So Curie started kindergarten, taking martial arts, made new friends, rode the bus, turned five, had a birthday party at Flight trampoline park with her pre-school and kindergarten friends all in one week.
Oh it has been hard having Curie go to school. She is exposed to so much more, learning so much, and having a great time; but for the parents it is learning the new normal, anxiety for your children’s happiness and success, packing lunch, dropping off, bus rides, new pick-up hard stops at work and more. All parents do it, so it is not like it is any different for us, but at the same time, it feels overwhelming for us; so much so, that Albert has had to start instituting a half-full policy for himself.
In kindergarten, Curie has Mrs. Best a strict but fun 30-year veteran teacher. Curie is the youngest in the class and has had to catch up on many things, capital letters, lower case letters counting up to twenty, counting down from twenty, reading colors, all things that we wish we had known when she was at Bright Horizons. We have since let them know that they need to help better prepare their students. For us, it simply means that we need to spend time every day with lessons for Curie, so we set aside some time, bought letters an posters, and Curie eagerly dives in. The fact that she likes school so much is wonderful and a godsend. Her favorite thing to play with us now is being the teacher at school, though she is always the teacher because she is in charge.
She is learning a lot too, they have all sorts of songs they learned, “Da rules, da rules, da classroom rules.” Every Tuesday they have a folder to bring home and in it is the work they have done. She brings home the cutest things she has made in school, a Humpty Dumpty, an ant with body parts labeled (and song sung to “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes.”), little work books for learning numbers and more. She is exhausted everyday though running through all her energy in a day that we have looked to raise her caloric intake to help boost her energy. This is offset by the need to help her sugar intake for her teeth since she has had to have a lot of dental work because of her soft enamel as a result of being born early. The dental visits have been horrible and traumatic. We have one to go, and it is an extraction. She bounces back relatively quickly from them, but for us as parents it is very hard.
Curie takes martial arts as her after-school program. A bus picks her up every day after school. Her friend Etta has joined her and they go together. Etta is Curie’s best friend at school and is a year older and a head taller. The martial arts class loves Curie who is the smallest one there and the kids like to draw pictures for her. Curie likes to teach us martial arts too, taekwondo to be exact. She is learning to be more respectful, and learning discipline in her class, which has not always translated to home yet. Her friend Layla got her white belt, and Curie is excited to get hers as well.
We have had time with kids from her old pre-school spending time at dinner with Lucy and Nora at Olive Garden, birthday parties for Chloe, Natalie, and Maggie, dinner with Navee, who she tried to hug all night. We have had time with her new friends as well, play dates with Layla, Isabella, and Etta. She and Etta hold hands walking to the classroom from the cafeteria. The first day of school she walked holding hands with Katie the other kindergartener who rides the bus with her when they couldn’t find their room. Another older kid takes them there now. Curie also loves the kids who have helped her, Riley the bus monitor is someone that Curie looks up to.
There has been a lot of change and the important thing to realize is all of this is a part of growing up. Albert’s mother recounts that Suephy had trouble starting kindergarten, but it did not stop her from being as successful as she is, it just takes being involved as parents and teaching and reinforcing the learning in school, staying ahead of lessons, helping with homework, getting her focused on the right things. She is more tired after school and just wants to go home to play. She needs more Mommy time and asks for playdates with Mommy or Daddy. It feels like we have less time as a family because of the obligations and the structure. Curie is taking it all in stride and it is just our “new-normal” as Albert likes to call it.
Curie’s backpack is a small kids pack we got at REI when she was two, it is the size of a purse-backpack to get a sense of what we mean. In it she puts in her lunch bag, her snack, her martial arts snack, the Tuesday folder, if it is Tuesday or Wednesday, her library book (she loves the library), a t-shirt for martial arts and sometimes a jacket if she has taken it off, and her water bottle. The backpack is tiny but so jammed packed with things, and even though it is not a full sized backpack, it is huge on her. After we carry her to the bus stop she dutifully puts it on and runs to the bus, sometimes forgetting to kiss us goodbye. The backpack is kind of like our days, full of stuff, seemingly small and too big at the same time, dutifully worn, and with a tiny keychain on it for good luck.