Thursday, April 22, 2010

School, Week One

Our girl started school this week. When we started her in the Birth-to-3 system, I could never have guessed that A) this would go so easily for both of us, B) that I would want her to go at all, C) that she would want to go. And most of all, it felt at times like this would never come.

When the PT first saw her, she couldn't lay on her belly, she could barely stand to lie on her side, and she was terrfied of sounds and movement of basically any kind.

This week she:
Monday: Went to school and went in with the teacher without hardly a look back. She stayed the entire 2 hour 45 minute session. When she got home, she said a new word: Doggy.

Tuesday: Barely even said Goodbye to Mommy. Stayed the whole time.

Wednesday: I said Goodbye, she pointed to the door to school. In they went. This was also Grandparents Day, so my parents were there to see her in her class and C in his. When I picked P up, Mrs. Karl told me that she just said "brother" as if she had been saying it her whole life. I haven't heard it myself, but that was the first time she said it.

Thursday: She was a little grumpy in the morning so I didn't know how it would go when we got to school. But she happily went in with the aide and, again, stayed the whole session.

That's it. Boom. Done. I couldn't be more shocked, but I also couldn't be more proud. It has been bittersweet, but I also really feel this is overdue. She has been "infantile," for lack of a better word, for a long time. Although she still can't walk, cognitively she is a 3-year-old. A big girl, doing big girl things. And me? I have books I want to read, things I want to cook and bake, things to sew (first up: the big girl's quilt for her big girl bed), Adirondack chairs that I bought last summer that need building and painting, the straw bale garden to start. I'll report back on it all right here!