The Road to Kindergarten: Part 1

I was in the kitchen, doing my usual morning routine: sip of coffee....get out vitamins for kids...sip of coffee...who needs a glass of milk?....sip of coffee.....get Gracie her breakfast....look at the time and realize that I need to chug the remainder of the coffee....as I'm putting my mug in the sink, I happened to glance at the calendar...time to flip it over!  August.  It was here.  Brian came up the stairs having finished ironing his work clothes, and I said "well...it's August.  The official Month of Kindergarten.  Countdown is ON!" Brian made a cheers-ing motion with his coffee, in salute to the fact that we would be slicing our daycare bill in half with Jake's departure.

And just like that, we flew through August...back to school shopping for supplies (this made me happier than I care to admit), figuring out first day of school outfits and orientation outfits, and what does one wear to a parents orientation??  All of this preparation, and then the week rolled around.

I'm not sure who was more anxious, me or Jake.  We were both excited for sure...he was anxious about making friends, finding someone to eat with at lunch, whether or not he would like his teacher.  I was anxious about all of those things for him PLUS anxiety over the unknown.  For me, that's always the worst part of anything new....I hate not knowing what I'm getting in to.  This goes for big things, like the first day of school or a new presentation that I have to do for work....and trivial things, like if I go to a different Target than I'm used to and I don't know where anything is.  Honestly, I think it should be a corporate rule of some sort that any big box store has to have the exact same layout no matter the location.  I'm onto something there, right? Right??

Totally off track, sorry.  So I had a lot of anxiety; going to parents orientation calmed down a lot of that for me, and it helped that I felt like I won the lottery in terms of the teacher he got.  No joke, when they announced who was in her class, I saw a few parents do the little silent fist pump to themselves in victory!  When the woman next to me saw which teacher we had, she tapped me on the shoulder with a desperate look in her eye and asked if we could trade folders so that her kid could have Jake's teacher, that she had been hoping all summer that's who she'd be assigned to.  Needless to say, I walked out of orientation feeling like I won the big prize of the night.

Jake had his orientation a few days later; unfortunately, I had a work event that I needed to be there for, so Brian was on his own.  Jake loved his teacher, and made a few new friends.  And I think that just seeing the way everything worked, the layout of the school, etc...really helped his anxiety about the new adventure, too.  (Like mother, like son!)

Working on the classroom scavenger hunt

They have little lockers: you just died from the level of cuteness, right??

After the classroom fun, they got to go test out the school bus!!

He looks so small in comparison to the giant bus!

Definitely a successful orientation! 

The road to kindergarten...to be continued....