Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Moms Just Know

Like I said in my post last week, I was holding things together fine on the first day of school until my mom showed up with these:
After I'd given her the summary of the morning, I think she could sense all the doubts I was having.  Her sweet and comforting gesture triggered the waterworks.  I don't know what I'd do without her.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

First Day of School

Wow!  I've been in my quiet house about ten minutes, and it feels pretty weird.  I kind of want to cry, but I've held it in so far.  I don't know that I'm necessarily sad that it's both Corben & Cianne's first day of school, but I've just got all these jumbled emotions and thoughts that I don't know what to do with.

First of all, here's a pic of the cuties; just look at the excitement on Corben's face:


I don't feel like I had a lot of idealistic expectations for our first day.  I just wanted it to be pretty simple, but things never go quite as planned.  Cianne got mad that I wouldn't let her fix her own hair.  Corben started throwing a fit when he had to go back upstairs to brush his teeth and put on his socks and shoes.  I'm not quite sure why that triggered tears, other than that was just his way of dealing with a major change.  (He inherited this lovely aversion to anything new from his dad; to Corben's advantage, his daddy is very understanding in such situations.)  Of course, breakfast didn't suit either child.  All they ended up eating before leaving for school was blueberries and bananas--probably not going to last them long, but at least it was fruit.

I have to say I was pretty disappointed with our school this morning.  I pulled up ready to let the kids hop out of the car to be shown to the appropriate places since I was under the impression that's what the teachers preferred.  However, as they hopped out, no one even spoke to them, until they realize that I'm waiting there and backing up the drop off line.  I finally decide that I'm going to have to park, and Ben and I are going to have to get them to the right place before the safety patrol sent them to the playground where 2nd-5th graders are supposed to go.  Ben helps Cianne finds the Pre-K bench,  and she sits excitedly with her class. We end up having to walk Corben through the building to where Kindergarteners are supposed to go.  I'm not sure if they just assume that most of the Kindergarten kids have done Pre-K and are familiar with the building or what, but this is our first time, folks.  I guess the important thing is they both made it to their classes before the tardy bell.  I'm sure everyone who passed us rolled their eyes at the obvious "newbies."  The one teacher that spoke to us assured us that tomorrow would be much better.  I hope so.

Before they left, Ben and I did get a chance to sit down with them and pray about their first day of school.  My mom always sat down with us the first day to give us a Scripture and a prayer to start the new year.  This year we read Proverbs 9:10 with our kids.  We explained to them that they would learn a lot of great things in school this year, but more important than reading, writing, math, science...anything is that they learn to love and respect God.  That's the wisdom that outlasts and outshines anything else.    I'm so proud of who they are already and hope they have a great year.

Now what to do with myself for a couple hours...preferably something to numb all these weird feelings...laundry, chocolate (a little early in the morning), nail polish change, vacuuming, ice cream (I am eight months preggo in August)...on second thought, I think I'll go hit my knees...again.