First Day

Kindergarten, good lord, started today. This feels both exciting and cataclysmic. Sofie has been beyond thrilled the past week, full of energy, telling each and every person she has any excuse to talk to during the course of her day that a) she just turned five and b) she's going to school and then basking in the attention this creates.  Everyone is ooohing and aahing about this huge step, us included, but none of them are also feeling sad about it like I secretly am.

 And so the day finally came. She woke up this morning so excited she was bouncing around the house, begging to go even though it was way too early. She strapped on her backpack fifteen minutes ahead of time and sat on the couch waiting to go.

Such a cutie, and so confident. Which is awesome. How did she get to be so big?





Sofie tells me that maybe the neighbor girl who ended up assigned to the same class will be "my best girl" in a way that's both hopeful and sweet. I explain to her that this may very well be but she'll also be meeting lots of other kids and there's no way to know who her best friends will be yet. Kid friendships are tricky things; you don't want to put too much pressure on the idea that any one particular kid will be someone's best buddy.

I'm glad school is starting for her, for all kinds of reasons. She's ready, of course; her teachers, her doctor, pretty much everyone has told us so, and we have no doubts about it. She's reading, she's got all those good interpersonal skills from two years of preschool, she makes friends well and isn't crippled by shyness, teachers tend to like her, most of the package is there. What I'm pretty sure we'll hear about is her ability to sit still and listen. She fidgets, and she still lives in her imagination much of the time and spent most of orientation reading all the signs on the walls of her classroom when she was supposed to be listening.

"They'll knock the whimsy out of her in under a week," one of Brett's friends said recently. I have to disagree. Sofie is a lot like me, and no amount of schooling managed to knock me firmly back into reality at her age. Sofie's got my stubborness and my imagination, and I predict there's nothing that will keep her from pretending (or perhaps believing) she's secretly a cat during school hours. Give her a few weeks and she'll be organizing the same massive-scale, multi-kid cat activities at recess that she was famous for at preschool.