And Now For: The Mess of the Story

Did you see the pretty pictures from Basia's first day of 2nd grade?  If not, they are in the post below this post.  I could have just left it at that.  It's my blog, and I'm free to pretend that everything is easy, wonderful, and special (in a good way) if I so choose.  But, no.  I'm going to give you "The Mess of the Story," which is my version of good ole' Paul Harvey.

The pretty pictures you see below are actually from our second attempt of starting 2nd grade.  Yep, we had a do-over.  The very day after our great last hurrah with the jet skis and sun and sand and all things that are summer, we were all set to get back to business.  Routine.  Structure.  My own heaven on earth.

I had been planning this for weeks.  The schedules were complete.  The drawers were filled with just the right mixture of fun and active learning and seat work.  There was even a drawer that instructs her to watch "Plaza Sesamo" in Spanish on TV.  Yes, TV during school!  Oh, what a nice mom I am.

The problem is that she woke up thinking and feeling something entirely different.  She woke up excited to eat the special first-day-of-school breakfast treat:

However, when the fun of fried, fatty deliciousness was over, she was pretty much done with first day of school excitement.  When she was supposed to be doing her morning get-ready chart, I found that she was in her room, with the door conveniently closed, playing with her toys.  When she was supposed to be smiling for her great first-day-of-2nd-grade pictures, she was crying.  When I was supposed to be cooled off from the annoyance of having a child who was not the same sort of excited as I was, I was actually still a little teary-eyed from working so hard to make everything just right and feeling underappreciated (hey, I didn't say I'm always a wonderful, mature mother-figure). 

So we parted ways.  She went to her part of the house to quietly play for the remainder of the day, actually choosing to play with quite a few learning toys, like math manipulatives, a U.S. state puzzle, her computer reading program.  I retired to another part of the house to read a junky novel from a movie I had already seen.  We met in the middle for lunch, although we still were not exactly best friends at that point.  At silent reading time, she slept for 3 hours (hmm, I wonder if she was a little too tired from all the summer fun to be gung-ho about her first full day of school?)  After nap, we talked about how my feelings were hurt (yes, I decided to let her know I'm human and not super-woman who does all for her and never has needs of her own).  We talked about how we would start over the next day and take pictures and do the full schedule of school with a happy heart.  We snuggled a lot.  A lot, lot.

The next morning she got up, ate a less exciting breakfast, did her get-ready routine so quickly that she had time to play before school.  We took the pictures you see below with her big, beautiful, real smile.  She did every single drawer of school work, commenting that "second grade is easy."  Neither of us mentioned the day before.  I think we were both happy for a chance at a do-over. 

It was a great First Day of 2nd Grade, indeed, even if it was our second first day!