First Day of "School"

The day arrived. I know. Hard to believe isn't it? Katherine is nearly 15 weeks old and today she went to her first day of "school". We're starting her early. We figure it can only help. :P

We know that Katherine knew something was up this morning. You ask -- How did she know? Stephen and I were both up and dressed by 7am. And we both went in to wake her up this morning. She was looking at us back and forth communicating with her pretty blue eyes... What's going on? Why are you waking me and why are you both here? Daddy -- what's she doing here? You change my morning diaper then you take me to see Mommy and she feeds me and we listen to world news on GMA (and sometimes a good cooking recipe or two... oh and maybe a feel good story). And so the morning began... I fed Katherine while Stephen shuffled things out to the car for my "move in" back to the office. We still watched world news only this time I was pleeding.... please don't spit up on me, please don't spit up on me - for my clothes situation was not a pretty one. (Lesson learned: never try on pre-pregnancy clothes to figure out what you're wearing to work -- the day before you start back to work... apparently they haven't relaxed the dress code to t-shirts and gym pants... I was shocked too. Needless to say my pre-pregnancy weight is still 8-10 pounds and a couple sizes away... sigh... And has my butt gotten larger???) Sorry about that... back to our original programming.

After Katherine ate I dressed her for the day. I had this crazy notion that I wouldn't dress her till after she ate in case she spit up. My logic seemed to fall short of, well, logic as I feed her any other day 4 of her 6 bottles in her daytime clothes. What makes the morning bottle any different? Tommorrow when she wakes up we'll be dressing her for the day when she gets her diaper changed rather than after she eats. I'm hoping that will save us another 5 minutes or so in the morning. (Those who know me well, you understand why even 5 minutes is moy importante.)

Then we shuffled downstairs to head out. I put Katherine in her carseat and as I was doing so I told her about how today she was going to school again. (Remember we were there twice last week.) I explained that today she was going to be going and Mommy and Daddy were going to go to work. Her feelings on the subject: http://picasaweb.google.com/daleksza/MyFirstDayAtSchool#. You judge her reaction. :P

We drove over to the daycare (Children's Academy) and in we both went with little Nugget. Ms Lisa was there this morning. We gave Ms Lisa her bottle, told her what time she last ate and then I hugged and kissed her 3,000 times before we left. Then it began. You guessed it. T.E.A.R.S. A lot of them. My little girl was at daycare while I was leaving her to go to "the place". (Also known as work.) I cried all the way to work. I was able to pull myself (but not my make-up) together just as we were arriving at the office. We trudged ourselves over to the elevator. One of the women we work with was running to catch the elevator. She made the mistake of saying "Wow, both Aleksza's are here today!! Is this a first?" I said yes. Then she asked THE QUESTION.... "Where is Katherine then?" And the crying returned. I replied that she was at daycare and this was her first day. "Oh my" was her response. Yeah. Beautiful. Me, crying in an elevator and walking into our office. I made quite a picture.

I made it all the way to 11:15 when I broke down and had to call the school to check on Katherine. Ms Lisa answered and said she'd taken two cat naps (the girl won't take a long nap) and was just waking up. Ms Lisa was about to feed her. She told me that Katherine fussed a little when we left but not too badly. The rest of the time she'd been happy and smiling. Whew. Two pieces of great news. Then... I heard her crying. Seven infants in the room, and I knew that cry was my little girl's. Ms Lisa confirmed. It sounded like a cry of "are you going to feed me now - I'm hungry!!!" versus, "Mommy, HELP, SOS, I can't stay here another minute." I hung up quickly before I started crying and subsequently may have found myself driving over there to pick her up.

The afternoon seemed to go by slowly. I kept myself busy unpacking my office since I'd moved twice in the 3 months I was out. I had a lot of *junk* to throw out. It was quite a scene in there until around 4:30 when I started to see some space on my desk. At 4:40 I started watching the clock waiting and waiting for 5pm. (Stephen was in a class until 5pm so we couldn't leave any earlier.)

We left the office around 5:05 (I know... we were running late!!!) and headed to daycare. Katherine was in my arms by 5:30. *sigh* But I'm pretty sure she was mad at me. I got one smile when I picked her up. Then she just kept staring at me as if to say - Are you just going to leave me again? *little teary*

Once we got home she started to forgive me. She smiled and talked and told me about her day. Apparently the other kids are loud. She said she didn't get a good nap in because they made a lot of noise. She told me she had some tummy time today but she didn't remember how long she was down for or how many times. I'll have to ask Ms Lisa or Ms Shawn tomorrow when I see them.

Now she's upstairs with Stephen, having her bedtime bottle and reading (drum roll) about the 10 commandments. (Stephen wanted to be fresh when he started that story so he had to stop reading last night when he got to that part... can't read that when you're half asleep - I mean they are the 10 commandments, have some respect! :P)

Apparently we can all survive the first day of school. I'm not crying (anymore), Katherine appears to have forgiven me and the world continues to spin.