The Best Laid Plans...

If you're up with Disney Princesses, I'm also giving away a family four pack of tickets to Disney on Ice in Chicago for the Wednesday September 8 performance here.

I'm giving away our new favorite book - Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten here.

I have a new giveaway up for a Monopoly board game here.

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Today was to have been Little Miss's first day of kindergarten. I have been really looking forward to this day because I love seeing how she's growing up. She walked into Mister Man's classroom last winter and announced that she was going to have his teacher for kindergarten this year. She was so proud and so confident, and I loved it.

We shopped for her uniform - somewhat unsuccessfully, but we had enough to get by for awhile. She loved going school supply shopping and packing her bag to take to meet the teacher on Monday in preperation for her day today. I even booked a massage for tomorrow afternoon, once she and Mister Man were both in school for a full day.

I was excited to have - for the first time ever - both wee ones in the same school at the same time. No more rushing from place to place and having slightly different schedules. No more trying to figure out which PTO I was going to do what for and feeling like I never really had a complete home at either school. And no panicking that I'd miss pickup or the bus for one child or the other because of a commitment to the first child.

In the middle of Mister Man's meet the teacher on Monday afternoon, I received a call from a number I somewhat recognized but couldn't quite put my finger on. Since the meet the teacher for him was essentially just unloading our supplies with no welcome from the teacher or orientation or anything, I answered it.

Hello, is this Michelle? questioned a voice I didn't recognize.

Ummmm, yes.

Great this is (name of the person). Little Miss has been accepted into the dual language program, as we just had a family drop out. Are you still interested in it?

Oh.

OH!

I dropped my bag and panicked. Wellll yes, we're still interested. It's a great program with the opportunity for her to be completely bilingual. And I would no longer have to pay private school tuition. And the schools are close enough that I could drop Little Miss off. And the daily schedules are different enough that no one would be late.

But there goes my easy little one school situation. And the friends that I have already made from the parents of kids that fill Little Miss's class. And the separation of the wee ones.

Figuring out school has never been easy with us.

But how do you turn down the opportunity for Little Miss? We'd tried to get Mister Man into the program last year and failed. We'd been told this spring that we hadn't won our way into it again. Until Monday.

She, of course, had been set on attending school with Mister Man, and he was so eager to be the big brother and show her the ropes. He was with me when I went to the office to tell them we were likely withdrawing Little Miss before school even started. And he was really sad. I hadn't realized how excited he was to be in school with her - and it was truly her that he was sad for.

I picked her up from my friend's house (I love my babysitting co-op, have I ever mentioned that?) and broke the news to her - with as positive a spin as I could. And thankfully, she was excited.

So I've spent the last few days registering her for the program and transferring her medical forms. We had another meet the teacher event today, and I practiced driving from one school to another. I found a friend from Little Miss's two year old preschool who was in the program and set up a playdate for today so she'd have a friend going into school.

And I canceled my massage for tomorrow.

Little Miss doesn't start until Monday. And she gets out of school an hour before Mister Man.

But that's ok. This is a great program, and Little Miss is looking forward to it. We've since found out that her second best friend from the last two years of preschool will be in her class. And I think a little separation will be good for them. Mister Man will be able to focus on his class and his friends instead of looking out for Little Miss and hanging with her all the time - and his social needs that. And Little Miss won't have to worry about following Mister Man and always being in his shadow - the younger sister of the brilliant older brother.

And me? I'm replanning my days. And getting involved in a second PTO. And figuring out what school supplies and uniforms I haven't taken tags off so that I can start to return them next week. And I refuse to panic about not knowing anything about a potential bus schedule until Friday at the earliest with school starting Monday.

It does get easier, right?