the kids went back to school today. i thought all was well planned out and then i stayed up too late and the girls decided that 5:45 am was a perfect time to get up and play.
somehow while searching for my happy morning face i could only find my ‘angry eyes’ and our well planned morning didn’t go so well.
the kids now have to ride the bus to school and that is totally different from sending the kids across the street 2 minutes before the bell rings. ahh, those were the days.
we were told the bus would stop on our corner at 8:20 am only to have it arrive at 8:10 am. before i could stop him, ryan was out the door without breakfast and running for the bus. he is a little excited about the whole bus thing. he made it on but that put a little hitch in the plan for me to follow the bus and help him find his class. i quickly sent jena to the car and grabbed sara with toast in hand and a sippy cup full chocolate milk and ran for the car myself. needless to say we lost the bus along with ryan and spent the next 15 minutes searching for him on the playground at the school. we finally found him amongst 5 little girls in his new class who were chatting his ear off. after locating his classroom, meeting his teacher and finding 2 more little boys from his class he quietly informed me that i could go home now. :) at least he wasn’t nervous any more.
i then spent the next 3 hours with jena asking me when she could go to school. when we registered her for school they told us that they divided kindergarten classes by neighborhoods since this school has boundaries about 3 miles wide. they also said that if i put her in morning than there would be no bus to bring her home and that the morning classes were too full anyway. so afternoon it was. until this morning when i wanted to pull my hair out and offer to pay the teacher extra just to take her all day.
finally the time comes to go wait for the bus, which we were told they didn’t know for sure what time it would come by so just stand out there from about 11:50-12:20. umm, ok. so we did and guess what? no bus ever came. nice. so i drove her to school and went into the office to get the scoop. the secretary (who was quickly becoming one of my not so favorite people for her ‘do i actually have to speak to parents’ attitude) then informs me that there are actually not any kids in our neighborhood who have afternoon kindergarten so they will have to request the bus make a special stop for her. umm, wait, isn’t that why you made me put her in afternoon in the first place?
this is the point when i said, ‘you know mornings would actually work a lot better for us. is it possible to change her to mornings?’ and then i got that irritated ‘i have better things to do’ kind of look. ‘well, she says, i’ll have to see if the principle is available and has the time to rearrange the classes.’ i think she thought i would say ‘oh, never mind, don’t bother’ instead i just stood there and gave her my ‘yep you just go ahead and do that’ face.
i just have to add something here-in my children’s old school, every time i had a question or concern the principle came right out and spoke with me and was very nice and never seemed put out. this could be due to the fact that she had frequent one on one visits with ryan in kindergarten but i actually think she considers it part of her job to speak to parents.
so there i sat waiting for ‘the great and wonderful oz’, i mean principle, to consider my request, when the secretary finally emerges from ‘his chambers’ and she says something like ‘we are actually going to move her to a morning class so she can ride the bus with her brother and because there are far less students in the morning classes and because most of the children in your neighborhood are in the morning classes as well. as long as that all works for you that is.’ i think i might have stood and stared at her with a bit of a ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ look on my face. and being that i am so agreeable i think i said something full of kindness and with a smile on my face like ‘that’s great.’ because apparently this was all her idea from the beginning and i am the one who messed it up royally.
then she tells me i should just keep jena home today and start her in the morning. that would have been fine except that jena started to cry when she heard this because she wanted to go to school so bad. so i promptly ignored the lovely secretary and took jena to class. i explained everything to the teacher who said she wasn’t sure why they put her in afternoon in the first place, and she had no problem with jena staying for the afternoon today.
i have drug this out way to long, that is what i do when i’m tired and when i encounter people who are idiots.
last of the story is that ryan got on the wrong bus on the way home and jena was in a panic because ryan was not on the bus so she thought she must be on the wrong bus. i got a phone call from the school explaining that both buses would bring my children right to my house and that they would make sure this did not happen again. i wasn’t all that concerned actually because i knew that ryan was thinking it was awesome that he got an extra long bus ride. jena was perfectly fine after the bus driver let her call me with her cell phone and they both made it home safe and sound.
did i mention that on ryan’s last day at his old school he got into a little playground brawl with the neighbor boy down the street? nothing serious really, they are actually friends, though they do tend to find mischief together. needless to say i got a farewell phone call from the principal of that school. i think she said something like she was required to call me but it was actually not a big deal because the boys had worked it out themselves by the time the teacher discovered it. but still, we didn’t really need that on his last day or this on the first.
here’s to tomorrow going much smoother and me having more patience for idiots.
did i mention that sara took off with my car keys this afternoon and we can not find them anywhere! i don’t even have a spare key because, well i accidently dropped them in the garbage can last year right before the truck came and dumped it.
i hope we make the bus in the morning or else we will be walking 2 miles to school.
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next, Teri took me to Gap to buy me some jeans for my birthday and Jena had an impromptu fashion show. the girl can really put on a show. next thing we know Sara is groping a naked male manican with her little hands cupping the goods and she is shouting to all of us ‘bum, bum!’ it was pretty hilarious! then she had to hug him before we left.
a lucky girl 