Thursday, August 13, 2009

Getting Ready for School

chalkboard via three potato four shop

We're flush with milestones around here. Audrey lost that wiggly tooth on Monday (we finally got to use the cool tooth fairy kit), and in a mere week and a half, she starts her first day of kindergarten.

I have to say, she's pretty excited about the whole enterprise of embarking on "big girl school", and since she's been at a full-day pre-school for the past few years, this isn't really a drastic. That said, there will be lots of changes. It's a new school and only a few of her pre-school classmates will go there with her, so lots of new faces, new teachers, new routines. But she's rearing to go, and we're doing all the requisite get ready for school activities.

First there's been the giant clothing purge... My mother-in-law generously offered to buy some school clothes for both girlies, so I wanted to be sure we knew what we really needed and didn't just buy a bunch of things haphazardly. Plus Audrey has become rather persnickety about clothing and won't wear any number of things due to this pesky thing she calls "comfort". (I'm not sure what she's thinking here, doesn't she realize girl's clothes aren't about comfort -- jeeze kid get with the program...)

She eschews puffy sleeves, little belts, zippers and buttons, and as such, we can expect a clothing related melt-down most mornings. (The one down side of Kindergarten -- especially for me -- is that it starts a full 45 minutes earlier than her old school, so I'm determined to get this clothing thing down to a science.) I started by pulling every. single. item. of clothing she owned out and making her try it on, creating Audrey approved (i.e. über comfortable) outfits, that she promises to put on before school with no fuss. We sussed out a grand total of five outfits, which for a messy five-year old is about half of what I was aiming for.

Now Millie on the other hand (and this is the most comical/sad revelation of the great clothing purge), as a result of Audrey's hand-me-downs and doting grandparents, has, wait for it...59 shirts (and that was after giving a slew away to friends, Goodwill, etc). That's just the shirts, there's an equal abundance of pants, skirts and dresses. It's kinda sick. So we've asked for no more clothes for Millie (quite possibly ever, as there are equally bulging bins stored away for age 3 clothes, age 4 clothes, etc...etc...) and we're working on finding things Audrey will actually wear.




finnish chalk and notebooks via kiosk

While the school clothes issue has been a major whip, procuring school supplies is a whole different story. Ooooh school supplies, how I love thee. I'm flush with new #2 pencils, fresh crayons, big nubby, pink erasers, snowy lined notebooks. It's all so lovely. Between the school supplies and all our John Hughes reminiscing, I want to go back to school myself...sort of ;-)