a beautiful mess: Off to Preschool

...this fall.

Wow. It's official. She's off to preschool. You hear parents say it goes by in a flash, but you never really grasp that concept until it happens to your own. She's my baby - my one and only. Will I cry? You bet your sweet bippy. I get watery-eyed just thinking about it. Will she cry? I feel fairly certain she will not. She'll probably leave a smoke trail the whole way, as desperately as she wants to start school.

So private school it is. We didn't qualify for public preschool, which was weird. Since when do you have to "qualify" to send your child to preschool? You're either low income and get to send your kids to for free or you're high income and can comfortably afford private school. Well, we're neither. Like most, we fall in that middle ground: You make too much to be considered poor, but you don't make enough to be considered rich. Crap. So we have to stretch our means to send our little monkey out into the world of learning. The injustice. But I'm going back to work, so it is possible. But since public preschool only goes until the afternoon, private school seemed like a better option anyways. We would need someone to watch her most of the day, so it may as well be in a learning environment with other kiddos. Her Daddy has a couple days off during the week, though, so he'll be able to pick her up early on those days and they can have their Daddy/Mia time together :o)

So we looked into several private schools and they all kind of ran at the same price, we just had to find the one that fit us best...and then hope we were "accepted". Haha - accepted to preschool? How funny that whole concept is! I think they must do that to weed out the kids who just aren't emotionally ready to go to school...that, or they want to make sure their parents aren't complete whack-jobs. Those are my only guesses.

We narrowed them down to one we really liked and then came the whole process, which actually wasn't that bad. We went in for the interview/tour and we really liked what we saw. Totally nurturing learning environment and the administrators, teachers and kids were really great. And Mia did great. Our little social butterfly charmed the pants off of that school and its staff. She introduced herself, shook hands and used her best manners...and talked everyone’s ears off. We quietly slipped in a back door and sat in on a little bit of the big music class they have in the morning where all the preschool classes, teachers and parent volunteers gather and sing songs while learning. Since it’s Easter time, that’s what they were talking and singing about. And when the teacher asked if anyone knew what was inside a plastic egg she was holding up, Mia raised her hand and yelled out, “Oh! I do! I do!” Every face turned around and I could feel my cheeks get hot. With no ~~shame~~ fear, Mia just smiled and said, “Hi!”, and everyone laughed. Dear God, please don’t let this be the start of a class clown in the making.

I thought she’d have to go through the “testing” they said was required, but they offered her a place right on the spot. They saw that Mia was obviously bursting at the seams to get started on school and all it has to offer. Literally. Bursting at the seams. We had to tell her throughout the tour portion “please stop jumping”. We also had to reassure her that she would be coming back for the new school year, but now was not the time she’d be starting school. She wasn’t too happy with that.

So now we enjoy the last remaining months with our baby as a little girl. Because according to Mia, once she starts school, she'll be a "big girl".

She doesn't yet understand that she'll always be our little girl...