My Dad had a sign in his home office when I was growing up that said, “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.” I always liked it because it seemed like it applied to anything, not just to his sales career. Right now for us, it applies to preschools. (Note to preschools in the greater Frederick area: YOU ARE NOT 4-YEAR INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING! Therefore, you should not carry a comparable price tag. My kid is not going to learn to levitate or be able to write a kick-ass critical essay of Finnegans Wake when you’re done with him! You play with blocks with a bunch of four-year-olds. Get over yourselves.) 

With the ‘pick two’ mantra firmly in place, Bill and I let go of some of the restrictions we had placed on choosing a school and chose one that was ’good enough.’ We moved quickly once we made that decision and chose a school, visited, enrolled Liam, and got his first day under his belt all within three or four days.

Today was that first day. Sam, Nate, Liam, and I all held hands while we lumbered awkwardly across the parking lot to Liam’s school. There were kids and parents crammed into every nook of the main hallway and I wasn’t sure which classroom was Liam’s. After spinning in a circle for a minute, one of the parents helped us find our way, and then Liam was just gone…swept up by Mrs. Dent and her calm, reassuring nature and her impossibly cheery, yellow room where I could see a dozen other three and four-year-olds bumping around, falling into their little chairs. Mrs. Dent whisked Liam inside, showed him the hook on the wall with L-i-a-m spelled out above it for his jacket and new Batman backpack. (The first backpack that caught his eye was this one. I steered him away from it, thinking a solid ass-kicking by his new little buddies was not the best way to begin his school career.) 

Everything happened so quickly and amidst so much confusion, there was no time for tears, tantrums, or for his face to split in half whilst hurling fireballs from his chubby little fists at my back as I left. When we picked him up two and a half hours later, Mrs. Dent called out to me that Liam had ‘done great.’ But, as we walked back to the car, he tugged defiantly on my hand. “No Mum-Mum! Stop! Walk when *I* say!” And, then in the car, on our way to a celebratory lap through the Chik-Fil-A drive through for an ice cream cone, he wouldn’t talk about his day. He’d only give up that they had had a snack of donuts balls and juice…and that somebody had eaten the last one. Probably it was his way of regaining some contol over his little world that had been in Mrs. Dent’s control for the last few hours. 

Tonight when I tucked him in, I asked him again about his first day at school. He was more chatty this time, realizing that I longed to hear him string together words into sentences and would stay for as long as he felt like talking. 

“Are you excited to go back to school, Bean?”

“When do I go back?”

“Monday…same day Daddy goes back to work.”

“Yes. I excited. Do you stay with me, Mum-Mum?”

“No…remember, we said that I had to come home so that Sam could have his nap, but that when Sam woke up, we’d be back to pick you up?”

“Yes…” 

“What did you do today? Did you make any new friends?”

*a string of jabbering that I can’t quite follow…something about a music cd, sitting on a circle, coloring some paper orange and cutting circles instead of squares, and story time about a car* Then, “”I pwayed wif bwoks and I pwayed wif a truck. ‘Nother guy pwayed wif truck too.”

“Oh yeah? You both had a truck?”

“Yes. Two trucks…”

“What was the other boy’s name?”

“Ummm…I don’t know. He had some brown hair…and some black hair…and a ponytail. Mum-mum, I think he’s a girl.”

The first doorway

As described here.