Both girls wanted to try gymnastics, which started today! I don’t think they’re ready to give up dance, but they seemed to both really enjoy their classes.
Firsts
First Soccer Game!
Carolyn had her very first soccer game tonight! She’s on the orange team:
God Bless Carolyn
A chilly, but beautiful, day for a First Communion ceremony!
First Day of Second Grade
New year, new teacher, new ‘do:
Carolyn wanted to wear a million little braids to school, so we settled on a slightly smaller number (*only* 18) and got up early to do it this morning.
It was a tad bit chilly waiting for the bus!
But she is definitely all smiles and ready to meet new friends and face new challenges!
Anna, on the other hand…when the bus left, she grabbed my hand and started pulling me to the car, saying “OK, now it’s time to drive me to preschool!” She was so crestfallen when she realized she doesn’t get to start until next Tuesday…poor girl!
It didn’t take her too long to cheer up, though, and by the time we were waiting for the afternoon bus she was dancing around with her pigtails flying!
Piano Lessons
Carolyn has been asking to learn how to play piano for a while, and I went out and bought a couple of beginner books, and tried to work through them with her. I’ve discovered that while I am very proficient at playing piano, I am absolutely terrible at teaching piano.
A friend recommended her teacher, who conveniently lives just a few minutes away, and Carolyn had her first lesson today. How exciting!
New Year’s Eve
We spent the evening at Lisa’s annual countdown to 6:00 party, and now Carrie is working really hard to stay awake until midnight to see the ball drop for the first time. We’ll see whether that was a good idea or not tomorrow morning…
Kindergarten!
Today, Carolyn headed off for her first day of Kindergarten! I got up at 6:20, got myself ready and packed a yummy lunch (a ham & cream cheese pinwheel sandwich, baby carrots, grapes, olives, letter pretzels and two tiny vanilla cookies). Then I managed to get the kids dressed early enough that I had time to make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and we still had a good ten minutes before the bus came to snap a few pictures.
She looks all grown up from last year! (Though I said the same thing last year too!) She picked out this dress herself when we went clothes shopping for school, and although it’s not exactly my style, it is pretty darn adorable.
She was so excited to get on that bus she practically skipped down the driveway, and I had to stop her to give her a hug and a kiss and tell her to have a fun day.
It wasn’t nearly as hard to watch that bus pull away as I thought it would be. I think I already cried all the tears I had to in anticipation of today, and instead I felt excited for her. I can’t wait for her to come home and tell me how her day went, and whether she found the little note I stuck in her lunchbox.
Dance Recital, The First
Carrie did very, very well at her recital today. All the girls did! It was a very long time for her to sit in the auditorium, so we did spend some time hanging out in the cafeteria in the building. But she watched a lot of the other performances, and stuck it all the way through until the end so she could go up and take a bow with everyone else.
The building the theater was in had an escalator, and Carrie was so excited to be able to ride it. She kept begging to go back on the “elescator” again. I kept asking her what she wanted to do just so I could hear her say “elescator”. :)
The Wheels on the Bus…
The school district here runs a program for all the local preschools where they bus the incoming kindergarteners in from their preschool, let them tour the kindergarten building and watch a video about bus safety, and then bus them back to their preschool. So that’s what Carrie’s class did today:
She was all excited about riding the bus this morning, but then told me she was scared. When I asked her what she was scared about, it turned out that she was scared that the bus would not be pink.
Um. Well, as a matter of fact, there are no pink school buses in our district as far as I’m aware. It turned out that the excitement of getting to ride a bus for the first time helped her get over the fact that the school bus was yellow.
Oh, and one of the preschool teachers mentioned to the parents that we have to sign a waiver if we want our child to wear a seat belt on the bus – something about how the bus driver can’t go back and undo all the kids’ seat belts in an emergency. But they brought a couple dozen 4 year olds on the bus and every last one of them immediately tried to put their seat belt on. So how do you tell your child, who has been indoctrinated from birth to never go anywhere in a moving vehicle without some sort of restraint, to not put their seat belt on?!? Crazy.
I imagine we’ll get more information on this next week at the parent kindergarten meeting.
You know, kindergarten is a scary word to type. My baby can’t seriously be old enough to be going to kindergarten and riding a bus, can she?
First Day of School
Today was Carolyn’s first official day of preschool for the year!
She looks so much older than last year!
The morning went surprisingly smoothly, despite Anna having a diaper blowout moments before we were all going to walk out the door. We even got to the school with enough time to spare that I could get Anna out of the carseat and into a sling. (I hate carrying that bucket seat around!) After we said goodbye (and I chased Carolyn down for a kiss, she had already run off to play with the other kids) Anna and I headed to the parent “reception”, where we met a few potential new friends – exciting! This year, because I could tell Carrie was happy and excited, I wasn’t at all sad about leaving her there. Next year, when she gets on the bus…well, I’ll just have to have some tissues in my pocket, I’m sure!
Carolyn loved her first day. She was just a tiny bit sad because she really loved her teachers last year, but she’s already made a couple of new friends and I think it helped that the routine is pretty much the same as last year.
It was surprising to me that Carolyn’s not the only not quite four year old in her class – until I found out that half of her class is going to go to the public school’s pre-k program next year instead of on to kindergarten. I’m not being judgmental – every parent has to decide what’s best for their own child – but it’s puzzling to me how many people hold their fall birthday kids back a year. (The cutoff around here is currently 12/1, although there’s been talk – for years – about that getting pushed back.) It’s going to make Carrie by far the youngest in her class in kindergarten. Oh, well, I’m sure she’ll do fine anyway!