Our first week of kindergarten

A welcome note to any of my daughter's classmates parents who have found this blog. First, rest assure that I won't be blogging gossip here or anything I think is inappropriate for a blog so darn public. If you're the teacher, I will always bring my concerns to you before I ever write about it here. That said, back to our regularly scheduled blog...

Ah, Friday of the first week of kindergarten. I think we are all exhausted from this week. My daughter especially so. So how is she doing? She took to kindergarten like a fish to water...at least from my perspective.

Tuesday was insane. Almost every kindergartener had at least two adults with them in the lunchroom. I think we caught a few kids who also brought grandparents...very cute. Our daughter sat at the table looking a bit stunned, yet eager. We all walked over to her classroom once the teacher showed up at 9. The room was a nice size, cubbies for their coats, and the big tables were all set with their first coloring project. Once we got all her items put away and the girl was settled in a seat, she gave us that look. "OK, you can go now." We hugged her and went in for the good-bye kiss. DENIED. Overnight, our loving & kissy girl grew into a 16yo teen. Pick up was equally insane as class after class of different grades flooded into the lunchroom and kids had to sort themselves out between pick-up and bus. One teacher did have a bullhorn, but we could barely hear it over the chatter of tweens. Our babysitter came to get acquainted, thank goodness we planned it like that cause it really was a madhouse for a few minutes. But the kid found us and looked happy. She took a nap on the way home.

The rest of the week we left her in the lunchroom a few minutes before the teachers show up with a few of her classmates and the teacher's assistant. Each morning she acted as if we were the most embarrassing people in the entire world...And I wasn't even singing! That is an issue we will be working on, let me tell you!

The funniest thing is that on Wednesday she saw the kids who were going to eat breakfast line up and go in line. She got a breakfast ticket and ate breakfast...her second of the day. All without paying for it. She just followed the group. Her daddy did talk to someone the next day to pay for breakfast.

She also reported to us one day that one boy told her that he didn't like girls. Today I saw him calling for her at pick-up and patting the spot next to him on the bench. There's more to that story, but it's best told in person over a cuppa something. :)

Her teacher looks like she's going to be great. The kid loves her already.

I'm pretty hopeful for this year and this school. It was quite a leap of faith to apply to this school. I haven't written about kindergarten in months because I was waiting for us to figure out where she would go and then I didn't want to jinx what did happen. We didn't get into the lone private we applied to, but we did get into one magnet school and one gifted school. We're at a gifted. We are clearly aware of how lucky we are. Seriously. We decided to apply to this school solely based on the principal who appears to not take any BS. She stated some very high standards at orientation and while the coursework is intense for kindergarten, I think everything will work out.