first day jitters

Tuesday was Emilia’s first day of preschool this year.  Unfortunately for her Mama it was an ‘ease-in’ day which means she started at 9:15 and I had to be back to pick her up at 10:30 – exactly enough time to get virtually nothing done.  Emilia was all excited about school and it was virtually the only thing she could talk about for days before - ‘I have to go to school!!!’ was the refrain most-often heard in our house.  We even switched up our bedtime routine a bit to make time for baths before bed after it became painfully obvious that bathing in the morning had to go (we were about 20 minutes late to ‘drop-in day’ at her school because of morning bath).

Naturally, the morning of ‘the big day’ Emilia woke up in a horrible mood and EVERYTHING was an argument.  The dress she ended up wearing was not the ‘official’ back-to-school dress I bought for her, but another one (she’d barely worn it anyway so it’s good it gets some use, but irritating since we had laid out all our clothes the night before and were fine with our outfit then).  Then the hair ‘chimbas (pigtails) mama’, so I made pigtails.  Tears. ‘No mama, trensas (braids)’ – so I made braids.  Even more tears. ‘I wanted CHIMBAS!!!’ Tears over putting the toothpaste on her brush (she wanted to do it, which she did, but she insisted that I had put it on).  Then she wanted her socks pulled all the way up (they’re not knee-hi socks, but the fold-over kind – not a pretty look when they’re pulled up.  Then we wanted a waffle for breakfast, no, a cheese sandwich, no cheerios… O.M.G. NIGHTMARE.  Frankly I wanted to throw her in the car and drop her in the parking lot by 8.  But I knew it was just the jitters so I tried to be as patient as possible and keep in mind that she’s still a baby who, after all just turned 3.  All this is to explain some of the scowling that went on during our traditional before-the-first-day-of-school photo shoot.

 Last year Emilia sat beautifully for me to take her picture in the living room…

 

this year, not so much…

 

model posing (i swear i haven’t taught her to do this) with and without the scowl.

 our school shoes this year – probably the only week they’ll be this clean and shiny despite being machine washable.

Last year’s outside picture…

 and this year’s collection of happy faces…

 

 the scowling continued in the car (where at least I managed to get her to eat a cereal bar – am guessing this is where she’ll most often eat breakfast – today, for example, she refused to eat anything at all for breakfast – just not a breakfast girl sadly:()

 

the first hint of a smile – she had just seen her friend natalie (from last year) crossing the parking lot.  (we had to walk them in the first day but now they do carpool – thank goodness!)

 

relieved to see a couple of pals from last year’s class were already in the room (Betsy and Jackson H.)