For most of my childhood, the back bumper of our silver Chevy station wagon had a yellow sticker bearing the phrase "I Heart SMMA." SMMA stood for St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, my K-8 grade school.
After moving to Kansas City three years ago, our family joined St. Michael the Archangel parish. Adam and I had long talked about sending our kiddos to preschool there, and we solidified our decision in January when Adam had an opportunity to tour the school. Since then, I felt like the mental (and actual) countdown to preschool was on! We decided to give Annalise, who has spent her life at home with a nanny, a little warm-up and signed her up for St. Michael's summer camp. We were thrust into the wonderful world of backpacks, lunch boxes, and art projects. Here we are on her first day of camp.
She is a lovely little sunflower. :)
The two-week camp was capped off with an afternoon in swimsuits. Annalise and her friend Grace had a ball running through the sprinklers.
Camp ended in early July, and we went back to our normal routine for about a month before I started feeling the official preschool start date closing in on us. I had a mental list of all the special things I wanted to do before my baby girl went off to school. The biggest one was a mother-daughter date. I blocked off September 1st on my calendar, and we headed to the nail salon. Annalise loved sitting in the massage chair and dangling her feet in the water (so luxurious!), and she held surprisingly still for a rambunctious three year old. I didn't know how long the hot pink paint would last, so we took a few pics outside to document the mani-pedi.
After our nail time, we headed to Park Place to eat at one of my favorite lunch spots, Ingredient. Annalise took full advantage of the warm weather and got up close and personal with the fountains. Let's just say it was a good thing I packed a spare set of clothes!
The night of the 1st was "meet the teacher night," and, two days later, we found ourselves at student/parent orientation. I was a bit apprehensive because we learned less than a week before school started that Annalise was not assigned to the same class as her friend Grace after all. However, we instantly fell in love with her teacher Mrs. Holsapple. Adam and I agreed that she reminded us of my aunt and twin cousins, who are all school teachers - unbelievably chipper, extremely kind, yet appropriately firm in enforcing the rules.
During orientation, we got to help Annalise create her "lucky duck" page. All the pages went in to a class binder, and, each week, a new "lucky duck" student gets to take the binder home, so everyone can read and learn more about one another.
After orientation, we headed to brunch with friend Grace. (Annalise always calls her "friend Grace" to distinguish her from "cousin Grace." So cute!) Here are the girls giving us a big ta-da, both with mints stuffed in their mouths. ;)
At home that night, I sifted through all the preschool paperwork and started entering dates into my calendar. Yellow Day, Halloween party, Mrs. Holsapple's birthday... I put the abbreviation SMA before each one to signify St. Michael the Archangel, and the yellow bumper sticker from my childhood immediately flashed through my mind. SMA and SMMA. The similarity made me smile and somehow gave me peace of mind that Annalise was right where she was supposed to be. :)
Little Miss did have one homework assignment before the first day of school. She traced her name and decorated her construction paper apple with a delightful array of glitter paint, smiley faces, and princess stickers.
As has become our standard practice, we laid out her whole outfit the night before, so as to avoid any early morning clothing drama. (Lord help us all when this girl becomes a teenager!)
I went into full-on Pinterest mom mode, broke out my very best penmanship, and decorated this chalkboard for our photo op.
In the morning, everyone was ready super early, which I feel like literally never happens in our household these days. We even had time to break out the nice camera and snap some pics on the porch before our nanny arrived.
Annalise kissed Daddy goodbye, and my little preschooler and I headed over to St. Michael's. It is fortunately a quick 5-7 minute drive, and I found myself thinking about how many hundreds (eventually thousands!) of times I will be driving this same route down 143rd Street in the coming years. Annalise was cool, calm, and collected the whole time. I wondered if I might get emotional, but the teachers wisely kept the drop-off procedure short and sweet, so I really didn't have time to even think about shedding any tears.
I spent the whole day thinking about Annalise, hoping that everything was going OK for her. (In retrospect, I probably didn't need to be so concerned. Not sure what I thought was going to happen, given that Miss A has generally been fine in social situations in the past. Ah, a mother's worry!) I could not wait to pick her up. When she came bounding out her classroom door with her hair disheveled, a sticker on her shirt, and a giant smile on her face, I knew it had been a good day. We jabbered non-stop on the drive home. She promptly informed me that she had been selected as the helper of the day (see sticker in picture below) and further informed me that helper meant she got to ring the bell to tell everyone it was time to finish up playing. She also proudly pulled a fluorescent orange "helping hand" out of her tote bag, noting that "not all the girls got a helping hand because some of them didn't help clean up." Then, she gobbled up a giant bowl of plain peanut butter, her after school snack of choice, and took a long, glorious nap. I think it is going to be a great school year!
No comments:
Post a Comment