1st Day of School!

Last night Lydia was so excited she could hardly get to sleep! Her enthusiasm and anticipation for her first day of school carried right on over into this morning! She woke up on her own at 7:30am and gave me a great big good morning hug along with an enthusiastic, "Hooray, it's finally here, my first day of school!" Now on most days it's a major chore to convince Lydia to let me do her hair, but today she couldn't wait. She requested to have a head band with her hair flipped out. Changed right into her little dress (which she had picked out for today over a month ago), grabbed her backpack and headed to the breakfast table ready to go to school!

Dan, being the super dad that he is, arranged to go in late to work so that he could be with us for Lydia's first day of school. He made her some delicious french toast and scrambled eggs as she'd requested for her big day! The kids were eating breakfast and I went upstairs to get the baby ready when I suddenly heard Lydia screaming with sadness. I ran downstairs and as Murphy's law would have it, with five minutes before we leave the kids were goofing around and she accidentally spilled her entire glass of milk! All over the floor, the table, the wall and even onto her dress, shoes and especially her new back pack! Yikes!! Luckily the dress damage was minimal and cleaned up quickly. The shoes, no problem, but the back pack was a little concerning. I scrubbed it and ran back upstairs to quickly blow dry it with less than five minutes to blast off!

Emmett and Lydia exchanged cute little ladybug beads to pull out when they missed each other. Emmett had his in his pocket all morning and pulled it out 3 or 4 times to rub and look at while missing our little "Lydibug." Tender! He also begged me to "plleeeaaaase let him go to school with her this morning!

For as long as I can remember growing up my parents always took back to school pictures of us on our first day of school. So naturally I continued the tradition. This one cracked me up because Lydia wanted to take a picture of her looking like she was walking to school!

I knew Lydia was going to do just great but the real question was, how was mom going to do? I'm happy to say that I did pretty good! Maybe the fact that I cried the night before and got the initial emotions out of my system really helped. I only got teary eyed and choked up twice which I tried not to let her see but Dan totally noticed both of them! At breakfast she found the note I'd put in her back pack. When I was reading it to her and telling her how great she was going to do I felt the tears well up, then when I was reading about how smart and beautiful she was my voice began to shake but I kept it together reminding her that pretty is as pretty does. What really makes her pretty is her kindness to others because that's the pretty that shines from the inside out!

We went as an entire family to walk her to the Kindergarten play ground and drop her off. She gave me kissing hands and that was the second time I had to hold back the tears as I gave her kissing hands too and a great big Hug! She then gave Emmett a big hug and kiss. She waved good-bye, smiled and lined up with the rest of the kids having heard the bell ring. The poor little girl in front of her was crying and holding on to her mom's leg. Lydia smiled big blew a kiss and headed into her class!
Here's a picture of her with her teacher Mrs. Bryner (the best teacher in her school and we feel so lucky to have her)!

Last week we got to go and meet her teacher one-on-one for her pre-assessment. Lydia did fabulous with all of her letters and sounds. When she was doing the blending her teacher said she must be ready to read and Lydia said, "yeah, I love to read!" Her teacher had her read a page of beginning words. Out of the 43 words they need to read to go to first grade Lydia knew all but one of them. I was surprised but then she wrote her name for her teacher and accidentally wrote her "a" backwards. I smiled and thought, "oh good, she still has plenty to learn in Kindergarten!"

After her assessment she went on a super fun treasure hunt to learn all about her class room and what they'd be doing in Kindergarten. At the end was a treasure in her cubby! Well, if she wasn't excited enough before she sure was now!

I just love to hear her say, "I'm a Coral Cliffs coyote" followed by a lovely coyote howl!
Well. . . we survived the three hours with out Lydia and were waiting anxiously with all the other parents back at the play ground for pick up. Out came Lydia holding hands with a little girl in her class named Jessica and my heart leaped, Hooray she has a friend!

She told me all about how she made new friends, sits at the red table next to Heidi, learned the school rules, sat on the rug and teacher read three stories (the Kissing Hand, Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar and Animal ABC). She had a snack, and recess, went to PE to exercise and play fun games, practiced writing and got to be the first table to put away their boxes because they were the most "reverent!" Their table also got to play with the legos and she waited patiently in line to go down the twisty slide and at the drinking fountain. She even got a stamp on her hand for good behavior!

When we got back home the first thing she did was kick off her shoes and drop her back pack in the middle of the floor. When I asked her what she thought of her day she gave me not one, but two thumbs up! I love that picture because you can see all of the lovely jewelry she chose to wear on her first day! Her bling bling bracelet from Auntie Em, her CTR ring so she would remember to Choose The Right at school and her dream catcher necklace to remember that her family was thinking of her and praying for her! Since then she has told me about five times that she gets to go back to school tomorrow! What a wonderful first day of school. We love you little Lydia!