and so it begins...

Iris had her first day of preschool on Wednesday.

I should have written my thoughts on the subject on Tuesday.  Tuesday I was an overly sentimental basket case.  Okay.  Maybe not basket case, but I was emotional.  For instance, after serving the kids their breakfast, I went back in the kitchen to get my coffee and I started crying listening to her morning babble.  I wanted her last day as a "not-schooler" to be special, so I let her plan the day's activities.  She chose: play outside, leftovers for lunch, and make ice cream.  So that's what we did.  And I planned for Mom to keep Asher at her house for dinner so Iris and I could have a date night.  Iris picked IHOP for dinner and afterward we browsed every aisle at Toys R Us.

She loved it.

And Wednesday came.  I was so focused on making sure I didn't forget anything she needed for school, getting her dressed and taking some photos (not to mention making sure we were ready in enough time to take a few photos at the school) that I got angry when I couldn't find her shoe.  My time allotment for the morning did not include spending 15 minutes tearing apart our already-messy house looking for a matching pair of shoes!  Then as we were walking out to the "bus" (Iris really wanted to ride the school bus.  So we told her our van is a preschool bus.  She was calling me Bus Driver all the way to and from school) I realized I had not fed her lunch.  It was 12:15 and she hadn't eaten lunch.

And the Mother of the Year Award goes to...

Not this Momma!

Luckily the first 2 days of school are only one-hour sessions, to warm the kids up to the idea.  But still, having to wait till 1:30 for lunch is rough on a little one!

I am glad, though, that I got my weepiness out on Tuesday.  Wednesday was easy.  And Iris had a really good time.  I think she is going to love preschool.

But it still does make me a little wistful to think that Iris probably won't really remember these past three and a half years where she was carefree and uncommitted and home with me and Asher all day.  Starting preschool is starting her on the path that she'll be following and compounding upon for the next 14 years (and hopefully even more).  And someday it'll hit her (for me it was in the 7th grade) that she's been in school forever, and it'll be forever till she graduates, and school sucks, and there is always so much to do.  And I think that maybe I should have kept her home just for one more year to make more lasting happy memories of not having to do anything.  But that would only be selfish of me.  Iris is way too smart, and way too social, and way too ready to be a preschooler for me to not send her to preschool.

She has outgrown me.

She needs to be challenged in ways that I can not challenge her and grow through things I should not shelter her from.

Okay, so maybe I'm still feeling pretty sentimental.

eating our homemade ice cream

waiting till time to leave (when she should have been eating lunch).  and a quick shot before saying goodbye.