Last First Day Of Preschool

Yep, Mister Man started preschool (for the third year!) today. Next year, he'll be finished with preschool, and already this year is so different.

He chose his own outfit and got dressed one hundred percent by himself. And he's in afternoon preschool for the first time, too. Considering that he napped the last four days and asked to take a nap around 10am today, that doesn't bode too well, but we'll see how it goes. We really wanted him to do an enrichment program a few mornings a week to keep him challenged and interested in learning, and of course that is only offered in the mornings.

Before we got ready for preschool, we did our obligatory fashion show. We do this twice a year where I take out every stitch of upcoming season clothing out of the closet and lay it on each of the wee ones' beds. They have to try everything on to get a clean bed again. This was, of course, my mom's brilliant idea, but I'll admit that it had to be done.

Things we found out:
1) Mister Man is an angel. He tried on everything we asked him to.
2) Mister Man has grown a lot since this spring (read: May) when he last wore a lot of his clothes.
3) Hand-me-downs are a lifesaver. I literally do not have to shop for a single piece of clothing for either child this year because of all the clothes they received as gifts from friends and relatives and from handmedowns. In fact, Little Miss's closet is so stuffed, I can barely fit all her clothes onto the rack.
4) Little Miss is not my child. She is an evil spawn of some Stubbornbeast that I have yet to beat.
5) Little Miss will never be a clotheshorse.
6) There are two ways to get Little Miss to try on clothes: threaten to take away Snowy (the bear) or tell her that the shirt she's about to try on matches her underwear. Go figure.
7) There will be some VERY happy little children in our area this fall. The preschool Mister Man attends has a not insignificant portion of very high poverty families, and the school has a great network to distribute outgrown clothes to families who need them. And you wouldn't imagine how grateful they are for little things like this (or making Easter baskets or Christmas stockings for kids). They never ask for it, but there's always a need.
8) Little Miss may have far fewer clothes that fit her than we think she does because we only tried on about a third of her clothes and instead did the "yeah, I'm sure that'll fit" for the rest. It was truly that bad.

After lunch, we took our traditional first day of school pictures, and I ended up with 23. Thank GOD for digital photography, so I can see what he's done that makes the previous picture not the one for the memory book. I finally started talking about my dad goofing around with him at the pool yesterday, and that cracked the first normal smile I got.


Then of course he got all cute and coy on me, so I had to save this one, too. Awww, can you believe he isn't even five yet?

Little Miss was very sad that today was not her first day of preschool. It was supposed to be her first day, and more on that later. Today is about Mister Man's first day. She did wait for his bus with Snowy though. In fact we all waited.

The bus was supposed to arrive at 12:30. Preschool starts at 1pm, and it's about 20-25 minutes from our house. We knew that Mister Man was the last pickup (he gets carsick), so they'd go straight to school after him.

At 12:46, I called the bus company to see where the bus was and was told that they were running late today. They seemed truly perturbed when I asked them to check to see how late the bus was so that I could drive Mister Man to school myself if it was more than five or so minutes away.

While I was on hold, a bus pulled up to our driveway and opened the door. Mister Man started to get on. "Is this Grant?" Ummm nope, it isn't. I did some quick thinking and realized this was the kindergarten bus and that I knew a Grant who was going to afternoon kindergarten. He didn't live on our street though, so I gave directions to the grateful bus driver.

Our bus showed up at 12:54. I talked to Grant's mom later today and found out that the two buses both stopped at her house at the same time (she has one son going to Mister Man's school on his bus and one going to kindergarten), which caused just a tiny bit of confusion.

You'll notice that the bus driver is checking off on her list that yes, this is in fact the correct child getting on the bus. Mister Man wasted no time getting on that bus!

And the bus driver remembered us. She had been our bus driver Mister Man's first year in preschool. God help me, I can't remember her name for anything, and I didn't have the presence of mind to ask. I did ask her if she could put him in a harness though (they hadn't told her that) and confirme that she would pick him up from daycare tomorrow and Thursday (nope, hadn't told her that either).

In the end, it turned out fine. He has the same preschool teacher as he did last year. This year, there are currently only five kids in his class -- three boys and two girls. My first thought? This will make his 15 child limit birthday party that much easier. I think that officially makes me a bad mom.

Truly though, having five kids in the class for a teacher and an aide should really help him out a lot this year. I hope! I know it won't stay this small all year long, as there are five more screenings yet this year and each screening means more children added to the program. At the same time, he's in the oldest and highest functioning class this year in the afternoons, so in all likelihood there won't be too many more children added to it.

When he got home, I asked him what he'd learned today, and his answer was "nothing new." I suppose I ought to get used to that. At least one thing hasn't changed though -- he came home with all his pockets filled with acorns that he'd collected from the field in the playground. They're currently sitting in Daddy's shoe (shhh!).