Team Andros: First Week of School

We had a very staggered start to school this year. The twins started school the day after Labor Day. With all of my babies having fall birthdays, we just miss the deadline for kindergarten. I found a great program when Mitch was this age: the K2 program at Dieringer Heights Elementary School in a neighboring school district. They do a full day pre-kindergarten program that is 2 times a week and every other Friday. It is a fabulous program and I was so pleased with it when Mitch attended. The girls have been over the moon excited about going and asked all the time over the summer when it was going to be time for pre-kindergarten.

Both the girls inherited old backpacks from Chloe.

They were thrilled with their new "big girl" backpacks and Chloe was excited to get a brand new backpack. Win win!

Nana and Papa were still in town and got to see them off on their first day!

In front of their new school!

Being out of district, they don't get to ride a bus and I have to drive them on school days. After the first week, we started carpooling with a friend and it has worked out so great. I take the kids in the morning and my friend brings them home. It's so nice.

Putting away their backpacks

The teacher told them they could sit at the same table and do play dough while they waited for the other kids to get there. The girls are great friends (most of the time), but they are not clingy to each other and do not mind at all that they are not permanently sitting by each other in class. They both make other friends separate of each other easily and are not dependent on each other for anything, really. Sometimes I wish they "needed" each other more, but their independence from each other has its perks as well.

The first day of school parking at the school was CRAZY! Most people that go here are in district and are bused, and the principal sent out an email a few days before school asking that those who take a bus to please ride it and that parents NOT drive to the school as well to meet their children there. No one listened to that, which made parking a nightmare. I have never seen anything like it. The school is at the end of a very long road- probably a quarter mile long. Cars were parked all the way at the beginning of the road and parents had to walk their children on a busy street for that quarter mile. I did not want to walk that far, so I drove up closer and parked illegally and ran the girls in fast. Luckily it is not like this every day.

The girls' first day went great. Chloe and Mitchell both had a bit of an adjustment when starting full day school for the first time- exhausted for the first few weeks and random tantrums for awhile. Leah and Lexi transitioned much smoother than either of them- I was so pleased and surprised. When I picked them up after the first day, they were pretty quiet on the way home and I caught them both yawning a few times, but they were happy.

The next day was Auburn School District's first day. Chloe woke up with red, goopy eyes and as much as neither of us wanted to admit, I knew she could NOT go to school that day. She was absolutely devastated. I felt horrible for her missing the first day, but could not send her to school in good conscious with what I was pretty positive was pink eye.

But Mitch was ready to go! First day of First Grade. This guy never shows any apprehension about starting school, and wasn't nervous at all about Chloe not being there.

We watched Mitch get on the bus, then raced to get to our doctor appointment for Chloe on time. I love our doctor's office- we can always get in same day, and I was able to get in this day just an hour and a half after I called.

Sure enough, we were treated for pink eye and told that she could go to school the next day, if she didn't wake up looking worse.

The next day, Thursday, Mitch had his first piano lesson. He was pretty excited! I LOVE that our piano teacher comes to our house.

With two kids in lessons this year, it makes our start time earlier in order to squeeze in two lessons before school starts. We have a 7:00 and 7:30 a.m. lesson. Depending on who is the most ready goes first. That is a crazy morning for us, trying to keep everyone on schedule and making sure they get everything done they need to before and after lessons. The twins also have school that day, so it just makes for our busiest morning of the week. But we make it work.

It was also Chloe's first day! 4th grade looks good on her! She was so excited, but a bit nervous too, as she was sure that she would be the only kid who didn't know what was going on in the classroom since she had missed the first day.

It didn't help that we started the year off with other drama too. Just a few days before school started, we found out that Chloe did not have a permanent teacher. We knew they were short one teacher for 4th grade at the end of last year, but were told that they would hire someone over the summer. I called the school about 10 days before school started and was given a name of the new teacher. I wrote it down, with the plan that we would go in and meet the teacher a few days before school started. I lost the paper and called back the Friday before Labor Day to get the name again. It was then that I was informed that the teacher that they had hired would "no longer be teaching." I wasn't given a reason or an explanation. With just 5 days until school started, and the day before a 3 day weekend, I asked what was going to happen. I was reassured that she would have a teacher on the first day. This did not mean that she would have a permanent teacher, though. Upon hearing this, Chloe got very panicky and nervous and upset. I told her we'd call back the day before school and see what was going on. Tuesday's call did not bring good news- there would be a permanent sub until a full time teacher could be found. That was not the news Chloe was wanting to hear, but we had a good talk and I tried to calm her nerves with some positive thoughts.

Our other drama was Chloe losing her glasses just a few days before school started (notice her glasses-less face?) She sets them down in random places all the time, but usually are found by someone after a few hours or a day. Not this time! One evening, she, Ben and I literally turned the house upside down looking for them. I have never searched so throughly for anything in my life, and they were no where to be found. Still, 6 weeks later, they are yet to be found. We found some old glasses of hers that don't fit quite as well (bent and stretched out a bit) that we are making due with until she can be seen by her eye doctor for her annual checkup. We didn't want to go buy brand new glasses on the off chance that her prescription had changed and have to turn around and buy ANOTHER new pair just a few weeks later. She is due for her annual at the end of October (and they would not let us come in early). Chloe does not like her temp glasses at all, but we are hoping this is a good lesson for taking better care of her glasses in the future.

Olivia and her BFF. Olivia prefers Chloe to Ben and I 95% of the time. She sure misses Chloe during the day and is so, so excited when she gets home from school. If Chloe comes in the door and doesn't come over and kiss or pick Livy up right away, Olivia bursts into tears and becomes hysterical.

I love the relationship these two have!

Family walk to the bus stop!

Chloe had a good first day, but came home feeling a bit lost in classroom procedures and had a massive syllabus from the sub that seemed overwhelming to me even. Class policies and certain things about the way the classroom is run seemed a bit weird and overwhelming and Chloe didn't feel on top of things.

To add insult to injury, I received a phone call from our pediatrician's office right after school that day, telling me that the throat swab they had run on Chloe the day before (just in case!) had come back positive for strep. Are you kidding me? That meant no school for Chloe the next day, again. Chloe burst into tears upon hearing this. Missing another day would certainly not help her feelings of being overwhelmed and unprepared. Poor girl.

We tried to make the most of her day home. She felt fine, and Livy was more than happy to have her home.

She even helped me with the laundry, without being asked!

That evening, after school and after Ben got home from work, we packed up and headed to Tri-Cities for a short weekend. (Chloe had been on antibiotics for 24 hours at this point and was not contagious).

Our nephew, Sam, turned 8 and was baptized. We were glad we could be there for his special day.

Sam, William and Mitch- the 3 amigo cousins! William will turn 8 in May, then Mitch the following October.

We seemed to be attracting drama and more fell in our lap this weekend. We loaded up the car and were just pulling out to head home Sunday evening when literally, as we were backing down Ben's parents' driveway, Ben's dad stopped us and told us we had a slash in one of our tires. We thought he was joking (we had just had the drama of 3 flat tires on Ben's truck not one week ago), but upon further inspection, he was absolutely right. We knew our front tires were old and it was actually on our list to get them replaced later in the month. With how bad the slash was, we knew it wasn't safe to travel home, as the tire could explode on the freeway at any given time. Being Sunday evening, there were no tire places open, especially the one place that we wanted to get them replaced at. So we unloaded and stayed another night. The kids were thrilled, but that meant Ben missing a day of work and Chloe and Mitch missing school (Chloe missing 3 of the first 4 days of school). There wasn't anything we could do about it, so we made the best of it.

On Monday, Ben was able to help his dad finish fixing a broken sprinkler, a project that they had started on Saturday.

We got more time to spend with cousins, which is always fun.

These two cute redheads had more time to steal each others binkies!

We finally made it home, safe and sound, Monday evening with almost $400 worth of new tires. Better safe than sorry.

Since then, Chloe has gotten a permanent teacher that she LOVES and things have been going great for her. Everyone loves their teachers (and I do too, which is a bonus) and we have had a good first month of school.