First Day of School, First Day of School!

If you read the title of this post and had Nemo's voice in your head, you get bonus points!

I have been waiting for this day for months! Today was Noelle's first day of preschool. She has been longing to go to school since she figured out this past spring that her own personal hero (Meaghan Mahoney) went to school.

Here's what she knew about the day: she would have a teacher, make new friends, and that Mala (my mom) would cry.

Here's what she kept asking about school for the months leading up to it: could she ride the bus and would Meaghan be there.

Now I told her over and over again that Meaghan went to the big kid school and she would be going to the little kid school, but she still kept asking. On the bus thing we told her she just needed to pretend that Mama's car was a bus and she seemed to be able to deal with that.

We had her open house last week and it went pretty well. She was shy, but she was excited about her classroom and was mildly interested in some of the other kids there.

The night before her first morning it literally felt like Christmas Eve to me. I was so excited for her, for me, just all of it!  She's a great kid, but Mama needs a break from being the constant playmate. It's a little tricky with a 3 month old in tow and the constant rotating schedule of his needs. She also just seems to thrive with structure and learning and being around other kids...it's all going to be so good for her.

Today was day one and she did great! She had fun and even though she still seemed a bit shy about it all, she immediately asked if she could go back to school as we were driving out of the parking lot. That's a win in my book!

I very much look forward to the days where she can actually tell me about what she learned in school. Right now her answers are pretty much "I don't know" to most questions. She retains lots of knowledge and picks up on stuff pretty well, so I'm not quite sure why she isn't able to tell me what she did...I'll just chalk it up to her being a threenager.

Here's some pictures from this morning of our big girl!!

I told her to show how excited she was to start school :)

Another excited face. I will show her these one day when she doesn't want to go to school, in like 5th grade.

Posing before we left! Louie wasn't so sure about all this school business.