First Day of First Grade

Solana attended her first day of first grade today. She loved it, of course. She loves school and gets on well in almost any situation and with almost anybody. One of my biggest concerns was getting her out the door by 7:30am without me yelling at her to hurry up. I packed lunches, prepared her backpack, prepped breakfast, and picked out her clothes the night before. 30 minutes should be plenty of time to get ready. And, surprisingly, everything went swimmingly this morning! I was amazed!

When it came time to leave we doddled for a few minutes and decided to change her shoes. Then I helped her get her backpack on and coughed down a little lump in my throat. I'd been looking forward to the first day of school for one main reason for a while now. The month of August has been CRAZY! I've been driving her around constantly and have been guilt-ridden for all the car time Chloe's been spending. The house is a disaster area. The floors and bathrooms are filthy and I'm barely keeping up with laundry. I've been planning to get back to work on the house as soon as she went to school. With all of that on my mind I forgot about the fact that I'd miss her.

We went outside to take our annual picture and I told Solana to pose for the picture. This is what I got:

I swear, these poses are all Solana. I had nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with them.

Then we went down the driveway to wait for the bus.

There it is!

As excited and ready to get on the bus as she was I was shocked when she paused before getting on. "Mommy, there are too many little boys on there." I looked into the windows and, indeed, the bus was filled with little boys. "It's ok. You can sit with your friend Anna. She's about to get on." Anna lives two houses down and we could see her waiting at the bottom of her driveway to get picked up. She accepted that and got on. But not before I got another picture of her with Mrs. Tickle, the bus driver.

She was Solana's bus driver last year. We like Mrs. Tickle.

Then the bus drove away with my little girl in it. I turned around and sobbed for about a minute. Then I came inside, pulled it together, assured myself that Solana had a good Summer, retrieved Chloe from her crib, and felt happy again.

Solana reported that she had a great day when she got back. And she even ate all her lunch, except for the watermelon. The clear plastic fork I'd packed was camouflaged in her lunch bag so she didn't know it was there. I won't be making that mistake again :-) The school year has begun once again. How time flies! It's funny how all those cliche's come true when you become a parent.