Back yesterday from a trip up to see my parents, came back to a dead dryer. A household like ours can’t run without constant laundry, so we ordered a new one which should be here by Tuesday. We’ll either be bumming my brother’s washing machine or a local friends. This weekend we’re actually going to the shore with said friend and her family (they have a daughter Annika’s age, and it’s her birthday) – should be fun, although they are calling for thunderstorms on Saturday.
The big news was that it was Annika’s first day of preschool. Except for about a month and a half when she was 5 months old when she was in daycare, she hasn’t been in any prolonged group social situation outside of family. Annika is also the type of child that doesn’t deal too well with surprises, so we make sure to prepare her as much as we can. The teacher actually visited our house last week, which went a long way I think to help alleviate some of that anxiety on her part. But I know both J. and I were wondering how today was going to go. I knew it would be fine eventually. but I assumed it would take a couple of weeks for her to warm up to the new normal.
We shouldn’t have worried. Today was orientation, and after an error on my part (misread the instructions, we walked to school an hour early and had to walk back) we went. She was excited and after getting into the classroom and putting away her backpack, she said “Goodbye Mama! Goodbye Daddy!” and then turned her back on us to go play with some dough. We socialized with other parents for about 45 minutes in another room ; Well, J. did most of the socializing since it seemed like every mother in the group took their kids to see her. But when we went back in after the time was over to collect her to go home, she barely acknowledged us and almost had a melt down because she wanted to stay. Bodes well for the future, although we’ll see how tomorrow (the first full day, including the traditional drop off) goes. We are walking distance to the school (huge plus!) although once the weather turns too cold we’ll also be doing the carpooling thing.
So our Fridays which was traditionally Daddy and the kids doing the weekly shopping will morph into Annika going to school in the morning and Savita actually getting one on one time with daddy. I really am looking forward to that since Savita gets almost no one on one time with either J or myself. It’s a function of the age difference between her and Annika – when Savita was born, Annika was at the age where she demanded a lot of attention and didn’t necessarily do a lot of independant play. That’s gotten better as they’ve both gotten older, but since their naps overlap and Savita takes a longer one, I’m hard pressed to name a time when she’s not around Annika (except for when we split the kids up.) So tomorrow we’ll go to the JW Tumbles class together. She’s roughly the same age I think as Annika was when we first brought her so it’ll be interesting to see how they differ.
More change: looks like our nanny needs to go out of the country for six weeks starting the beginning of the year – a gap that we’re not going to be bridge. So we’re going to need to start looking for the first of the year. Part time nannies are tougher to find, I’m hopeful someone decent will show up.