First Day of School 2013

Yep, feeling kind of like a slacker here. It's been almost a full month since the kids started school. At least I took pictures! (Wish I had been able to find the actual camera, though. As nice as smartphones are, they don't quite have the same quality as an actual camera.)

Day #1 started out awesomely! We arrived early with plenty of time to find parking (the kids lotteried into a great school but there is hardly any parking surrounding the campus), unload and take pictures.

Callie (kindergarten) in front of the Be Kind flower.

Trevy (1st grade) with her cheesy smile.

  

Handsome Landon (kindergarten).

My three big kids. (Can you tell they all picked out their own outfits? Why Callie chose long sleeves, I couldn't say, but her hair looks really cute and she did that herself too!)

And one of the little ones.

I kept trying to get a picture with just my five kids, but...

Yep, we were photo-bombed. Such a sweet little guy. Ironically, his name is Timmy too! Timy Wu. His parents were super sweet. They had only been in Tucson a week or two. They taught me a couple of Chinese words and I clarified the American usage of the word sure for them.

I wasn't sure how I would feel that first day of school. Honestly, no tears. I was really excited for my twins to start kindergarten.  They were excited. Trevy was excited. And they made a new friend right off the bat!

The little men and I ran a couple of errands to pick up school supplies.

Love having them both fit in the cart. I'll be honest, that is the reason I waited until the other three were already in school. Have you ever tried herding five kids through Target? Really not fun. Unless you want to be there all day. Meh, they do have air conditioning, so it's tempting... But not tempting enough when you start having late-for-naptime-induced tantrums!

After picking kids up from school, we went to visit Missa at her new school - St. Michael's - where she is teaching 2nd grade this year. They barely started this past week so we weren't interrupting.

Ms. G at her new desk.

Wyatt testing out the cupboard hardware. This kid is getting around! He's been pulling up for a good month now.

Out by the fountain - the best group shot I could get.

We played at the park next door for a little while and Callie had Wyatt laughing so hard.

On the way back, Timmy saw this golf cart and climbed on. Fun photo op, I thought. And then I saw the keys in the ignition and figured I should get Latigo out of there ASAP! (The name requires an entire post of its own.)

*****

Day #2. Friday. (I thought it was really weird having them start on a Thursday but I met another lady who is a teacher and she said she really likes it that way. Two days of introducing rules and getting kids adjusted, followed by a weekend where the kids forget everything and then you just need a quick refresher Monday morning and you're off!)

James happened to have this particular Friday off so he walked the kids to the bus stop with me. It's only a few streets over, but they had to be there at 7am. Honestly, I was rather impressed that we made it on time.

What didn't impress me was the bus driver. He stopped, opened the door and told me that our kids weren't on his list, but he would take them that day anyway. Seriously? We were where we were told to be when we were told to be there. But why would I want him to take them if they weren't on his list? How would he know where they should go?

He hopped off and showed me his list. I pointed out the kids names and he said something like, "Oh man, I was just looking too far down." Uh-huh. Not exactly instilling confidence here... But the kids were all so excited and looking forward to riding the bus and, since they WERE on his route, we decided to give it a shot.

It was a very strange feeling walking home with just two little boys. It definitely felt like someone was missing! But we did get a lot done that day.

Melissa got home from working on her classroom in time to walk to the bus stop with us and take this picture.

After one of our few rainstorms. (I kid you not, central Tucson has been left out this monsoon season. A lot of the surrounding areas are reporting nice levels of rain but, even on the days when friends on Facebook are commenting on their massive storms, we are bone dry. Dark clouds move in, it gets hotter and more muggy, making me curse our evaporative cooling all the more, and then they move out. It's driving me crazy! As much as I love watching the rain, I am ready for this monsoon season to come to an end and take this heat and humidity with it!)

But I digress. The school bus.

Fortunately with our kids on it.

Unfortunately, the bus driver felt to repeat to me that our kids weren't on his route. He was talking to transportation about the situation...  Stellar.

For whatever reason, the kids still love riding the bus.  I figured the novelty would wear off after the first week and they would want to be taken and picked up. But such has not been the case. Trevy has loved riding the bus. The twins like it, but they are fine with getting dropped off in the morning.

Having to haul everyone to the bus stop by 7am definitely did not appeal to me and I was not entirely confident in that bus driver being responsible for my kids. So I debated. And then we compromised. I would drop the kids off in the morning (at 8:00) and then they could ride the bus home.

Monday went well. Better than expected, in fact. The kids were excited to get to play on the playground for a little while before class.

Tuesday began the meltdowns. Callie became the ultimate cling-on. She cried, she wanted hugs, kissing hands, more hugs, more kissing hands... I could not get her to go through the gate for over 15 minutes. At last the bell rang and she panicked that she would miss class and walked to her line in tears with Landon.

Wednesday was much the same. Again we were there for a good 15 minutes (I know - I myself have been rather impressed with us making it to school so early) with tears and kissing hands and screams and then the bell rang. Landon and Trevy both tried to get Callie to go with them but it just wasn't happening. I truly lucked out as a friend happened to be walking past just at that moment.  Her daughter is older and loves school so she walked through the gate just fine. My friend asked if she could help me and I couldn't have been more grateful.  She took Callie very firmly by the wrist and marched her screaming and crying the entire way to her line.

Thursday I thought I might get off easy when Callie saw one of her friends hanging out with one of the school monitors when we pulled up. Annnnnnnd....no. The friend was also a cling-on.

Friday was AWESOME! The monitors saw us coming. They double-teamed Callie. Apparently one of them had talked to Callie at lunch the day before and Callie had agreed to hang out with her on the playground in the morning. They took her hand and waved me goodbye. As long as she is inside the gate and someone is watching her, I am all about high-tailing it out of there before any waterworks can start.

Since that day, she has been fine with extra kissing hands on a necklace of mine that she can wear as long as she goes straight to the playground without a fuss.

Back to the bus situation. I babysat for a friend that first full week of school. Her daughter is only 2 and a half so I really didn't feel safe walking to the bus stop by myself. Three kids ages three and under along a major street gives me the heebie jeebies. So we drove the quarter mile. The bus was early and, hooray! there was an entirely different bus driver. The lady was very friendly, had all her teeth and turned out to be the former bus driver for some of our other friends, who absolutely loved her.

Over the course of the week, her arrival time varied by about 20 minutes, not that I could say mine was exactly the same, so I gave her my cell number, lest I miss her.

The following week, she gave me hers. With just the two boys and a new wagon James found for us, I couldn't justify driving my gas-guzzling van to the bus stop. I ended up having to wake them from naps two days in a row and hauling them through the heat of the afternoon to one shady little spot along the street. Good thing we had some of Auntie Bridgette's peanut butter cookies to keep us all happy!

Happy, that is, until three tired kids piled off the bus, with everyone wanting to ride or fighting over who got to pull the wagon. (Or needing to use the bathroom.)

When we got to our house, I thought it would be best to take the wagon straight to the backyard so we could put it away and not have it get stolen. Great idea! Until someone has to touch the gate with this little lady on it!

Fortunately, our neighbor, Scott, was just arriving home at that time and came over to take care of her for me. He also came over that night and helped me kill about 10 more along the front of our house, though none quite as big as this gate guard.

As he requested, I knocked down all cobwebs the following day and have tried to be diligent in getting rid of any more as soon as I see them. Rather unfortunate, as not all spiders are bad and rather useful at getting rid of other insects, but I would much rather be spider-free all together than risk having any of her descendents moving in!

Can I tangent or what? Back to the bus. Tuesday afternoon Crystal, our beloved bus driver, asked where we live that I had to haul the kids streets over to the bus stop. I told her we were only about two streets up, not really a big deal. They probably didn't have her come down our street because it isn't a straight shot between the two major streets and I wasn't sure the bus could navigate the turn at the east end. 

Wednesday I asked if she could she possibly drop them off on the corner at the other end. She told me no because they don't do drop offs on busy streets. Fair enough. She told me she would check out a map to see if she could get any closer to us.

Guess what I happened to see Thursday afternoon on our street? Another school bus! Headed the opposite direction. It stopped right across the street from our house about an hour before I needed to go to meet the kids. So I told Crystal and she said that she was going to try driving by our house. I received a call that evening that she had no problem getting through and she has been dropping the kids off right at our house since that Friday. It has been so nice not to have to wake kids up, watch the clock, try not to pass out from heat exhaustion... I do miss the exercise, but the heat...not so much.

On the whole, school has been going well for all three kids. Trevy has aced her spelling tests with a little help from dad and none from me. I think he has gone over word lists once or twice, but I think her love of reading is serving her well.

The twins' teacher was stung by a bee and out the first week of school so that set things back for their classroom just a little bit. Glad that she is back and they are all falling into a nice routine. I love the little projects they have come home with. Landon loves the songs and sang, "Criss cross, applesauce. Hands in your lap" for the walk home one day. Another day Callie sang the days of the week song. They all have a folder that comes home on Thursday and gets turned back in on Friday. Or, in Callie's case, the following Wednesday. She is following in Trevy's footsteps. As a kindergartner, I often ended up having to remind Trevy Monday morning at the door of her classroom to turn her folder in when she failed to do so on Friday. Trevy hasn't missed turning anything in yet this year and Landon has been stellar as well. I gave him Callie's folder this past Wednesday because I couldn't think of any other way to get it back to the teacher via its owner. I'm glad they have each other.

They have also had to stick up for each other (and wake each other!) on the bus. They are also learning that not everyone who pretends to be their friend really is. One girl - Nadiya - had Trevy pull Callie's hair and Callie pull Trevy's shirt down in front. Ah, the joys of learning!