First Day of Pre-K

It's been a long time since I've reported on the day to day happenings of the world's best boy, but the first day of school seemed like a significant milestone. We've been calling the day care "school" for years, but this was honest to goodness school with a cafeteria meal plan and uniforms and recess and a single teacher. We signed Ian up at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School for several reasons, none of which have to do with being Catholic. He's been going to St. Gregory day care since he was a few months old and it's been good to us. The day care, church and elementary school are all across the street from our office, so it is certainly convenient. And with Ian's birthday being 22 days past our area's arbitrary September 30 cutoff date, no other Pre-K I called would accept him. We would have had to "red shirt" him for a year before he could have done Pre-K next year and he would have been bored out of his mind.

So the Catholic school took him with open arms. We had to buy uniforms that are polo shirts and khaki shorts and white sneakers. He's not allowed to have any tattoos or nail polish and his shoe laces have to match his shoes. Given that I come from the wolf pack of parenting models, all these rules made me a bit nervous, but Ian seemed to do okay. We had several discussions about the uniform and he was dubious of the button shirt but Daddy wore a similar outfit that first day for solidarity.

Yesterday was the first day of school but it was really just an open house from 8-9am. Ian dutifully dressed in his uniform and was a star student for that hour. I was surprised that he actually wanted to keep his school clothes on while we ran errands that morning.

Even more surprising what this morning when MY son, who is NOT a morning person, cheerfully agreed to put on khaki shorts and a polo shirt at 6:30am. We dropped him off without a hitch and it was super easy. He was stoked for school!

There were a bit of shenanigans at dismissal in that they didn't have a letter saying he should go to after school care, but we sorted that out. I just don't understand how schools that do this every single year can forget to mention things like that.

We went to pick Ian up at 5:20pm and he was very upset that it apparently had taken "forever" for us to come get him. He said he had fun at school but he didn't like the after school program because there were big kids there and they wouldn't share toys with him. We're going to bring a backpack tomorrow and see if he can have a few special toys of his own to play with after school.

He wasn't allowed to have a blankie at school either, but he seemed to fare well with that. We brought him back to the office with us so we could finish our fantasy football draft. He ate a bit and went to watch a movie on the loveseat in my office. By 7pm he was out cold and he hasn't moved since.

This school stuff is hard work!