First Day of School

Sophie was so excited she was running!

The blue spot in the lower left corner is the stroller I was pushing (we bought a cheap one - the walking is too much for 4-year-old legs). Erik was taking photos next to me. In this photo you can see how narrow the streets are (and that's not even the narrowest!).

Waiting outside the door. 

Sophie being a sweet little mother hen to her brother

It was touching to see the neighbors greeting each other after the summer, hugging, giving high 5's to each other's children, exclaiming how much they've grown, smoothing their children's hair and counseling them to be good. Little children crying and clinging to their mommies and big kids gathered together in nervous, chatting circles. People are the same everywhere.

I had a hard time sleeping last night - I kept getting up to walk around the kids' rooms and open or close windows to adjust temperatures and cover them with blankets and check them sleeping. It didn't occur to me until now that I was nervous but I woke up already close to tears. All the girls were really excited; Stone didn't seem phased. We all walked there together, and when it was time to say good-bye, Stone's face clouded into a cry and it was really hard for me not to cry too. I hugged him tight and forced myself to give him a big, confident smile, telling him he would meet lots of fun four-year-old friends, and he would need to be my brave, strong boy. I was so grateful he didn't cling to me - I don't know what I would have done. He kissed me and let go and said a heart-breaking "Bye Mom!" and I walked out and burst into tears on the street. Erik and I walked around together for awhile - it was a short day so just 10:00-12:00 but it felt like forever. I'll let the kids tell about the day in their own words, but I'll just say that when I picked up Stone he looked happy but his teacher pointed at him and said "He cried ALL MORNING," and then sternly said to him "NO CRYING TOMORROW." (All in Spanish, so he didn't understand). I held him tight and cried some more without him seeing and carried him all the way home. If we can't get a situation that feels more positive for him I'll pull him out lickety-split, but I'm really hoping we can make it work! I was very proud of my girls - you'll see below.

Stone, tell me one good thing about your first day of school.

"I don't have any good things."

Ok, tell me about the day. What happened?

"The day was awfulllllll. My teacher was awfulllllll. She was so mean. I didn't like her at all. Actually there was a good thing when my sisters came and found me. But now it is a good day!"(he says while singing and playing with his train set).

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Sophie, tell me about your first day of school.

"It was awesome! My teacher was the best, and I met a really nice friend who sits in a desk by me. But something bad happened. When I went out for recess I saw that Stone was crying really hard so I started to cry and went and got Lucy and we saw that the teacher was tugging on Stone's arm and pulling him back into the class and not letting him go to recess with the other kids. Just because he was crying! So then Lucy started to cry and we got Lindsay, and we all got him from his teacher and we snuggled with him and played Kitty and I Spy. Then we went back to the class room and school was over."

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Lucy, tell me about your first day of school.

"At first I was extremely nervous, but at the same time I had a picture of what it might be like in my head, which was really awesome, and I didn't know which one it would be. When we got to the school there was a GINORMOUS, huge crowd in front of the door, and then finally we walked in and saw a big courtyard thing and we got assigned to our teachers. First, mommy had to say "these are my children, a 6th grader, a 4th grader, a 1st grader and a 4-year-old." The teacher she was talking to said "Ok, the 4th-grader comes with me," and she grabbed my wrist (which kind of hurt) and I followed her wherever she pulled me and she kept going over to people and welcoming them and blah blah blah, and then that took a few minutes. Then she led us up a ramp into the school and then up a long thing of stairs, turned left, and then the 2nd class was ours. As we walked in, the girl in front of my gasped! And I didn't know if she did that because she was thinking "Oh no, there's a new girl! She's probably going to hate it here!" or if she meant "YES! Another girl to play with." There are a lot of girls in the class, and they all turned out to be really nice. The teacher assigned me to a desk and took attendance and I learned the kids' names. Then we did some paperwork and it was really hard to understand because the teacher talked so fast. I could understand what she meant, because I would pick out the words I knew and make up the sentence in my mind and just look at what everyone else was doing. Then a super extremely loud bell rang, and everyone stood up, got their snack (I didn't have one), pushed their seats in, lined up, and then ran out of the room and down the stairs and out to the courtyard for recess. Then we had recess and I saw Stone was really upset and the teacher was really mean to him. His teacher was trying to take him away so Lindsay and I held onto him and said "NO, HE WANTS TO STAY WITH US." So we spent the whole recess walking around and snuggling with him, and then when recess was over we went back to the class room and cleaned up. Then we had to straighten our desks perfectly because apparently that's really important, and then we went out the door and found Mom and then went home. My favorite thing was that the first girls I saw were really really nice."

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Lindsay, tell me about your first day of school.

"So after we went into the school (there were a TON of people there), I saw a lady who turned out to be my teacher. She grabbed my hand and brought me over to a group of girls, and she introduced me to them. They were really really nice and they showed me where to go. We chose our seats in our classroom and sat down, and we were all chatting, but as soon as the teacher came in everyone was quiet. She passed out text books and called attendance, and then we had recess. Our group of girls went out and we walked around a bit, but then I saw Sophie and I ran up and hugged her and then I saw Lucy and ran up and hugged her, and then I noticed that Sophie was crying and she said Stone was sobbing so we four all walked over to a corner and snuggled him and calmed him down until recess was over. I told him school was almost over and he needed to be good just for a few minutes, so I walked him back to class and he went in. So I went back to class and the day was over! And it was happy."

When we left home we promised ourselves that no matter what happened on this trip, we would just say "How fascinating!!" and dig out whatever lessons we could learn from the situation. This school promises to have lots of "fascinating" moments!