First day of Preschool, round 2!

Emily's first day of preschool this year:

And just for fun, Emily's first day of preschool last year:

Yes, I love dressing my daughter in plaid skirts.

Emily does not seem to have changed much. I am starting to think she is going to be like my sister, whose face still looks almost exactly the same as when she was 3. Charlotte has certainly changed though! She's been training hard this past year, growing and getting stronger so she can endure all the enthusiastic sister love...

...and looking up to her big sister

The first day of preschool went well. We reconnected with kids from her class last year, and she seems ok that she gets to SEE her two best friends on the way to class but not be in the same class as them, since Emily's going 5 days a week and their parents opted for the 3 day a week program. It appears that they get to play together on the playground on Monday Wednesday and Friday though, so that's kinda cool.

There were tears from some of the kids, and tears from some parents out in the parking lot. I was once again surprised at how calm I felt about it all. I realized once I got back out to the parking lot and saw some crying parents that I was supposed to be feeling sad too, but mostly it just felt like we never even left for the summer. I'll save my tears for next year, when she'll be at school ALL DAY EVERY DAY, at the same school as FIFTH GRADERS.

That one will be tough.

Charlotte was pretty sad to be leaving her sister behind though. She wasn't old enough to notice last year (or maybe she did notice but wasn't old enough to express herself) and I guess by the time she WAS old enough it was just the routine. But now, after having her buddy Emmy home with her all the time, I heard a lot of mournful mentions of "Emmy!" on the way to the gym.

Saying goodbye to the sister


Being a "second year mom" is also pretty neat. I already know all the teachers and the director, and several of the moms of Emily's classmates. I even know moms walking by to go pick their kids up from different classes. Now by "know", I mean "know their names and the names of their kids so I can ask how they're all doing", not "know and am good friends with", but still, I am able to put up a good show having small talk with lots of people who walk by. I am a fairly outgoing person, but not at first. I am quite shy about approaching new people, but once I have gotten to know them a bit, then I lose my shyness and can chat with the best of them. So having acquaintances from years before is helpful for me. Maybe this year I'll finally gather the courage to invite some kids over for a play date.

Maybe.

Pre Preschool

As I was hurrying everyone out the door yesterday evening and speeding us all to the church where Emily goes to preschool for her Meet The Teachers night I was hit with deja vu. Not surprising, since that's exactly what I did 3 out of 5 weekdays all last year (complete with the lateness part). I realized I've missed having Emily in preschool...not that I don't miss her when she's gone, but I miss the structure that school gives our lives. I am really awful at instituting structure myself. When Will isn't around to enforce a bedtime I tend to just wander around the house until 1AM or so accomplishing nothing and then fall asleep wherever, waking with the girls at 7 to curse myself for not going to bed earlier. I am appreciative of anything that forces me to be structured.

And Emily misses preschool too, especially her teachers, who it just so happens are her teachers again this year! When they were introduced at the little info session Emily started clapping wildly, and as soon as we went to her new classroom to check things out she positioned herself right between them and just spent some time gazing adoringly up at her heroes.

On the way home she asked if we could invite her teachers over to our house. I love that she loves them, and I love knowing that my daughter is spending 2.5 hours a day in a place she enjoys and benefits from so much.

So tomorrow, weeks it seems after everyone else has gone back to school, I will send my daughter back as well. And I will know that in the end, despite several years of freaking out about the "which preschool" decision, it appears I made the right one for her.

Roses are Red Dye #40, Violets are Blue Dye #1

I have a problem with people feeding my kids junky food. I don't like giving them sugar or anything that isn't 100% whole grain, but I especially try to avoid nitrate, dye and chemical-laden processed yuck. I know that makes me a pain in the ass. But my kids haven't seen enough of the world yet to really realize that we eat differently than most other Americans, so why not give them healthy food, especially when they're young and don't even know what they're "missing"?

Preschool has been a challenge. On the first day of school the snack was Froot Loops, and ever since then, when I ask Emily what she had for snack at Preschool the answer is usually "cookies" or "colorful cereal". This is the point where it gets difficult. I can control the food she eats at home, but when it comes to the outside world how much should I interfere, if at all? I have never fooled myself that we'd be able to keep junk out of her diet forever, and there's a point where you just have to control what you can of your child's diet and be happy with the fact that MOST of what they eat is healthy because this is unfortunately the world we live in. I think it's very wrong that junk food is the norm out in the real world, but that's the truth. Once she's in kindergarten I'll be able to send her a packed lunch, but for now we're in the middle of 2 years of preschool where snack is provided by the school.

I don't want to send her a separate snack, I feel like that will only single her out and give her bad emotional associations with food. I am not a very confrontational person, so even talking to the director about the food they provide seems scary to me. I guess sooner or later I need to stop sitting here simmering about it and actually say something if it bothers me so much. I've thought about offering to donate snacks now and then, things like 100% whole wheat pretzels instead of the kind they usually buy, or the 100% whole wheat juice-sweetened fig newtons I get occasionally. But that would get expensive, and besides, I'm already paying for her snacks through tuition and it's not really fair for me to single-handedly fund ALL the kids' snacks. I could mount a campaign to try to get the parents to add a couple dollars more per month to their tuition payments so we can upgrade the kids' food, but they all seem pretty happy feeding their kids junk and again, the whole confrontational aspect of it frightens me and I don't want to be THAT mom.

So when it comes time for the classroom parties and I CAN have a little control over the food, I jump at the chance to give them healthy things. At the Thanksgiving party I made a melon turkey with fruit skewers for tailfeathers, thinking at least this way they will have some fruit and it will be presented in a fun way that will make them want to eat it. For the Valentine's Day party, I realized that I should be doing the opposite...there WILL be junk there, so I might as well volunteer to bring the junk so I can make it my way and let the other parents bring the fruit since that is inherently healthy. Luckily, at the planning meeting when the head mom suggested doing a buffet of sweets one of the other moms did the confrontation part for me and said that there should probably be SOME healthy food. That gave me a great opportunity to suggest having a selection of foods that are naturally red, and it seemed to go over well. So it seems all I need to do is enlist a like-minded confrontational person to be my sidekick, then I can really get things done!

We ended up with a menu of apples, strawberries, raspberries, red peppers, babybel cheese wheels (in the RED wax!), red juice boxes, and I made 100% whole wheat cutout cookies with juice-sweetened jam. The kids seemed to enjoy it but not many of them cleaned their plates. I was disappointed at first, until I remembered that not many of them cleaned their plates at the Thanksgiving party either, even though the menu was much more junky then. It amazes me how little kids will eat unless encouraged when there is interesting stuff going on around them. My own daughter ate the cheese, strawberries and raspberries eventually, hoovered the jelly out of her cookie (even though she will eat the whole thing at home), and thoughtfully returned her unwanted apple slices to the communal bowl. Eew.

It was nice however to know as they tore around like demons afterward that the insanity was being powered by 100% kid energy and not by piles of sugar and dye.

Musical Hearts

The music stopped!

Charlotte playing with the big kids (in the tutu SHE picked out to wear today!)

Hopefully, with practice, I will get less timid about trying to effect change. Maybe eventually I can be ok with being THAT mom. Because I like my sweet, preservative-free kids just as they are!

Preschoolin'

I've been feeling guilty for a long time about not posting Emily's first day of preschool pictures after moaning on here for so long about the preschool decision. So without further ado, here we go!

My big girl!

The carefully-selected dinosaur backpack



So excited!

She STILL hangs her backpack up backwards. Oh well, it works



Day 1 was a success! Especially since she got her first taste of froot loops.

Emily has been doing really well with preschool. Aside from a rough week where she ended up in time-outs on a couple days for pushing and hitting her classmates on the playground, she seems to love it. When we drive by, she points out the building and says "Are we going to preschool? I am so ess-kited to go to preschool!". It's really nice, especially when I see the little boy who still, after a month and a half, has a breakdown whenever his mom drops him off. The little boy who Emily loudly tells me is named "Jack-in-the-box" and is a whiney boy when we're standing right next to him. I have a feeling Charlotte is going to be like that in a few years.

But that's another worry for another time.

Preschool!?!?!?!

We were out to lunch on Saturday with my in-laws and Will's old boss and his wife (at Volt! Yum! But their lunch-sized wine pairing is much much smaller than its dinner counterpart. Boo.) and my mother-in-law mentioned preschools. She has this way of mentioning things that I should be used to by now but I'm not. She'll say "I was talking to my friend at church last Sunday, and she asked me "So when are Will and Sara going to pick a college/So when are Will and Sara going to have a baby/So when are Will and Sara going to have another baby/So are Will and Sara all moved into their new house yet/What preschool is Emily going to because you know there are 2 year waiting lists for some of them" and I said "Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time/Oh they have plenty of time"."

I'll start a new paragraph here because I'm sure your head is spinning from all the ""quotations within quotations"".".

Then she waits for me to respond. And there are only two ways to respond. #1 is to tell her what our plans actually are, which is what she's really asking in a roundabout way by telling these little "stories", and #2 is to just smile and nod. And I usually do #2.

So this method takes the focus off the actual question, and puts the focus on figuring out what she really means and finding a nebulous answer, if needed. In my mind I'm trying to figure out if this "concerned friend" was a complete fabrication invented to bring up the subject, or if the conversation actually did happen, with very fortuitous timing.

So that is why I had this conversation last weekend, but it was only today that I actually thought about it and realized "2 year waiting lists?!?!?! I have to start calling preschools, like, today".

But I have some issues, and they are:

-Emily is still my teeny tiny baby and will always be this way and surely won't be leaving me to go to school for another 10 years at least so it's silly to even think about preschool in the first place.
-I have to pick my child's preschool? Where in the manual do they tell you how to do that?
-How do I even find out what preschools I have to choose from?

I started, as usual, with my beloved internet. A quick google search brings up some yahoo listings, but how do I know whether that's an exhaustive list or not? Maybe it's just the preschools who paid to be listed on yahoo. Do I (gasp!) have to look in the yellow pages? I always tease my mom for turning first to the yellow pages, but do I even remember how to use them myself? Am I going to have to actually call people? On the phone? And some of these preschools actually look like they are daycare, so what's the difference between a preschool program and daycare?

I tried to sign up for a community of local moms online so that I can figure out my area's "preschool hierarchy of desirability", but they take up to 48 hours to process your joining request. Don't they know I need advice NOW? The waiting lists could be approaching 3 years by the time I'm approved!

In the meantime, I'm trying to think of the preschools I already know about. There's the Lucy School, which is a picturesque little barn-turned-school where I took Emily for Sing and Sign class last fall. It's all very outdoorsy and granola with a focus on music and art, and the kids have an organic garden. But lord is it pricey. Also, they do preschool through 2nd grade there, and it's not very close to our school district. So if I send Emily to preschool there, will I be the meanest mommy ever if I pull her away from her friends to put her into public school or a different private school for Kindergarten? If I send her there all the way through 2nd grade, then she and her friends will have to split up anyway at that point, but she'll be joining a class at a different school in 3rd grade...a class that has probably been at the same school together since Kindergarten, so will she be the new kid coming to the party 3 years too late, doomed to be an outsider for all eternity? And music and art are good and all, but hopefully there's science and math aplenty too? Lucy School just makes my head spin.

Then there's the preschool Will and I went to, which is at my mother-in-law's church. I liked it there well enough, and I don't really recall getting any religious lessons with my preschool, but doesn't it seem weird to go to preschool at a church, especially if it's not YOUR church? A lot of the preschools I saw online have "philosophies" and "teaching methods"...a preschool at a church might have a loose cirriculum, but is it really school or just like glorified daycare? All I can really remember of my own preschool days was playing with dinosaur toys and finger painting with paint that the teachers were foolish enough to mention was edible. Yum.

Then there's the school downtown that my mom enrolled Krista (my middle sister) in at the last minute when she was 3 because she was going to wait to put her into preschool until she was 4 (another dilema! Enroll at 3 or wait until 4?) but Mom decided she'd like to have some time at home alone with my youngest sister (since Krista did and still kinda does demand attention, usually loudly). So she enrolled Krista in the last place that had spaces left. Damn, that's harsh. Compared to places with 2 year waiting lists, I'm thinking no.

And which are the places with 2 year waiting lists? Do they even exist? If I call KinderKare and ask for a tour because I'm scouting preschools for my 21 month old daughter, are they going to laugh at me and tell me to come back in 2 years when she's actually old enough to go to school?

And the big question in the back of my mind the whole time...does which preschool Emily goes to really matter that much? I barely remember my own preschool experience, but even if you don't remember it, isn't the point of it to lay the groundwork for the rest of your school career? That sounds pretty important. But is it?

I don't think I'm ready for this yet. Maybe I'll bury my head in the sand and just keep nodding at my mother-in-law for another year.