As milestones go, this one's a biggie...

Well, hello there blogging world! Long time no see!

I'm really heavily into the reading of blogs now instead of the blogging of blogs, but since I have one, what kind of mother would I be if I didn't acknowledge this most important of days, Elizabeth's first day of preschool?

But business first.

One of the reasons I stopped blogging is that my comments appear to have been infested with Japanese spam. I know its spam thanks to Babel Fish and I got pretty tired of it. So, the comments are on the "requires authorization" setting, and they'd be turned off completely if I knew how to do it. But don't worry about leaving comments, 99% of you e-mailed me or talked to me on Facebook anyway, so let the blogging commence comment-free!

Elizabeth has been so excited to go to school for the past few weeks that she could hardly stand it. And once she got her "super cool" shoes (of the sparkly trendy variety) it was about all she could do to make it through the days. She actually didn't sleep very well last night because she was so excited.

I took the day off work because I wanted to see her off and pick her up, and spend some alone time with Lilli, since I'm not sure that has ever happened before in her life. Maybe she's had a solo doctor visit, but that's it.

So here Elizabeth is, ready for action, with the tote bag the preschool requires the kids to use to carry their lunch to school. No giant backpacks for us until Kindergarten I guess.


Here's Elizabeth, Lilli, and Grandma waiting to go into school. The doors unlock at 8:30 am sharp. Don't try to get a jump on these people by being early. Elizabeth looks a little shy or coy in this picture, but its actually the tiny bit of sunlight making it through the gloom to hit her light sensitive eyes.

One final pose before going inside.
When she walked in the door she was greeted by the teacher, and all the kids sat down around a table where big sheets of paper with the letter "A" waited with bottles of glue and piles of odds and ends, ready for a collage outline. I was afraid that we were going to start off with a problem, because seriously, "A"? I knew that this was not going to be super educational, but I was afraid she would be bored in the first 5 minutes. Because she can READ (yes, I keep saying that. Proud mama. I might stop eventually), and she's got a nice dose of other academic skills to boot. But instead she turned to me, with a total look of joy on her face and said "I didn't know I got to do ART! How cool!" (not sure why cool is her word at the moment, but everything she likes is cool) And it seems that the whole day was pretty "cool". She "really enjoyed" her lunch (I packed it myself, so that please me), she loved the "bean bag dance" and she "mostly played with Diego, but not the real (i.e. cartoon) one". The only downer to her day was that during outside time "some buddies were on the swings and they wouldn't let me on, so I went away until they were gone and then I came back and swung a whole lot."

Overall a successful day!

And what did Lilli and mama do?

Here's one thing:
Lilli requested trips to the park and the mall, so that's what we did. We both had a great time, and it was nice to be with her by herself. She kept up a constant monologue the entire morning though, so it definitely was not any quieter without her sister around.

I'm so glad the day went well, and I know Elizabeth can't wait to go back to school tomorrow!