First Day of Second Grade

It’s official – I’m the mother of a second grader! Ugh… Where did the time go? It feels like I was just standing at the bus stop with my 3-month-old baby, waving goodbye to my kindergartner and wiping a tear from eye. Fast forward two years to this morning, when our second grader led the parade down the driveway, followed by our 2-year-old with her basket of Little People, Grandpa, my husband, and then there’s me juggling the video camera in one hand and the digital camera in the other. I did finally relinquish the digital camera to my father, who got a few cute shots of her getting on the bus, while I videotaped the whole thing. We looked like the Griswolds (“Family Vacation”), I’m sure! Amazingly, my girl is still not at the age where this is embarrassing to her – or maybe she IS at that age, but she hasn’t gotten the memo yet…

She had a good day at school, which was a relief because she’s been agonizing over it for the past week. We just tried to offer words of encouragement and tried to be patient with her – I remember being younger and having that same mini-anxiety attack that the summer was over and it was back to school. I also felt that way as each of my two maternity leaves came to an end, frankly! Fortunately, she liked her teacher, saw some friends in her class that she hadn’t realized would be in the same class with her, and – big excitement – her teacher handed out stickers for the kids to label their folders! She was less than thrilled that the bus took 1 hour and 25 minutes to get her home today... We live about 5 minutes away... But, she was surprisingly ok about that, considering how she feels about the bus.

Chaos returned to our house tonight between getting dinner on the table, homework done -- only 20 minutes of reading tonight -- there will be 20 minutes of reading every night, in addition to whatever other projects are assigned -- I sense there is a lot more homework given out now than back in the "olden days" when I went to school! ;) And then finally bedtime -- whew! And we'll start the whole process over again tomorrow! At least we have a week or two before we have to throw dance class and Sunday school into the mix!

How did your first day of school go this year?