Preschool Beginnings

A shopper, I am not. And while I often fool myself into thinking that shopping with the kids could be fun, historically it has NOT been! Picky, distracted, unreasonable...these are just a few of the words that describe our children when it comes to shopping & clothes! :)

But last night, Anne Peyton and I set out, just the two of us, to find her a pair of shoes to wear for her first day of "real" preschool today. Our daycare provider does an excellent preschool in her home, but THIS is going to be at Kendallvue Elementary School and there will be 15 other kids in her class (vs. 5 or so). She'll go 2 mornings a week, on Wednesdays & Fridays.

We started off on the right foot (npi) because she had been in a wonderful mood ever since getting home from daycare, where today was the first day of preschool there, too. I think the return of structure after a summer without had alot to do with that. She was chatty (unsolicited updates on Arielle's first day of kindergarten, monologue about "deading" (killing) spiders & other bugs, etc), helpful (requested to scrub the kitchen floor), and compliant (actually cleaned her plate and changed clothes when I asked her to).

Our first stop was my favorite secondhand kids' store: Once Upon a Child. We dove into the size 10 shoe bin and she actually LIKED the first pair of shoes she tried on! Then, she spied a classic brown suede Mary Jane without its mate. It surprised me that she liked the look of it (ie, it wasn't pink!), and even more that she liked the way it felt, as she walked up & down the aisles to test it out. Rather than distracting herself with the play area, she actually engaged in helping me find the mate, and was very excited when we finally found it.

I was drunk on 4 year-old good attitude at this point, so we moved on to the clothes aisle even though that wasn't the purpose of the trip. I'd hold up a shirt and asked her if she liked it. In the past, she would look at it for 3 seconds and ignore the question. This time, she said "hmmmm, let me try that on" with great enthusiasm. The horsey sweater passed the test. Then, SHE found a brown leopard-print skirt (actually rather classy looking) on the rack and pulled it off with excitement (this has never happened). She immediately tried it on, and then I found a mini brown sweater that looked like it would match. What do you call those cute-but-not-very-functional sweaters that land just below your chest? Anyway, it was one of those. I held it up to her and she said "what in the world is THAT, momma?". I had to LOL. She tried it on and looked adorable in it, so the outfit came home to us to be modeled to Daddy & Tommy.

Next stop was Famous Footwear because we still needed some good ole' sneakers. We found a pair that was slightly big (but not too big), but she was less than enthusiastic about the fact that they were sneakers. It must be known that in the past, many a meltdown has involved the wearing of sneakers; we're talking a BIG deal here. Not that this stage of life is over for her, but I will say that after 20 minutes of trying on various other shoes, and then trying the sneakers on once again, she said "ok, momma, I'll wear these to school tomorrow". WHAT did she say? I hadn't even expected her to agree to buy them, let alone wear them to school on her first day.

She went to bed telling me she's "ess-cited" about her first day of preschool tomorrow, even though she might be a bit shy. Despite a late-night potty & water wake-up, she woke up bright-eyed and with continued good nature. I fully expected her to change her mind about the tennis shoes, but, nope! After a small photo session on the front steps, John dropped Tommy off at Marilyn & Jerry's and then came back to get us girls. She remained excited, albeit shy (she clung to us for quite awhile and had to be kindly pried away by the teacher when it was time to say goodbye) and we left without incident, proud and incredulous that our baby girl is now a schoolgirl.