We Survived the First Day of School... Barely

We spent Tuesday night getting every possible detail ready. Clothes were laid out on the floor (including socks, shoes, belts), backpacks were next to the door with all necessaries already inside them, lunch bags were spread on the counter with dry goods already in them, and kids were shuffled to bed by 8:30 p.m.

Ammon was the first to wake up at 7:00 a.m. Abe followed in a close second at 7:01 a.m. Raven (we're babysitting while our friend has surgery in Anchorage) and Ziya, on the other hand, had to be woken up and rushed along at about 7:45 or so. At 8:00 we sat down for our brain-healthy breakfast of oatmeal with berries, scrambled eggs and toast. I thought we were doing pretty good on our schedule and my goal of being out the door at 8:30 a.m. (I should know better than to let thoughts like this enter my head!). Raven has beautiful long brown hair and she wanted something special done to it for the first day of school. This took longer than I'd anticipated. As soon as she got off the chair, Ziya hopped up and asked me to do her hair, too. While she sat there, she did the biggest poop ever... it required a change of clothes. By now I was really sweating!

We did finally make it out the door at about 8:45. Ammon would have been happy with me dropping them off, but I insisted on going into the classroom with them. He immediately spotted his good friend, Jimmy, and then even more, he was ready for me to leave! I held my ground and hung out for a few more minutes (I can be pretty stubborn). I wanted to take a picture of him at his desk, but my camera battery died (uggghhh, I hate it when this happens). Ammon immediately got busy working on a little person-shaped popsicle stick that he was supposed to decorate to look like himself. I kept asking him questions and then I said goodbye at least three or four times and he was giving me the "o.k., o.k. mom, that's enough!" look. Isn't he too young to do that? At least I was confident that I was leaving my little boy in great hands. His teacher's name, after all, is Ms. Lafferty... she tells people that she named herself that because she likes to laugh!

Abraham was all dressed up in his little school outfit and he had some supplies in his backpack. I was supposed to have a meeting with some other moms to talk about what we're going to do for pre-school this year, but the meeting plans fizzled at the last minute. Instead, I took him to his best friend Tate's house. While there, he got to watch Star Wars. When I picked everybody up after school and interrogated them all, the vote was unanimous: Abe had the ultimate best first day of school!

Jacob also had his first day of classes (although he's been working since last Wednesday). He is co-teaching two sophomore Language Arts classes, one sophomore World History class, one Algebra A class (mostly freshmen) and his own Study Skills class (kids that are on his Special Ed case load). Like typical high schoolers, the kids try to push teachers' limits during the fist days... so Jacob came home pretty worn out. He is also the assistant coach for the Cross Country team (this will make three sports for him this year... ask me what I feel about this in about January!). He has a great time coaching. Although he loves being a special ed teacher, I think he also really enjoys the coaching interaction with kids who are happy and motivated about being there.

We got home and in perfect unison, everybody started melting down (including Jacob and I, at moments). I'd prepped our dinner, but I just couldn't get it on the table fast enough. At one point, we had all four kids crying at one time (two boys in one bath and two girls in the other). It was great. Normally, I might have pulled at least some of my hair out, but all I could do this time was laugh (which annoyed the kids even more, I think). We had no problem getting everybody in bed by 7:45 p.m. Let the games begin!