If he stands straight, he will fall over!

School starts in a couple of weeks and Kaleb will be in Pre-K and, I admit, I’m getting a little emotional.

Okay, maybe more than a little emotional!

I suppose one of the reasons that I’m emotional is that this will be the first time that Kaleb and Kenzie are separated. Actually, they’ve never really done any activity apart from each other from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night.

I’m also apprehensive about establishing a new routine. It’s not that I’m not open to change, but rather I’ve got a routine that works as fragile as it may be. It seems that it only takes a small mishap to throw things out of kelter.

And now we’re facing a BIG adjustment!

Furthermore, “going to school” places a lot more demands on a parent than just dropping them off at daycare. Kaleb will have to be at school on time as opposed to driving up to the daycare about any time and any day I wanted.

So, he needs to get to bed earlier and get up earlier, which means I need to get to bed earlier (and quit staying up so late at night writing these blog posts) and get up earlier!

Kaleb will be attending a public school and I went and enrolled him a couple of weeks ago during the registration period.

A few days later we received a nice note from his teacher saying she was excited about having him in her class and she would like to meet him before school starts.

So, today we packed up all his Pre-K school supplies for the year in his new big-boy backpack and delivered them to school and had a meeting with his teacher.

It’s a big step when you’re packing a big load!

The backpack seemed a little large for him…hmmm, maybe I should have gone with one of the toddler packs!

His new teacher was friendly and has had a lot of toddler teaching experience. She was energetic and enthuiastic, exactly the qualities four-year-olds prefer in grown-ups!

The teacher screened (tested) him to see what he knows. I hope he passed (Alright, I stood outside the door and listened and it sounded like he did pretty good, although he may have a deficiency in knowing the lower-case letters of the alphabet.)

The teacher said Kaleb did well and that I had done a good job with him. But I had to give some credit to the Nick Jr. channel (and my special thanks to Dora, Diego, Team Umizumi, and Bubble Guppies).

Nevertheless, she said she was proud of both of us! And so we were both proud of ourselves!

Kaleb is excited about about going to “big kids school” and every day he asks if it starts that day.  But his excitement is more about the school supplies than school. Here’s the conversation we had while driving to the meeting with his teacher:

Me: “Kaleb, we are going to your new school today to meet your new teacher!”
Kaleb: “I get to open the glue?”
Me: “No, we’re just meeting the teacher and she’s going to ask you some questions to see how much you know.”
Kaleb: “I get to use the scissors?”

Starting school is just another one of the stops along the way of our new adventure and the journey we call “growing up.”  I hope school will be a place where Kaleb learns to love learning and love others.

So for now we’re just waiting for school to start, Kaleb with excitement, me with apprehension. And I’ll let you know how it all turns out in Part 2 of this Back to School episode!