First Day of School

The summer holiday passed so quickly, helped along by three weeks travel back to the US, but nonetheless, Boo and Pea were ready to head back to school and see their friends. I think we were all also in need of getting back on a regular schedule. (My lovelies need structure, which is seriously lacking in the summer....)

Boo is starting Year 2 (the US equivalent of first grade) and Pea is in Reception - which age-wise would be Pre-K in the US, although I'd consider what they do to be Kindergarden-level work.)

Boo is very excited as he is "in the top of Key Stage 1 - we're the biggies"; I think he is particularly excited, however, as Year 2 students get to carry their OWN meals to the table and they buy their own snacks from the Tuck shop at snack time - a good exercise in responsibility and money management.

Pea just looks - well - tiny.

My babies are growing up! (sniff, sniff)

Off to School

Today is my baby's - my little baby, BARELY out of pullups - first day of school.

Not nursery school - real school. Uniforms. School songs. Plays. Field trips on a bus. (bites nails) Ok, so today isn't the first REAL day - she is only going for a half day, to get a feel for it before she starts full time after Easter break, but its real to her.

Today she woke up and undressed herself. Completely. She's always taken off her trousers, but gets tangled up in her shirts, which inevitably leads to tears.

Today, she pulled her shirt over her head like she's been doing it for years, grinned, and said "I'm going to big school now, I can do it".

Then, after completely dressing herself, froze - then looked and me, and shrieked "I'm going to BIG school. I can wear my uniform!"

And promptly stripped naked.

And redressed herself, in her uniform.

So, ready for school, she looked like this:

(Yes, she is wearing black leggings. AND a school skirt. She couldn't decide what she wanted to wear, so she wore both.)

While I will admit that I'm struggling with Boo - who in this picture, will not turn 6 for another 3 days - looking so grown up, I'm totally freaking out about how grown up Miss Pea looks.

As I write this, however, I am realizing that in all her excitement, she didn't pee before she went to school. I'm praying that she won't have an accident on her first day, but she's so excited, and so new at the potty thing, that its a reasonable expectation that she will.

So maybe not so big, just quite yet!

First Day of School: the update

After a relaxing and yet nervewracking morning (I think I was half waiting for a phone call from the school saying that Pea had melted down), I waited at the gate for the preschoolers to be brought out.

When her teacher brought her out with a whispered ("she did great"), I was rewarded with her customary after-school grin-and-squeezy hug combo that I am used to back home.

"How was your day?" I asked. "Good", she replied.

"Did you have fun?" "Yup", she responded.

"Did you make any friends?" I asked. "No, no fwends" she said.

And that was the end of that.

Her other teacher, after bringing out another preschooler, stopped to say that she did great, but hadn't eaten her dinner "but it was curry, so..." and added that she did eat her pudding. (No surprise there.)

Returning home, she ate, and ate, and ate, singing and dancing along with "Beauty and the Beast" (the Disney video, not the Linda Hamilton/Ron Perlman reruns, also shown on Sky here.)

At 3ish, we left to pick up Boo. Straight out of the chute, he was grumpy and snappish. (Read: exhausted.) I asked him if he still wanted ice cream. "Yes, but my LEGS. ARE. TIRED. I had THREE recesses today, MOM."

Sticking on his jumper was a sticker. He said his teacher gave it to him at the end of the day "because I did everything right: I did what I was supposed to, and I was a good listener". What great encouragement for a new kid on his first day at a new place. I'm so proud of him! (yet, oddly, the more he snapped at me, the more I was tempted to tear it off his shirt. but that would be very childish of me, and ONE of us has to be the grown up. Still, he was a grumpy grump...)

The aforementioned ice cream cone was devoured so quickly, I wonder if he even tasted it. Thinking about the curry served at lunch, I asked "How was lunch?" to which he quickly retorted "I want to pack a lunch tomorrow!".

"How was lunch?" I asked again. I'm not giving up - I'm too curious!

"There were peas and carrots. I didn't eat them. I did eat the rice, and the chicken and sauce."

"The curry?" I prompted. "Yeah, I ate that - it was good. But I'm hungreeeeeee". I made a mental note to feed him more at breakfast, then congratulated him for trying something new.

You have to give him credit - curry on the first day of school is about as foreign to his diet as you can get, and he handled it well.

It took until dinner time to pry more info out of him, but basically, his first school friend is the OTHER Sam, he played "Agent Hamster" with Sam and a bunch of 2nd year boys (basically, he and Sam ran and the bigger kids tried to catch them. Still, the name is a bit weird and disconcerting). They sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" in english, and then in Welsh. He said he really liked it....but...

at bedtime, he said he didn't like going all day. He told the Hubs that he missed Mommy (awwww), and he missed his toys. He missed Ox, too.

I missed him today, and agreed to take Ox with me in the car when we go pick him up tomorrow, because, honestly, I think Boo is super, too.

First Day of School, Part 1

Wait...do you hear that?

That sound of....nothing.

Quiet. Still. Quiet. A quite foreign sound 'round here.

Today is the first day of school. Boo is in 1st year here, and it is his first year of going all day. School starts at 8:55, and I (think) I pick him up at 3:15. (Need to check that shortly.)

Pea is in preschool. She, too, gets dropped of by 8:55 or so, and stays until 1pm - yes she stays for lunch! Five. Days. A. Week.

At the moment, I am sitting on my sofa, hot mug of tea and a plate of Welsh cakes on the coffee table, heart still pounding slightly from the mad rushing about the school.

You see, Pea, who absolutely loved preschool back in Chicago, stated firmly last night that she did NOT want to go to school, and she definitely did NOT want to eat lunch there. (And this is a girl who very clearly knows what she wants, most of the time.) The original intent was to send her from 9-11, and then when she adjusted, let her stay until 1pm. However, the teachers said that most children stayed for lunch (sorry, dinner), and suggested we try having her stay until 1 straight out, and if she really had issues, shorten it after the first week.

So today, all dressed in her new first-day-of-school clothes, she shyly wandered into the main room, with a sly smile on her face as she took in all the children and the toys. A helper took her by the hand, and I skedaddled. None of that hanging around for me - I learned that back at Little Angels!

Boo was patiently waiting outside Pea's classroom for me, and I led him into his room, where they were already sitting for circle time. He had an odd look on his face, which I'm hoping was just nerves. He told me that he might be shy the first day, and we had told him that this was jut fine - he makes friends easily, just to be himself. I have to add, he was pretty proud of his new uniform. I was a bit surprised about that, but to be honest, being dressed like everyone else had to be a bit of relief on the first day.

The teaching assistant showed him his hook in the cloakroom (where he is "Sam B", as there is also a "Sam H" in his class), and where to store his water bottle, and collected his book bag. A kiss on the head in the cloakroom (so as not to embarrass him in front of his new classmates) and off I dash to finish MY school errands.

I had to drop paperwork with the secretary, buy some little envelopes for lunch money (1 penny each), then drop lunch money in the kitchen - at which point my ability to do math completely escaped me, and then seeing both dinner money and milk money spots on the envelope, wondered if they had forgotten to tell me about milk money. (I'll find out today I suppose).

By then, the children had started to gather in the main area for morning assembly, so I had to dash around the school, back thru the gate (as the preschool teacher was caught up with another mum, and I needed to get Boo settled in his class so couldn't wait longer) and I hadn't told the teachers that Pea WAS indeed staying for dinner!!! THEN I needed to see Boo's teacher, as I needed to pay for his daily fruit at snack time and the 50 P that I owed for cookery for the term.

Honestly, I think I was more worked up trying to make sure I had everything straight so there was no issues for them with snacks or meals for the day than they were with starting school!

So I'm looking forward to collecting Miss Pea at 1:00 and learning about how her day went. I went to bed last night, praying over and over again for her to have a good first day, and to enjoy it. I hope my prayers were heard.

And when we collect Boo at 3:15 (ish), I'm walking them both into town, to Shepherd's for first-day-of school ice cream cones to celebrate! I'll report on how the day went later...