Julia's First Day of Preschool

 Last week Julia had her first day of preschool. The first day she was semi excited about it. She had done a month long summer session so she already knew what it was going to be like, and she knew that she didn't like to be away from her mommy that long. It's only three hours long, so if anything that makes me want to send her to school longer to get her over her mommy separation anxiety.

I also kind of wonder if that's just what she says because she knows "I'd rather stay home and play with my toys" isn't a valid excuse. She doesn't cry and she seems fine when she gets picked up, she just tells me before hand she doesn't want to go and misses mommy. But she didn't mention anything about that on the first day and was a happy little duck picking out the clothes that she wanted to wear.

 Clothes that made me a little nervous. She chose pants with a zipper and snap button and a belt. Usually when she has to use the restroom when she wears those pants I help her because she doesn't know how to do it herself. But she really wanted to wear those pants and couldn't be persuaded to happily swap for another zipper-less pair. Figuring I had to trust her to do hard things and we might as well start doing hard things on the first day of school, we practiced pulling up the zipper, closing the snap, and unbuckling and buckling the belt.

The zipper was fine, but there was no way she was getting the snap closed. It was a pretty hard one to push together. So I told her to just not worry about the snap and we left it undone, the belt would hold up her pants.

The belt was iffy. She could do it, but it took a little bit of patience on her part to get everything aligned just right. I had thoughts of her peeing her pants because she was too nervous to try to get the belt off, or breaking down crying in the bathroom because she couldn't get it back on, but I let her go with the belt anyway. And she did just fine! Silly me for worrying. She said after recess everyone had to go use the potty and she was able to get her belt off and back on all by herself.

taking a break from taking pictures to pick up a potato bug and put it back in the bushes.

You may not be able to tell, but she has her shoes on the wrong feet here, which I think is just perfect. Trying to be big and independent, and not caring if it's not perfect.

She also said the day went by really fast, so there's hope she gets used to it soon! The next school day, by the way, she was back to saying "it's too long without my mommy."  

She says her favorite part about school is recess and her favorite part about recess is going down the slide. But she likes to tell me about the stories they read in class and the jokes her teacher tells them too, so she must enjoy class time a little as well.