Right now, Kaitlyn is at her first day of school… her first day of CP. Which is first grade. Its hard to believe.
Bill was going to miss taking her to school because of some meetings. But she only gets one first day of first grade… hell have thousands more opportunities to go to meetings. (Probably hundreds more just on whatever todays topic was.) Around 7 this morning, Bill called to say hed be in when the other parents would be getting in… after taking his little girl to school. Which I think he thought was not that big a deal but it was a big deal to her. All the dads were there. I saw how thrilled she was to walk in with him and show him her classroom.
Ive been worried all summer about Kaitlyn being in the classroom that has two grades in it: CP (first grade) and Grand Section (kindergarden). Id talked myself into thinking it would be ok because she will have the same teacher as last year, which will make starting CP a little less intimidating. I worried because Kaitlyn will turn 7 half way through the year and be in a class with kids who are still 5 years old.
When we got to school this morning, any worries I had went away. She was obviously so comfortable in her classroom… and with her teacher who greeted her with a big smile and bonjour. She found her desk (in the front row) and immediately started unpacking her backpack. And I found out there are only two CP students who are in the other class… which is otherwise made up of 2nd graders. That sounds like it will be tough. And not for Kaitlyn. Not in the least. Now I just hope that she is kept sitting with and working with French kids. If shes ever going to learn French this is the year. And thats the only way its going to happen.
After arranging her bag and her pencil cases just so, Kaitlyn went back out to the playground to run around. Just as the bell rang for school to start, she ran to me crying. Shed fallen. There was no real injury but it gave her cause to grab onto me and beg me not to leave. That was hard. Really hard. Shed stopped crying by the time the teacher got her entire class lined up and marched inside. But because I was just trying to convince her everything would be ok, I forgot to remind her that shes starting out eating at canteen. I did talk to the teacher, she wrote it down. She seems to know. Hopefully that will work out ok for her. And hopefully, she wont have homework her first night!