Kindergarten

   I survived, I mean, she survived her first day of kindergarten! After half an hour of tears, and clinging ,and protests of not being ready, I finally calmed down enough to drive home. How did my little girl do? Great! In fact she kept telling me to leave! "All the other parents are still here, you can't make me go yet!"

   All joking aside, we did great. We have talked about kindergarten all summer, and always talked about how fun it would be, all the exciting activities she would do, and how many friends she would make. Most importantly, we were very careful not to associate anything negative with starting school. This is something to be excited about! Like going to Disneyland!
   I admit, I had worries. My oldest is smart and definitely likes being in charge, but let's face it, the girl likes being taken of care of. When she was a baby, she refused to hold her own bottle. I mean, she would not do it. If it came down to starving or holding her own bottle, she would choose to starve. She was perfectly capable of doing it, just wanted us to hold it for her. Same with feeding herself solids. At the great age of five it's not uncommon to hear her beg one of us to feed her. She's even asked her two year old sister to feed her!
   She's content for me to dress her, and she'll hate me later for saying this, but it took over a year to get her to put her pants back on after she went to the bathroom. She would be fully dressed going in, and I'd see her later rockin her undies, because it was too much work to pull her shorts back up. Thank God we lived in Hawaii and shorts were all we had to worry about! If I had to get that girl to pull a snow suit, or jumper back up, I would have been in for a battle royal!
   So with all this selective dependence, I wondered how she would do when she couldn't ask her teacher to open up her yogurt for her, or take her to the bathroom, and make sure she got back to the classroom okay. And goodness did I stress about her getting to her class each morning! I couldn't just leave her in front of the school, ten minutes before class started, and really expect her to get to the right place could I? She's just a baby! My baby!
   I lost sleep over this stuff. I just had to keep reminding myself, they are professionals! There will be adults to look after her, to tell her were to go, to help her with that tricky yogurt, and to makes sure she doesn't go to the bathroom and just take a trip out to the playground unsupervised.
   After I had wrestled these worries into submission I started worrying about my husband. This was a big moment for Bella, and most likely, he would miss it completely. I mean, he's deployed, so I knew he wasn't going to be there, but I had at least hoped he would call or Facetime. But of course, he would become unavailable, starting, you guessed it, Bella's first day!
    Someone was smiling down on us, and because of the time difference, Gilbert was able to Facetime Bella before she left for school. My wonderful husband forgo sleep to call his oldest child in the middle of his night and wish her well on her big day. He was even there for a picture!

 

 

  I love technology!

   It was a busy morning for us. We had to have the traditional 'first day pancakes' (a tradition my mom started). We had to fix the princess hair. Wash, blow dry and flat iron! And we had to have plenty of time for pictures.

   I've spent plenty of time lately perusing Pinterest in search of the perfect 'first day' picture. How was I going to document this momentous day? After all, this is a big decision. I have to live with, and repeat it for the next 12 years. My head might explode if I had to switch themes halfway through her school years. So it had to be perfect, and you know, easy, cause I'm lazy. But I couldn't pick just one, so I kinda went crazy. Here are my favorites:

 



 
    Funny story. In preparation of the picture above my family was asking Bella what she wanted to be when she grew up. Did she want to be a doctor, singer, painter or astronaut? A fire fighter, verterinarian, dancer or scientist? All of these awesome options were meet with exsaperated "Mommy's". I was at a loss. Then my mom asked if she wanted to be in managment. Bella looked intrigued. "Do  you want to be the boss, Bella?" That was it. Her eyes lit up. Bless her pointy little head, she wants to be the boss. The perfect job for her. Miss Delegation herself. What makes it even more funny is my parents. My mom workes in management for the city, and my step-dad is part of the city's largest union. So we always joke about my mom working for "the dark side" and trying to recruit people over. Point one for Grandma! Get your dark cape at the door.
   See the cute little printed out paper? I haven't uploaded it yet, but I had her write her name on it. I'm going to keep that, and by keep I mean take a picture of it, put it in a safe place and never see it again. But that's okay, cause I'll have the picture of it. And on her last day of kindergarten I'll print out that picture and have her sign it again. We'll be able to see how her writing changed this year. I'll do this every year and see how her style evolves!
   I hope your "first day" went as fantastic as our did! And wish me luck as I continue to let go of my babies, one white knockled finger at a time.