First day of school

Today Kiernan went to school. For the whole day by himself! Like the totally big boy that he is; even when Mommy wants to live in denial.

We've been talking about school for a long time. Months and months. And he was excited! But this past week he started getting hesitant. He was more shy than I think I'd ever seen him during the one on one interview with the teacher and that kind of threw me off.

Then he announced he didn't want to go to school - he was afraid of his teachers, he told me. And he didn't want to take the school bus.

Hm.

In the end, I thought it would be good for him to take the bus so we convinced him to take the bus but that we would be at school to meet him and make sure it went well. We got him all ready, put on his big backpack.



Then we removed his big backpack, took out about half the stuff he needed to take for his first day and put it in a separate bag that I brought for him. Man they need a lot of stuff!

Then we put the backpack back on and walked to the corner to meet the bus.




It was a very emotional moment, I must admit. But he got on no problem and off to school he went. And we rushed back home, got the twins in the car and headed over to the school. Where we had to wait a good 10-15 minutes for the bus to arrive. After about five minutes my anxiety started building, because you know, obviously something happened to the bus in the tiny distance it had to go ;)

But finally it arrived and I could see that there was an older girl on the bus helping him put his backpack back on and he got off the bus happy and told me the bus was fun. Yay! Success!

We went into the school and started walking towards his class when he said "so we're going to meet the teacher?" uh oh. I told him no, he was going to be staying there for the day and he started to whine and say he wanted to go home. The instant he saw the teacher he threw himself behind me and started to sob. oh boy.

After about 5 minutes of sobbing and talking I got him into the classroom and got his bag on his hook and the teacher said she'd take over. Ok. I knew it was the right thing to do so I left my sobbing baby with this stranger at SCHOOL. And then I peered in the window on the other side of the classroom as I left and saw him standing there holding the teacher's hand sobbing. And it sucked my friends, it sucked.

But I left and I tried to relax and I went home. And I reminded myself that Kiernan is good in new situations, that he's social and he's smart and he could deal with being at school. And I convinced myself it was true - lord help me if I hadn't been able to, I would have spent the day crying in the dark or something.

I went out to meet the bus early, just in case. And the bus pulled up and no Kiernan came out. And the bus driver called for him and .... nothin'. So I got on the bus and I found Kiernan disoriented with a paper crown over his face - he'd fallen asleep on the bus ride home after a long and tiring day of school :)

And as we walked home with him in his paper crown and sporting a new tshirt with the picture of his new school mascot over the one he was already wearing he told me that he'd had a good day and school was fun. And he told me that he cried in the morning because he thought he didn't want to go to school. But actually, he did want to go to school. And that made me a very happy mommy indeed.