K is for Kindergarten
4-14-16
Oh my Lord, tomorrow morning I drop Miss Tess off at what
will be her new elementary school for Kindergarten Round-up. I can’t help but be nostalgic on this moment
and then time travel back to the day she was born. How is it possible? How have these years flown by so fast that my
little baby will be going to school each day? I sigh when I think about it. And sometimes hold back tears. And other times I just can’t control my
excitement about all the fun she’ll have, what she’ll learn, the friends she
will make, and the future activities we will get to do with her. I can only hope when I go pick her up that
her day was full of fun so that when the time really comes for her to attend
school each day, way too quickly as it always does, that she is excited to
begin this new adventure in her life.
The drop-off was a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. I knew it wasn’t going to be great. Tess is my clingy child, my shy little girl,
and she almost always prefers adult interaction to child play. Yet, I was still hoping for a 7.
Once we checked in, all the kiddos were given a name
tag. She refused it. What child cares about a sticker on their
shirt? Tess. Tess does.
In fact, she refused. I finally
slapped it on the back of her dress when I was giving her a 27th hug
and kiss. Now she’s the cool kid, right?
Next, she had to pick a chair and sit at a table with other
kids. She certainly wasn’t going to pick
a chair so I picked one for her. I
notice all the parents have left by this point, with the exception of one who
arrived late with their little future kindergartener. I realized at that moment that I needed to be
a bit speedier in making her feel comfortable.
Well, we went back and forth on sitting in the chair….fail. I finally got her coat off but then there was
no good place to put it. She wasn’t
going to have it on the back of her chair, on the table, on the floor by her,
etc. And as I type this, where the hell
is her coat?
After the coat fiasco, she still won’t sit on her chair and
is now wrapped around my right leg. I
wasn’t moving anywhere quickly without her.
So, I bent down and did the “it’s going to be a wonderful day” speech
like I had been doing all morning. “Oh
what fun you’ll have! Oh, you’re going
to love it!” Well, that was enough to
get her to cry.
It must have looked as if I was waving the white flag
because just at that moment a teacher came running to help unlock her from my
leg. I did one last hug and kiss with
the promise to pick her up “very soon” and made a leap for the door. I couldn’t help but peak through the windows
and stand there long enough to make sure she had stopped crying. And with that, I got in the car and drove to
work with a tight chest and maybe a couple of tears myself.
This whole morning, although worse than I anticipated since
she already goes to kindergarten prep, was just what we needed. Tess needed to see where she would be going
to school, I needed to be familiar with the building and the teachers even more,
and let’s be honest; we both needed some practice before the real first day of
school shows up! But you know what, when
I picked her up she was smiling from ear to ear and wearing a brightly colored
macaroni necklace. She said her favorite
part of the day was getting to take a bus ride around town. She couldn’t tell me a single name of any
child she played with or any of the teacher’s names, but she had fun and she
was a big girl! And that’s enough to
make any parent proud.
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