first day of pre-k

Yesterday was Celia's first day of school!

Celia was a little nervous leading up to the school year, but we had a couple chances to visit her classroom and see the teachers before school started and that helped her a lot. We love all the teachers and staff at her school, and I especially love her classroom teachers this year. They are both very experienced and just the nicest, warmest people. Celia is going to have a great year with them. She is always so quiet and acts shy when Chris or I is at school with her, but yesterday one of the teachers told me she was talking nonstop all day. So the shyness is just an act with Mommy and Daddy. Her class is the pre-k class, so they are the big kids at school. Their school day is longer than the other classes, and they'll be doing all kinds of new academic stuff this year. One thing we're excited about is that during their afternoon rest time, the teachers will be reading chapter books to them. Each day they read a chapter, and Celia is already looking forward to hearing what happens next in the story each day. I've been wanting to start doing this at home soon, too.

Another nice thing about our preschool is that there are all kinds of afternoon activities for the kids after classroom time is over: Different arts, sports, and academic things. This year Celia is doing swimming and dance classes for the first time. She had dance yesterday and loved it. I ran into the preschool director and she said the dance class is the cutest thing. She is going to take a video for me sometime! Now I have to make sure I have her swim and dance things packed in a bag each morning, and keep track of what she has each day.

I think Pita is going to have a great school year.

preschool orientation

Things are pretty crazy around these parts, which is why I haven't been blogging at all. I hope that when (if) my weekly schedule is ever finalized, and I get used to packing everything up for me and both kids for work and school days, things will be easier.

I thought that once school started, there would be no choice for the administrators I'm involved with to quickly resolve the issues with my position. I was wrong. It seems to be worked out that I will be back at the preschool now, where I was before I was wrongly transferred last year. There is still no resolution about my work schedule, so for now I have to work five mornings a week (ask me how I'm going to do this whydon'tcha? I don't have daycare on two of those days...) until it is worked out somehow. Since we're supposed to start seeing students this week, I don't know how that's going to work. On top of all that, there are administrators who have said and done things to me that are illegal, and that is being dealt with too. I'm still not going to go into detail on the blog, but I will say that I am very thankful to belong to a union, and that the union president and HR director are behind me on all this.

Moving on to happier things, Celia's first day of preschool is tomorrow! Henry will have his first day of daycare, too. Today we went for preschool orientation. Celia had been in the classroom before, so she was comfortable going right in. There was some work for the kids to do, decorating their sign-in folders and mats they'll use for circle time.

Celia was a little shy and didn't talk much, but she talked to her teacher a little and met a nice little girl to play with. I'm not sure if they said one word to each other, but they played dress up and a few other things together.

When we left, Celia told me she loved preschool and couldn't wait for tomorrow. Unfortunately she started getting a little nervous tonight and told both Chris and I she didn't want to go. Hopefully it will go okay tomorrow morning.

Each month Pita will get a calendar with a little activity to do each day (easy things, like walk like a penguin, write your age, practice drawing circles...). She has to color in the day when she's completed it, and when it's all done she gets to pick a prize at school. Kind of a neat idea.

After orientation, we headed home and got ready for lunch. Henry Boy crawls all around the house now. I have to keep a very close eye on him because he really likes to get himself in trouble :). It's cute to see him crawling all around while I'm working in the kitchen. He has started trying to climb or pull up on anything and everything, which gets kind of dangerous.

Henry went down for his nap, and Celia and I played with her snack shop and then made cookies. She really hates making cookies.

Later in the afternoon we went out to print a family picture for Pita to bring to school tomorrow, and then went home and played, and got ready for the kids' baths. Chris came home early, which was pretty nice. We had dinner, and Celia played in my bedroom while I took a shower. When I looked into the bedroom, I found her lying on the bed with a baby bottle, with my shoes removed from the closet and lined up by the bed. You never know what you'll find with this one...

Clothes are set out, lunch boxes prepped, breakfast planned for, backpacks and bags ready. Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything. I am exhausted. Time for bed.