baby girl

Aidan starts preschool tomorrow. She totally needs it; she needs more enrichment than I seem to be able to give her right now, former teacher or not. She needs something this year before starting Kindergarten next year. But I can't believe it. Everyone knows that your children's, well, childhood goes so fast, but I just can't believe it.

I am nervous for her. I've been prepping her on how to ask a girl or girls if she can sit with them to eat lunch. I've been teaching her how to say her name and ask someone else's. We've been talking about how to handle things on her own that usually Mommy helps her with. And tonight, we packed her lunchbox together and talked about how everything in the lunchbox can go in the trash when she's done except the lunchbox itself. I know that kids can be cruel, even at age four, and I just want her to have a good first day so that she will want to go back on Thursday. I'm anxious, nervous, wanting only the best for my firstborn!

She is not nervous. She is, as she says, "so exciting!" She's been asking me for weeks, "Mommy, how many more days and how many more sleeps till preschool?" She tells me exactly what she'll be doing while she's there, which is actually another concern for me. What if she's totally surprised and they do all different things? Will she react okay? Then I ask her if she understands that it's not a one time thing, this preschool. That she'll be going twice a week. "Yes, Mommy, but only until I am five, because then I will be going to Kindergarten, and that happens every day." Oh, okay.

I even worried about her sleep tonight, knowing that she'd be just too excited to go right to sleep and that she'd come out of her bedroom talking about it five or six times. But I put her to bed on time, and I haven't heard a peep.

Maybe she's more ready than I am?