Thursday, October 13, 2011

First day of Kindergarten!

Seriously? Can this really be happening? I have a Kindergartner! Noah started Kindergarten in September and it's really blowing my mind. It's funny... I always thought of this time in our lives as being such a sense of accomplishment. Almost like an ending of sorts. Like, "Yes! We did it! We made it to Kindergarten! Our son survived the first 5 years of his life with us as his parents and now it's time to send him off to school!" There was definitely some of that feeling, but I've been so surprised as to how much I realize this is a HUGE beginning! The start of his school career, new friends, new interests, new teacher(s) -- every year for 12 years!, homework, making lunches, PTA meetings, etc., etc., etc.!

It's taken several weeks for us to finally settle into a good daily routine with getting to and from school on time (luckily it's only across the street! I can't imagine a commute on top of everything else!), homework (YES! homework in K -- every night and on weekends!), and getting to bed on time (he's SO exhausted every night). But I think we're finally figuring it out. I'm just so surprised at how quickly our lives have shifted to revolve around school -- and holy moly, it's only Kindergarten! I had no idea how intense this would be and I'm realizing now that having school-aged children is like one of those "unsaid" parenting experiences that other parents don't warn you about or is hard to explain before you actually go through it yourself (i.e. postpartum recovery, nursing, sleep deprivation with newborns, sleep training and infant, etc.). I guess I'm also just realizing that it gets more complicated every year as your child develops so I should really just cherish Kindergarten!

Nevertheless, he had a great first day. The first 2 days were shortened days with just half of the class, so that was a nice transition into everything. He seems to really like his teacher and has made some new friends. We were a little sad that there were no familiar faces in his class, but he knows several other kids in Kindergarten and sees them around so I know that's at least comforting to him. He's already impressing me with his handwriting progress. He's been really good at capital letters for a long time, but they have been pushing lower case letters and I was worried he would struggle with that right away. But he's been doing a great job and is so proud of the fact that he can write his name with capital and lower case letters now!

Here are some pics of his first day!

in front of our building

lining up with his class!

first day of school lunch at McDonald's with BFF, Eddie K.
(and baby brothers :)

2 comments:

Marci said...

I agree completely that life does start to revolve around school. My entire day is: commuting to and from school, making sure we have enough food to feed growing athletes, helping remind kids to practice their band instruments, filling out permission slips, running kids to and from activities, etc.. It's exhausting and I look back on when the kids were little and we could do whatever we wanted when we wanted and wonder why I didn't appreciate it more. Enjoy kindergarten, it only gets busier!!

Miggy said...

Seriously!

Seriously?

That's impossible. There is no way our fussy, never sleeping babies actually grew up.

But I guess they did.

Good luck Noah (and Jess!)