School Daze

It’s been almost 3 weeks of school for Gianna – I can’t believe it! It has been a big adjustment for all of us, but I think we are all hanging in there and figuring it out.

She likes her teacher, she thinks the bus is fun, and has made some new friends. I am already hearing recess stories of “so and so was swinging without me and I didn’t like that”! She has a long way to go to improve her handwriting and homework started this week which went okay, not wonderful, but we made it through.

I love hearing about her day – I try not to ask too much but Gianna is a chatty mcchatterson so she usually volunteers quite a bit of information with little prompting! They have gym, computer, art, and music class each week and she loves all of them (well, I don’t know if love and gym would go in the same sentence, but she tolerates it!).

The uniform is the biggest blessing! 4 days a week we have zero arguments (well, we had one argument about socks, but we quickly fixed that problem). On gym days when she has to wear her gym uniform, we have a little issue since she hates gym clothes of any kind. It took three tries to find shorts she would actually wear, though. She spent a good 20 minutes yelling about how “I am just not going to school on gym days. I do not like these kind of clothes. Besides, I don’t want to play sports anyway I don’t need to go to gym class”. She wore her tshirt backwards this week but so far we have survived! It also cracks me up that she will ONLY wear the bow we bought that matches her jumper!

Favorite color: Pink

Favorite food: grilled cheese sandwiches

I want to be “a horse rider and a ballerina” when I grow up

We are dealing with a crazy amount of exhaustion after school and over the weekend but hopefully with time that passes/she adjusts. She does not like getting up early at all or eating breakfast. She also doesn’t eat her lunch – I have no idea what to do about that part! She comes home with 3/4 of her lunch un-eaten daily (today, she only ate grapes). I’m sure she is far too busy chatting it up with her new little girl friends to eat and before she knows it, lunch is over (we prompt her about 2031124 times per meal at home to eat and not talk!) and natural consequences will hopefully start to take effect soon (she’s starving when she gets home!).

We hope she keeps loving it and we see loads of improvement over this year, and I am sure we will! And I will keep leaving her little notes in her lunch box every day.

How has everyone else’s school year started?

School Prep & Nerves

In a month Gianna will be starting her second week of Kindergarten. Which is just NUTS to me.

But ready or not, here we go, right?

We found out that she will be able to ride the bus and have all the details on that squared away - and it turns out there are something like 4 or 5 other kids from our neighborhood who will go to her same school! The only downside is that we have to walk her about 1/2 a block to the bus stop (and to pick her up, of course) but it is what it is so we will work with it.

We are getting the rest of her uniform attire tomorrow, she is getting her before school hair cut (trim!) and hopefully we will be able to do the rest of her school supply shopping this weekend. She doesn't have a lot on her list, which is nice. Probably the oddest thing is the headphones she has to have for computer class! Oh and we of course need to pick out a backpack and lunchbox. And shoes. Okay, so maybe we will need to stretch this into next weekend....

But either way, we HAVE to be done and ready to go next weekend because we are going to be out of town prior to school starting and the last thing anyone wants to do the day they get home from vacation is go school shopping!

So that is the prep part, we know what to get, we have our lists made, etc.

On to the nerves part.

Gianna is NERVOUS and dare I say maybe even a little scared about starting school. Which, how can we blame her? She's never been there save for one time for an hour during screening. She doesn't know anyone (yet). She's never been gone all day before. It's literally going to be 100% new to her. And as history has proven, she doesn't always like new routines or change. I think she is excited, at least she will tell you she is excited even if her face says otherwise, despite her nerves. But we have been seeing a lot of behavior from her that says otherwise - and she has said on more than a handful of occasions that she is a little nervous. She's afraid school will be hard because "sometimes learning is hard for me, mama." (breaks my heart that she feels that way, but that's a whole different post).

Mike and I (and everyone she's around regularly, I think) always try to be really positive about school - it's going to be so much fun! A new adventure! I tell her every time that she expresses nervousness about it that yes, it might feel hard at first but that's because it is NEW! Anything new feels hard (remember how swimming felt hard the first day.. etc.) even for grown ups. But it is all still such an abstract concept to her that I think she has a hard time believing what I am saying! She really thinks that we can just pick her up after lunch if she's not having a good day or if she's tired.

In order to help with some of the nerves we are going to start back up with a morning routine so that she knows exactly what to do and in what order. This has always helped her feel in control, and it cuts down on us reminding her (which pisses her off, quite frankly!) of what to do next. We have started waking her up a little earlier in preparation for getting up for school - her bus comes at 8, so we are going to start with an hour of wake-up/get ready time since she is NOT the kind of kid who can just get up and go! It's a process. I think I am going to make her a little count-down calendar too, she is having a hard time with when school will start and we can put other fun things on there for her - safety city, vacation, etc.

It's strange for me, as her mom, to think about her being in the hands of strangers (who we trust!) for 7 hours of every day, even if I am not home with her during the week. I'm not nervous about the school, we picked this school because we think it is the best fit for her, but I am nervous about her being nervous! I am confident that after the first few days things will be better and more comfortable for her, but we are also basically preparing for the worst/hoping for the best for those first few days.

But it is still impossible for this sleepy little cutie to be a Kindergartner, I don't care what you say!

Growing up

We all know by now that these adorable little people we are so blessed to have call us mommy and daddy are the biggest time-suckers ever invented. It seems like yesterday they joined our family as itty bitty humans and tomorrow they are going to be taking on the world.

Or in this case, Kindergarten.

I am an emotional wreck over this whole kindergarten business – not because I am necessarily sad about it, but because MY ITTY BITTY HUMAN is going to be gone all day. Because once school starts, it doesn’t stop for a very long time. It’s the first step to college. She might have gotten bigger, but she’s still my itty bitty human. Watching her grow up has been the greatest joy – I had no idea how awesome this journey of motherhood could be (how could you know beforehand?!) and it keeps getting better. Different, harder sometimes, but better.

The whole starting school thing has me wanting to latch on for dear life and then about 10x tighter to every moment with her since I get so few of them. Like how she wears silly pj combinations to bed which typically consist of a tutu and some kind of head wear (a hat, pink bunny ears, a tiara). As much as it drives me up a wall now, I’m sure I’ll miss the way she stalls at night and whines at me when she wants my attention. Okay, maybe I won’t so much miss the whining part as much as the attention seeking part. I love to spy on her while she plays – her imagination has always been fascinating to me and it still is. To watch her create stories and scenarios, crafts and pictures, getting her thoughts out into the universe however she can is pretty cool. She drew a picture today of our family “in the good old days” when Aleesia was a baby, she told me because Aleesia “didn’t take my toys then but I still love her anyway.” 

When Gianna tells a story she doesn’t leave out any detail, real or imaginary. My favorite story lately has been about when she went fishing with her Papa. “We went fishing, I had my Barbie fishing wand and Papa put on the worm ‘cuz it was gross. Then you have to watch the bobber, you know, the decoration on the fishing wand, until it sinks under the water. And when it sinks you have to real it in fastfastfast. then Papa takes the fish off!”

I hope she always beams so bright when she accomplishes something she tries hard at. And that she stays so close with her Papa.

Gianna gets really nervous when she knows change is coming so we are trying to keep the whole school business low-key and no big deal but she asks almost every day about it. It’s nice to know exactly when she starts (it’s actually right when we get back from vacation) so we have sort of “time mark” to help us. She is excited but the unknowns sort of swirl in her mind sometimes it seems so we just try to answer whatever questions she has as best we can and reassure her that it’s still summer and to have fun! Sometimes though, I think I need the reassurance as much as she does that it’s still summer and to enjoy it!

It’s sometimes hard to watch your itty bitty human grow up, but this doesn’t feel hard as much as it feels likes it’s the ending and beginning of an era. The end of her being under our protection full time and the beginning of the school days where she might learn more about the world then we are ready for her too. It’s going to be great, hard sometimes I am sure, but it’s still summer time and we are going to soak in as much fun as we possibly can!

Before I know it I am going to be crying my eyes out every other day because my itty bitty human is going off to college and kissing her on the cheek before work in the morning as she sleeps in her tutu with her bunny ears on is going to be such a distant (fond) memory. They really do grow up in the blink of an eye, huh?

Birthday Eve Eve

I have had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that my baby is turning five. FIVE.

ONE WHOLE HAND.

I don’t even know, can’t even begin to put into words, how this happened so quickly.

Yet it wasn’t quick at all.

I remember snuggling that girl up in the hospital, waiting for someone to come in and tell me I was done babysitting or something. And then crying because she was MINE! Mine to snuggle for as long as I wanted.

It has been five years. Five of the hardest, most awesome years of my entire life.

And I still get to snuggle her as much as I want (although, she will tell you it isn’t always for as long as SHE wants at bedtime). But tonight, I snuggled her until she was asleep and she laid with me almost just like she did as a baby. Except you know, with arms and legs about 500x as long. But she always finds her same sweet spot right at my collar bone. The spot she was made to fit in for those snuggles.

I am normally pretty cry-y and sentimental-y but woah have I been a crying, blubbering, sentimental mess the past few days and I know it’s only going to get worse.  And it hit me that today is her birthday eve-eve. I will put her to bed as a four year old for the last time tomorrow night.

An awesome twitter friend put it best when she said five is hard for mom’s because all of their babyness is gone. We just registered her and had her kindergarten assessment this week (WHY did they schedule that on her birthday week!?). She is hilarious. And independent. And helpful. And sassy. And sweet. And she is not a baby anymore. She is a big kid. (and she will gladly tell you that all day long!)

But she will always be my baby. And as I contemplate on just how I am going to remain composed over the next few days (and how in the world I am ever going to finish her birthday letter!) I will remind myself of all the AWESOME things this big kid is going to do in the next five years (and beyond, of course!). And we are going to have a seriously fun time celebrating her this weekend.

Because according to Gianna, five year olds are the coolest since they can chew gum.

The great K debate

Never in a million years could I have a) imagined 4 years of parenthood could or would FLY by so fast or b) that where to send my oldest girl to school would be such a hard decision.

Mike and I both went to public school and it was fine – never really thought that we would send our kids anywhere other than public school, honestly. I’m not sure how the question arose for us, but within the last year we started talking about other school options and what might be the best choice for her/us.

Originally, we were unsure of the public school district we live in but we were assured that the level of education was nothing to be worried about. But somehow, we (me, mostly) still weren’t sure if that was the right place for her.  She’s a little hyper (yay, age of 4!) and easily distracted sometimes, she totally shuts down when Mike or I try to work with her on letters/numbers/anything education related really (and we do it just in everyday conversation, not in a “sit down and learn” kinda way!) and it turns out she does the same thing in preschool too.  The idea of sending her to school with 24 other 5 year olds to learn, when she doesn’t want to sit and learn, made me nervous.

Nervous that she would not pick up what she needed to, that she would get frustrated, that she needs more structure and even discipline in the classroom, if you will. Her prek teacher is a little…relaxed in the classroom which doesn’t do much for G. She pretty much requires structure to operate, and at the very least a regular predictable routine.  Sure, she adapts, but not easily or quickly as we have learned.

We are blessed to be able to afford the option of private school and we finally decided that catholic school was going to be the best fit for her. Maybe it will only be for one  year to sort of mold her and prepare her for what is expected of her at school, maybe not.  But we are all excited about it, nervous, but glad to have finally made a decision that we are comfortable with.

It’s going to be a big transition, there is no doubt about that. And we are hopeful mandatory uniforms will cut down on the morning escapades that often occur regularly.

BUT ALSO – my baby is going to Kindergarten! Hold me, tightly please.