Reporting in: First week of school

We survived the first week of school!

What an adjustment this has been for the whole family! I find my day suddenly revolving around a school schedule. I've been trying to tweak Alice's nap times so that I can drop off and pick up. Hayley isn't taking the school bus...Call me over-protective but I know the kids in our neighborhood and don't trust the older ones. So for now she'll get the chauffeur service!

I chose this week to send Maya through withdrawal...we made a new rule: no blankie and binki during the daytime. It was a rough couple of days. But we're on day #6 and she's pretty much accepted it. I know I left it until she was really old but it wasn't a battle I was willing to fight during the time that Alice was born and her newborn days. Anyways, she'll be binki-free before she's 3--hurray! I love that she talks lots more and plays more now that she doesn't spend half of her day in a zombie-like state with that plastic thing in her mouth!

Hayley loves her teachers and is suddenly very concerned about who her best friends are and who plays with whom. It's funny to me how aware she suddenly is of boys vs. girls. I don't think she has learned the name of one boy in her class but knows lots of the girls. I keep challenging her to learn the name of the little boy that she sits next and her response is a frustrated, "Mom, I'm just not interested!" I guess I should be happy, I'm sure things will be different in a few short years!

In interviewing Hayley, this is the report:
-The best thing at school was earning enough colors to complete her rainbow and thus earn a prize from the treasure chest. (Mom was impressed that it wasn't candy. She chose a cute little stuffed frog and named her Frogalina!)
-The most surprising thing about school was seeing some friends she knew--Scout and Bethany. (I'm not sure why this was surprising since she knew they would be there!)
-The scariest thing about school was that she thought the boys might tease her. (What I thought she would answer to that: she was terrified that she would misbehave and have to "change her color" from green to yellow then orange then red. It's a warning system they have set up for bad behavior. When they get to red a note goes home to mom and dad. She cried a couple time because she was so scared she would do something wrong and have to change her color. My sweet little sensitive thing!)

We're figuring out what helps to decompress and get to a socially acceptable level behavior after a full day of school. It's a big leap and emotions have run high this week. It has definitely felt like a full-time job last week just to keep everyone functioning and happy.