Claire's First Day.

We live walking distance from Claire's school, which I love. What I envision as a lovely stroll crunching leaves, wearing sweaters while pushing the stroller and sipping from a thermos is in all reality hefting along a stroller, wiggling it in odd directions to keep Emma happy, tipping it backwards to keep Tiegan from trying to jump out, and begging and pleading with Aoife to not stop scootering right in front of the stroller so I don't run her over. We still crunch leaves, and it's fantastic. I love the chaos and we will make the trek on foot until I deem it too cold to do so. Aoife scooters along and Claire's scooter is tucked under the stroller so she can scooter home, too.

I was excited to pick up Claire from school and hear about her first day so we arrived pretty early. The bigger girls played on the playground while I fed Emma and waited for Claire. Other parents arrived and pretty soon the kindergarteners came bopping out. She had a couple students from her 4K cclass in her class, and apparently made a couple new friends on her first day. A few girls hugged her before leaving. (We~re still working on showing affection to other people. She usually just stands there and maybe smiles, or looks terrified and honestly, I'm okay with the awkward coldness. You do you, Claire.)

Claire is really excited about one new friend in particular. The two of them came up and Claire asked if her new friend could come over and play. (Maybe another day, that sounds fun.) The older girls hopped on their scooters and I wrestled Tiegan into the stroller (in tears), and we set off for home. Claire told me about her day, yelling so I (and the entire neighborhood) could hear.

 There's a hill when you first leave the school, Aoife was going pretty fast and ended up biffing it right in front of the crossing guard. I'll be wearing running shoes from now on so I can keep up, but when I reached her, she sputtered that she wanted to keep scootering so she could do the rest of the the hill and go fast again.

Obviously traumatized.

 Claire yelled about her day. She had cheerios for breakfast and a duuper yummy sandwich and oranges and tots for lunch. (Her school has free breakfast and lunch for everyone, which is super fortunate.) Her new friend sat by her. Her teacher liked her flower pants, and she wore a really pretty blue dress. They did math and had quiet time and she colored in coloring books. For choice time she did some more math and read some books. When we finally got home, she handed me a big stack of papers and asked if any of them were for her. (nope) "ugh that was a really really lot of school"  -it was even early release day this week. We'll see how she handles next week.

Safe to say she loves school, is making friends, and will have a great time. And will probably need a nap.