First Day of School

Today was Sam and Claire's first day of preschool. We were somehow up at 7:00 this morning, which is a tad early for us, but it was good to have plenty of time to get ready. The kids were really excited about putting on their new school clothes so were eager to get dressed as soon as they woke up rather than hangin out in their jammies for 2 hours. Thank god for that! After breakfast and a couple of quick pictures we were all ready to go. They were both excited about the first day although mommy was not very excited about the fact that Claire brought her "entourage" of stuffed animals into the car with her. She had her 3 monkeys, her blankie and her bear finger puppet. Bill had already told me that it was going to be a challenge to get her to leave all of her stuff in the car and while I knew this I was not looking forward to this task. On the way to school I told her that her monkeys and her blankie (aka Annie) were going to hang out with mommy while she was in school but that she could take her bear finger puppet with her. As we were getting out of the car at school she said that she was going to leave monkeys and Annie in the car but then grabbed all of them anyway. I had to pry them from her and remind her that they would stay with mommy and little bear would go with her. She conceded with some resistance but made me carry her all the way up to the school. Of course Sam said, "Mommy can't carry you Claire. You know why, mommy? Because you are carrying baby brother. Daddy has to carry you, Claire." Okay, apparently we have said this enough times that Sam can repeat it but since Bill wasn't there I was stuck carrying Claire. We headed to Claire's class first and I explained to her teachers about her finger puppet and they didn't seem to have a problem with her bringing it with her. She was completely happy in her class so Sam and I left her to go to his class. On the way I stopped to talk to a friend but that didn't last long b/c Sam was so antsy to get to his class that I had to keep moving. He went into his class without looking back and I was off! I had a list of a million things to do before noon and only 3 hours to do it. When I picked them up they both got fabulous reports from their teachers. Claire has the same assistant teacher that Sam did when he was in the 2 year old class and she marveled at how different Sam and Claire are from each other. Both kids were wiped out (of course they didn't nap!) and were so excited to share all about their first day of school. So far it's shaping up to be a great year!