help pick anything up”. But when she saw the duplos, she just couldn’t help herself. So she ended up having a pretty good time.

This sending your kids to school thing is sort of a head trip. Obviously there are all the feelings about how your kid is growing up so fast, etc. But there’s more to it than that. When you’re old enough for preschool, your life starts happening. I met the best man from my wedding in preschool. I have memories of preschool.

It reminds me of a Louis CK bit I heard one time about how now that his daughter is in preschool, there are no do overs anymore because now she will remember things, the way he remembers things about preschool (EDIT: you can hear the bit here, from minute 3:00 to 3:32). As he says, they press record at age 5, nothing you do before that matters. You could punch her in the face before that and it doesn’t matter because they’re going to wipe the hard drive.

Not that I’m considering punching her in the face. I just mean that any mistakes I make now she could remember for the rest of her life. That’s heavy stuff! No more do-overs!