Meredith's First Day

Today was Meredith's first day at her new school. She is starting the pre-kindergarten program at the International School of Minnesota (ISM). She'll be there half-days five days a week during the school year. As we've previously discussed over the past month, we've been very excited by this school for Meredith and scrambled to get everything squared away for the switch.

Meredith has also been looking forward to the new experience. She's gotten to visit the school three times during the last month and met her teachers last week. But with new changes comes stress. Getting her to go to bed the night before was challenging. She was all riled up and kept on thinking of excuses to get out of bed (hungry, thirsty, want to safeguard her art project, want to find a book, want a book to be safeguarded for her, wanted the bathroom light to be on). Our patience wore thin and we directed her to go back to bed. Through pathetic tears she cried: "Daddy, if you could turn on the bathroom light and leave the door open for me that would be helpful." Okay. We'll turn on the light. But you need to get in bed. Sigh...

Poor girl. We understood her excitement and anxiety. Before dinner, she enacted the school drop-off and pick-up with her new backpack. We thought she really understood how everything was going to work. Afterall, she's done daycare and preschool for not quite three years. She gets this. But as we discussed how her first day of pre-K was going to go, she looked at me with alarm and blurted: "You mean you're going to leave me at school?!?"

We felt really sorry for the stress of the change she is going through, but in truth about 90% of the time she's really excited about her new school.

The drop off went smoothly and Meredith happily greeted her teachers. When we picked her up at 12:45 she had much to report on her first day and had lots of fun. She was tired, but still so hyper that she slept very little for her regular nap.