Starting Kindergarten

Last week was a big week in this house. Exciting. Nerve-wracking. Tearful. Happy. Hard. It has been an emotional roller coaster this past week.

Brooke started kindergarten on Tuesday. She was mostly excited; but feeling a little sad and scared about being away from her family all day. We would both much prefer 1/2 day kindergarten at this point. Grandma stayed with Hannah and I took Brooke to school for her first day on Tuesday. Once we started getting dressed, loaded, and on our way- there were no tears from Brooke. Nervous smiles and hugs but no tears.

The hardest part for me was holding her hand walking her down the hallway. There was massive amounts of kids and it just overwhelmed me. We were not in our small sweet Christian preschool anymore, and that was hard! But overall- the day went well and we got her picked up after school with a smile on her face.

Far more difficult was putting my baby on the bus on Thursday morning. She gave me some tears before we started getting ready for school, but once we walked down to the corner she seemed fine. Thankfully the neighbor girl agreed to sit with her, which helped. She got on the big bus without any tears (or so I thought). As the bus drove up the street I just started crying. When they came back around the block I was still standing there talking to our neighbor (and had stopped crying) and the bus driver had me hop on so he could tell me something. Brooke was sitting in the front row and looking like she was holding together okay.

(you can see her nerves/fear in her smile in this picture- looking at it after-the-fact)

After school I met the bus, got a big smile, a big hug, and we took about 3 steps and she started to cry. Broke.my.heart. She sucked it up though and wouldn't talk about it...for about 20 minutes... then she said that she started to cry in her class before it was time to get on the bus because "I've only been on Disney busses, and that was with my mommy and daddy. I was afraid to get on the bus without a parent!". I called the neighbor girl for a report and found out that Brooke had cried part of the way to school, and part of the way after school. There were moments of tears off and on thru the evening, and after we got her to bed. I was really nervous for Friday--but she did great. (The promise of candy after school probably helped). This morning we had some more tears (where she said she didn't want to be away from her fun mommy and sister all day, and grandma could just teach her at home), but she got on the bus and did great.

Man I sure hope we all adjust soon. I pray that she loves kindergarten, and grows to not mind the bus. I pray she takes after me in the school-category-- I loved school and was a pretty good student. Matt for the most part hated school. (weird, considering his mom was a teacher!). I really want both our girls to have a love for learning, a respect for their teachers, and a joy of being with others. Both of them seem to be quite social so far, and Brooke loved preschool, so I'm hoping we'll get there quickly with kindergarten too. She's just overwhelmed still at this point, and still feeling a little shy. Say a little prayer, would ya?

So that's the first week of kindergarten in a nutshell. Life has been turned upside down around here! I've got several other blog posts in my head - but I'm going to leave this one just about kindergarten.

Have a great one-!