Preschool

Sweet relief!  After 2.5 weeks of daycare roulette where Lucy stayed with 5 different people (2 of whom she did not know at all) we are off to preschool and settled in.

Lucy with her teachers Miss Karla and Miss Shireen.  The other little girl is named Stella.  Miss Karla is new this year and she seems wonderful.  We're lucky to have both of them.

As you can see, it was really hard for Lucy to settle in on her first day.  She spent a lot of time crying and clinging to Eric's leg.  Ha!  I got a chance to drop her off last week because Jamie had been sick and it was too funny.  She jumped right out of the car and told me "my preschool is this way."  When we got inside the building she dumped her coat and backpack in the middle of the floor and ran inside without so much as a wave over her shoulder for me. 

It's a new (hectic!) arrangement for us, with me off to work at 7am with Jamie at the sitter in Nevada, and Eric sleeping in until 7:30ish with Lucy who goes to Small Wonders at 9am and continues onto campus until anywhere between 5 and 9:30pm.  Then me finishing teaching at 11:10, racing out the door to meet Jamie at the elementary school by 11:20 (sitter picking up an am preschool kid there) and trying to get to Ames, which is 10 miles away, by 11:40 for the 11:30 pick up time.  Phew!  Thankfully the staff at preschool was so willing to stay an extra few minutes with Lucy.

I saw pictures someone posted of their kids' first day of school with signs that had their grade level and thought it was a neat idea.  So here we are with Lucy's preschool sign.  Proud big girl, proud mommy.  Lucy did take that picture of me, too.  She's getting pretty good.

Yes, it's preschool.  I colored the sign.  You can probably tell where Lucy "helped" color, though.

And yes, they asked every kid to have a backpack, so we HAD to get one with the princesses on it.  On an aside, there is a Waldorf school here in town that a couple of my friends are sending their kids to that doesn't allow the kids to have any clothing or accessories with images from the media on them.  What?  Thank goodness Lucy's not there.  I had looked into the Waldorf school here thinking that it would be similar to the Montessori preschools in Maine that many of my friends sent their kids to with great success in individualized learning and creative expression.  Nope.  The school here is a little too extreme for me, and I don't think Lucy would have done well there (and not just because she's not allowed to wear her princesses.)

It's funny how she can look so big and so little at the same time.

Preschool?  When's it my turn?