The first day of Kindergarten

5:38 am

Am I too old to be having that nightmare where I oversleep and miss the first day of kindergarten?

7:32 am

At what point did I switch from trying to make this a peaceful, relaxed morning to coaching Amanda through every bite of her waffle,"Eat faster, eat faster! Do you want to be late to school on your very first day?!?"

9:25 am

Welcome to one of the longest mornings of my life. Kindergarten. Who knew it was going to be this hard?

Okay I suspected it. I was afraid that as hard as I tried to put on a brave face, I would end up a blubbering mess of tears. I thought that my pockets would be overflowing with wadded up Kleenex and that I might scare the children by sobbing loudly and uncontrollably. I thought Amanda would probably do okay other than being horrified that her mother was making a spectacle of herself. She’d be in the corner whispering to another kid, “Who is that lady? How embarrassing!”

Yesterday was my first indication that things might go a bit differently than I was expecting. Amanda went to a birthday party for a pair of twins that she has grown up with. She’s gone to almost all of their birthday parties and always had a blast. So I had absolutely no reason to believe this party would be any different. But do you remember those old Folgers commercials…the ones where they would show a scene in some five-star restaurant and a smarmy voice would whisper, “We have secretly replaced the regular coffee at Café de Foo-Foo with Folgers crystals. Let's see if these picky coffee-drinkers can taste the difference…” Well if that voice had been at the party yesterday it would have said, “We have secretly replaced Dione’s happy little social-butterfly of a daughter with a nervous kid who will be terrified if she loses sight of her mother for even a second.” I could tell the difference immediately and it freaked me out more than a little.

Since Amanda was a baby she has been happy to hang out with pretty much anyone, any time. I might have had a hard time leaving her but she never seemed to have much of a problem leaving me. Amanda has never been clingy, never had a problem talking to other kids or adults for that matter. In a situation where she doesn’t know anyone she will act shy for a few minutes but then she warms up, makes friends and ends up having fun. So yesterday was weird. And it cranked up my anxiety level for the first day of kindergarten, oh about 150%.

So back to today, the good news is that I didn’t cry… Well okay I teared up a bit when I saw Amanda’s name on a red apple hanging on the window outside of her classroom. For some reason that got me. This is Amanda’s classroom! How did this happen? But then I sucked it up and managed to keep my brave face on until I got home.

Amanda on the other hand? She was the crier. After a few minutes in her classroom, Amanda started crying and told me she didn’t want me to leave. “Please don’t leave, please stay with me, Please don’t goooooooo. I don’t want you to leave, Mommy.” When the teacher suggested that any kids who needed to go to the bathroom might want to go before she started class, Amanda said she wanted to go and she wanted me to go with her. I knew this was not going to be pretty.

As soon as I managed to cram myself, Amanda and Alyssa into the tiny little bathroom (with this tiny little kindergarten size toilet) Amanda had a full-fledged meltdown. The tears started flowing freely, and she was sobbing, “Please Mommy, please Mommy I want to go home, pleeeeeeease…”

On the outside I was smiling brightly and sticking with the, “Oh this is going to be so much fun, Amanda. You’re going to make friends and you’re going to sing songs and you’re going to love this, Sweetie, I promise,” thing, but on the inside I was thinking, “OHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh nooooooooooooooooo… what if she doesn’t have any fun and doesn’t make any friends and they don’t sing any songs and she HATES this and we have to do this all over again tomorrow?”

It only got worse after that. Amanda totally wanted to leave Kindergarten but Alyssa totally wanted to stay. So Alyssa was fighting me, practically tore my shirt off while desperately trying to jump from my arms so she could play with the fabulous selection of toys while Amanda was sitting on her little corner of the carpet holding onto my leg, unsuccessfully fighting back tears because she wanted out of there badly. Did I mention that she was the only kid crying? She was. I think I was the mom that all the other moms were relieved not to be at that moment. The other parents were great though, very sympathetic. A couple of them tried to get their daughters to befriend Amanda but Amanda wasn’t having it.

The other parents were leaving a few at a time and I finally decided that I was just going to have to do it, just hug her good-bye and hope for the best. She tried to follow me out the door, but then she turned around and stayed. I stood outside with another mom talking for a bit and when I peeked in the window I saw that Amanda was marching around the classroom with the rest of the kids, miserably marching, but at least marching, which was a good thing.

10:08 am

I call my mom to report the morning's happenings and ask her how my first day of kindergarten went. Did I cry? Nope. Did she? Yep.

11:10 am

I had all of these grand ideas about how I would spend the four hours (actually 3.75 hours) between the time I drop Amanda off at school and the time I pick her up. Now I’m just mostly hoping I’ll be able to spend it doing something other than obsessively worrying how she’s doing. Is she okay? Is she still crying? Is she making friends? Is she having fun yet?

12:45 pm

So the first thing I noticed when I picked Amanda up from school was her huge smile. No tears in sight. (insert enormous sigh of relief) Her teacher even sent her home with a little red happy face paper, which apparently, in kindergarten teacher speak, means Amanda had a good day.

Actually according to Amanda she had a great day. Not that I was concerned. During crayon time, she wrote down her thoughts… She doesn’t write much yet so this was mostly just lines, not actual words, but she read it to me slowly so I could type it out for future reference...you know, like maybe tomorrow morning in case she decides to barricade herself inside her room and refuses to come out until she's old enough to skip school completely and just get her G.E.D.. So here’s the scoop on school in Amanda’s words:

"I had such a good time at school. I want to go tomorrow. I don’t know all the kids at the school but I know some. I hope other people get to come here on their first day and they have a lot of fun. I didn’t eat any of my lunch at school but mommy sent me some lunch. I did not get into trouble the whole time. I made three friends. Every day I want to go to school but I can’t because some days I have to be off of school."

In case that’s not enough for you, I asked her to give me the play-by-play starting with the moment I left:

• She cried for seven minutes (no, she can’t tell time) and then the little girl sitting next to her asked, "Did your mommy leave?" Amanda said yes and the little girl said, "Mine did too. Wanna be friends?" (Ahhhhhhhh…)
• She didn’t get to eat the snack I packed. None of the other kids ate snacks from their backpacks either. The teacher gave out pretzels but Amanda doesn’t like pretzels so she didn’t eat anything at all.
• They sang a song about Humpty Dumpty and an alligator song.
• There was a puppet table, a paint table, a play-doh table and a crayon table. The boys went to the puppet table, she wanted to play at the play-doh table, (of course) but there were too many kids and not enough chairs so she ended up at the crayon table where she drew pictures of me and Alyssa but not Daddy because he’s hard to draw with the beard, moustache and nose (?).
• It’s not okay to leave your stuff on the floor because one girl tripped over something one of the kids left on the floor.
• They can call the teacher “teacher” or "Mrs. P****r" but not "Mrs. P." One boy called her "Mrs. P" and she didn’t like it.
• They learned all about the letter “A” and tomorrow will learn all about “B”.
• She made three friends, one of whom high-fived her, without specifically saying that she was high-fiving her but that was okay cuz Amanda said “I was like, oh I know what you’re doing,” and high-fived her right back.
• The teacher was really nice and only got mad when kids didn’t listen and then they got time-outs but Amanda ALWAYS listened.
• They got to play outside two times and one of her friends fell down and scraped her hands up.
• They mostly sat on the carpet not in chairs and Amanda picked a square on the carpet that had a flower on it, but one time her friend sat in the flower square and Amanda had to sit in the boring old zebra square.
• When I asked her if there were any cute boys in her class she said, “Oh yes! The little boy who had to wait a really long time for his mommy was CUH-UTE!!! (She doesn’t know his name but he’s blonde.)

And best of all:

• She can’t wait to go back tomorrow.

Oh and as for me, I’m doing better too. We survived our first day of kindergarten and with any luck we just might survive the whole year.