First Weekend of Kindergarten

So, kindergarten.

It means something totally different to me today than it did a week ago. And I'm certain I'm not the only one.

It has involved an unanticipated amount of effort in the following categories, among others:

• responding to an alarm that goes off unreasonably early in the morning; 
• waking up a child who prefers to stay "cozy in his bed"; 
• getting said child fed and then clothed in an exceedingly particular manner as dictated by a uniform code that is largely foreign to our sports-shorts-and-untucked-muscle-shirt-with-flip-flops kid; 
• making it out the door by a certain time (also unreasonably early in the morning); 
• arriving back at the school at a certain time (too early); 
• dealing with exhaustion/excitement/angst/sudden maturity of a first-time kindergartner during the after school hours; 
• negotiating extra snacks and homework and television time with said bundle of joy/despair/negotiating prowess; 
• making sure dinner is ready super early so that baths and reading and lunch-making and backpack-packing can all happen super early so that children are in bed by the (apparently still too late) time of 8:30;
• and then hitting "repeat" three more times.

By the end of the first evening, I was totally identifying with the kid in the Jello commercial. And so was Luke.

This isn't to say that he isn't going to love kindergarten and school in general - it's just that I don't think any of us had a clue about how big a transition this would be. For all of us. (Lord help us when baby brother arrives!)

terrifying

And there are lots of parts of it that have totally blindsided us. For instance, who knew a person could put so much effort into trying to teach a child to clip and zip his pants - only to find that he's happy to just belt it all in (unclipped, unzipped) and go from there? Or that a five-year-old could spend 10 of his 15 minutes of homework time griping like a high school senior? Or that the paperwork for parents to complete would be as time-consuming as my master's degree work?

ice cream at Braum's to celebrate the first day

One thing we sure didn't anticipate was the fact that Luke had no concept of the weekend. It wasn't until Wednesday night that we realized that he was going to school each day with the notion that he would be doing school every day from now on forever. When I broke the news to him that he had only one more day of school and then could stay home for a few days (his school has four-day weeks for K-2), he was a changed person. Bedtime was easier and the next morning was smoother. And then this morning - the first day of his first weekend - he popped into our bathroom at 7 am (the exact time we have had to wrestle him unwilling from under the covers every other morning this week), grinning ear to ear and ready to start the day with vim and vigor. (I did not share his enthusiasm but instead had a sudden epiphany concerning the deep value of early morning cartoons.)

Granted, it took exactly one hour and fifteen minutes for him to lose all enthusiasm and declare, "I can't WAIT to go to school again!" Apparently, his grumpy mother and still-asleep sister were not the eager playmates that his new kindergarten friends would have been. But I have a hunch that he'll survive the weekend anyway - and maybe even be a little more keen to get back into the new school routine next week.

As for the homework battles, I'm afraid it may be a looooong thirteen years...