They’ll never again have a very first day of school

The sweet girls finished their first day of Kindergarten today and both said they really liked it. Whew! Ree seems a touch more enthusiastic than Ro, but both say they’re eager to go back tomorrow. (good thing...) I think the “Meet the Teacher” event yesterday really helped. This morning they marched right into class, stuffed their lunchboxes in their cubbies, then found their place on the carpet. All TubaDad and I got were two over-the-shoulder waves and two excited smiles. We hung around for a few minutes peeking through the tiny window to see if they needed us, but they were perfectly content in their big-girl classroom. (*sniff*)

So TubaDad took me out to lunch and I had a glass of chardonnay to help stave off the weepies. I also made him talk and talk and talk about anything BUT how fast our girls were changing and the fact that they have now started school. It feels weird, I gotta say. Like this is their first huge step toward growing up. Ahhhhhhh, ok, breathing deep and changing the subject to something easier:

Ro (left) chose a Hello Kitty lunchbox and thermos, and Ree (right) chose a Littlest Pet Shop lunchbox and thermos. The soft, insulated lunchboxes and flip-top built-in-straw thermos thingamabobs are awfully different from the metal ones I used to carry back in the day. I don’t have a first-day-of-school picture (ahem, mom!), and no one in the family remembers clearly... But I think it was a metal lunchbox with Raggedy Ann modge-podged on the front and I remember that my little bro had a cool domed-top mailbox one at some point. Does anyone else remember what your first lunchbox (or any grade-school one) was decorated with?

  

They both kept yelling “kindergarten!!!!” at random times today in the family room, bathroom, car, wherever. It was hilarious.

And we made signs for the first day of Kindergarten, and then I almost forgot to get them out. Oops (I was a little frazzled today). They were so proud to decorate them and hold them up “for a peeshur, mama!” I thought it was cute that Ro held hers so she could read it. And Ree was a little vexed by the one-armed coloring. She’s usually dead-on within the lines, but I think the paper kept scooting around on her:

Here’s what they took in their lunchboxes for snack today. I packed a lot since I didn’t know if they’d be starving or not (turns out they weren’t very hungry). They’re in the afternoon Kindergarten, so they eat lunch at home before we go to school, and then have a snack and recess break somewhere in the middle of their three-and-a-half hours of school. Ree picked the bunny egg and Ro picked the bear one. They both ate most of the hardboiled eggs, all of the mini oranges, and only a couple of pretzels and cheese cubes. Oh, and they’re the ones who wanted to have bento boxes. I thought they’d be hard to open and too much of a pain and tried really really hard to sell them on a simple ziploc bag or just one square tupperware container. No dice. They were extremely determined, and even ran to the bento drawer and pulled out what they wanted. Fine, fine... that’s what they got.

PS: School Decisions: A whole bunch of folks asked how we made the decisions about whether to start the girls in school this year or next (because the CA cutoff is Dec 2 and they have Oct 6 birthdays) and whether to keep them in the same class. Regarding starting this year: it kind of all came down to Ro and Ree. They were SO ready to go. I think being in preschool and then pre-K for a few mornings a week the past couple of years helped. My mom (who ran Kindergarten admission testing at her school for 17 years) has been telling us that they’ve got the academics, attention span, motor skills, and maturity down pat. The area I want to make sure they’re really well adapted in is the social area, so we’ll be keeping an eye on it. I was always a year younger than my classmates, by the way, and went to college at 17, so I’ve got firsthand experience with being on the young side of the classroom age span. And it never bothered me at all. The other things that helped make the decision were blog commenters, believe it or not. I was kind of agonizing over this and commenters pointed out that I wasn’t making a decision for the rest of their lives. If anything doesn’t work out, we can just have them repeat Kindergarten. There’s no stigma at this age. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about that option before, but it was such a relief! So anyhow, we’re starting them this year, and they’ll turn 5 a little over a month after school starts, and then we’ll watch everything. With the twins in same class vs. different class thing, we had the gut feeling all along that we wanted to keep them together, plus Ro and Ree were adamant that they wanted to be together. Then we talked to a whole bunch of folks and heard that Kindergarten and possibly even first grade are really good grades to keep twins together (because everything is so new and kind of a little scary for them at first) and it’s easier and less traumatic to separate them when they’re a little older and more confident and secure in school. Anyhow, so that’s what we’re doing. Basically we made both decisions for now and will reevaluate both of them at the end of Kindergarten.