Liam had his first day of preschool on Tuesday.
Here are the obligatory “first day of school” shots at the front door:
There were tears when he realized that we’d be leaving (his). There were tears when we got back in the car after dropping him off (mine). Someone’s tears lasted much longer than someone else’s. I’ll let you guess who…
He appeared to have a great day. When he spotted us at the door for pick-up he let out a distinctly Liam squeal and ran to us immediately to give hugs and kisses. There’s not much better than an unprompted kiss and hug from your toddler.
When we got in the car we tried to get him to talk about the day’s events. The first thing he told us was that he held hands with his partner Julia when they went to the playground. This is interesting because there is no one named Julia in his class. He later talked about playing with his friends Julia and Celia and we were able to explain that despite the fact that Mo and Pok’s 65th wedding anniversary party might have been as exciting to him as preschool was, Julia and Celia are his cousins and aren’t in his preschool class.
The next thing he told us was that for snack he “got to have hummus and pretzels, but without the hummus.” He also told us that he got to have orange juice to drink (which is interesting because they only serve juice on special occasions, like birthdays, but who knows — with the way the rest of the day went, he might have had a gallon of OJ — at least it would account for the bouncing off the walls routine which went on for the entire afternoon…) and he was very excited about this.
When asked about his favorite part of the day he responded “playing with the fire trucks and going to the playground.”
When we got home he basically stopped talking about preschool as his mind was completely occupied by his desire for a “chocolate yogurt.”
After his request was fulfilled, we asked him how he liked his first day of preschool and we got a thumbs-up:
We continued to get information about his experiences in drips and drabs over the course of the past several days and it’s been interesting to hear him working through this new phase of his life. On my end, it’s been super-strange to try to figure out which information is accurate and put together the pieces to try to figure out what he’s done all day. He’s been a part of our lives for 2 years and 9 months and this is the first time that I don’t know exactly what he’s done with his time. Even that is not as strange as sitting here writing this post in a quiet house. The quiet house is something I could get used to, but it’ll be another couple of years before I get the opportunity to try it out again…
How did the drop off go today?
Matt did it this morning, but he said it went some better than Tuesday. Still crestfallen, still tears, still needed to be picked up by the teacher, but he apparently seemed more resigned that he would be staying. The teachers told me when I picked him up that all it took was distraction with a train and he was completely fine for the rest of the morning. He was in great spirits when I picked him up and reported having a great time.