The day before

'Twas the night before Kindergarten and all through the house...
a small creature was stirring
and tossing and turning
and giggling and talking
and asking questions
and full of energy when she should be sleeping.

I realize that doesn't rhyme. Maybe Holly will whip up a rhyming diddy and post it in the comments.
Parker is super excited about the big day tomorrow. Yesterday around bedtime she was VERY anxious.....I made the mistake of bringing it up during story reading and she totally fell apart. Today she had a bit of a stomach ache and some reflux troubles, most likely from not eating....which I relate to anxiety about school starting, but maybe it was just a fluke.

We have our outfit all picked out and road tested (she can snap the snaps on the pants, and the shoes have velcro....we are still a few days away from being able to tie shoelaces). It's not the one in the photo below, that one was one that I did when we had a little 'fashion show' earlier in the week. I had her put on several outfit combination so she could see what can go together and I'm going to print them out so she'll have a little 'look book' of her outfits.
Yes really.
I'm trying to avoid the situation where she has only 2 things she'll wear.

After my last post, I got the following comment about our clothing battles:
"Do not make Parker dress like everyone else..."
but you don't understand, it's not ME making her dress this way. She has completed a detailed analysis of what 'big girls' (i.e. older girls....3rd-6th graders) wear, and she has determined that it is:

1. hair in low ponytail (not high, must be low)
2. jeans
3. tshirts
4. flip flops

This is a fine uniform except it's hard to find (non-babyish) shirts to fit her and it will be too hot for jeans for a while, and she can't wear flip flops to school.

At least the hair part will be easy.

Tune in tomorrow afternoon for the first day pictures and the day's recap!

(ps, I've removed the black nail polish, she has a sensible pink on there now)

Getting ready for school / Meet The Teacher

School starts on Monday! Parker is very excited, but also very anxious about it. Although we've been doing little things to get ready for the big day....we're still not nearly ready.

I've put a big calendar on the fridge and we put apple stickers on important school days, ballet stickers on ballet days, etc. She marks off the days and it helps us count down to special events.

We got a new backpack and new lunchbox, in her new favorite color, blue. Also notice the pj pants and tank top...her new favorite pajama combination. She has 2 pairs of these and wants to wear them ALL THE TIME.

Tonight was Meet The Teacher. Bob came home early from work to attend. Parker changed clothes 3 times before she came up with the right outfit. I'm still super stressed about what she's going to wear to school. She wants to wear jeans 24/7 (when she's not wearing pj pants), but it will be way too hot for jeans to start with, so I have no idea what type of bottom she's going to wear. She has many pairs of capri pants....but I'd have to tranquilize her to get her in them I think.

Her teacher is nice, Parker likes her, and she has many years of experience with 4 and 5 year olds. When we first got there, they took the kids on a tour of the school and the parents met with the teacher. She went over some of the basic info and the parents went around the room and introduced themselves and said if this was their first kindergartener, or last, or whatever. 2 moms got weepy (not me!). There are 3 other parents from our neighborhood....but they all have boys. Parker returned from the tour looking pretty shaken. The teacher had everyone do a dance, but Parker just stood there sort of frozen. She'll snap out of it, but it might take her a few days (weeks?). At her table are 2 boys and another girl. The other little girl was sobbing the entire time and was glued to her mom...not good. There are more girls in the class than boys, and many of the girls have gender-neutral names like Parker does. Hopefully she'll find a buddy quickly.

Part of the evening's events was for the kids to put away their schools supplies. Instead of running around buying everything, you could order supplies from the PTA back a few months ago. I COULD HAVE SWORN I DID THIS. But apparently not. Our package of supplies wasn't there, and I can't find the canceled check...so even if i did order them, I haven't been charged for them, so I'm moving on and hitting Target first thing tomorrow to get what I can. It looks pretty standard, and a lot of it is communal stuff, and then we'll pop in and drop it off tomorrow afternoon. Not even the first day and I've already dropped the ball, created chaos, and put us behind the 8 ball. Not a good way to start things, but hopefully it will all work out. It will all work out, right?