Threesday

Lea loves school. She has loved school for over two full years now, ever since we started sending her one morning a week, then two, to the infant/toddler room at her preschool. She has made so many friends (as have we) through this school, that even if it weren't for the excellent teachers, perfect schedule, and short (and lovely) walk from our house, I'd still consider it a great part of all of our lives. It's just been awesome.

I was talking to my friend Lindsay (mother of Rylan, Lea's best buddy, met at school), as I have many times before, about how much my mental health was suffering during the summer of 2007, when Lea was 7-9 months old and we knew NOBODY in town and a two-minute chat with a barista every now and then was all that was passing for my social life. I say that flippantly, but really: I was in some serious trouble that summer.

And then, I took a leap and invited myself to lunch with an acquaintance of Brian's who had young kids, whom I'd met once for about 15 seconds. She graciously fed me vegetable orzo and handed me a flier for the preschool open house that evening. She also gave me the phone number of the preschool director. I could not wait until that evening. I could not even wait to get home to place a phone call; I actually drove straight from Marybell's house to the church, where I frantically introduced myself and my need NEED NEED for this preschool to the first person I found (who turned out to be the spouse of a custodian, but she pointed me in the right direction). Within 15 minutes, the deposit was paid and Lea was signed up for school.

Since then, Lea's school time each week has increased. She first started going four mornings a week when I had just gotten pregnant with Susanna and was dealing with round-the-clock sickness. She still goes four days, plus now she has the option to stay for lunch, which she does once or twice a week. She gets so excited about "lunch bunch," and I get to do that age-old Mom think where I write her name with a little heart or a flower on her little Tupperware lunch container. Overall, it makes her seem about six and a half years old and it's almost too much to bear. The kid really is growing up.

Except, she's still only two. Two! I cannot believe sometimes that this child who talks in paragraphs and has favorite songs and picks out her own library books is still only two years old. Which brings me to the title of this post.

The preschool director decided to be a stickler this year, and so, even though every single other member of her class from last year has moved up to the three-year-old class, Lea is still down with her old teacher from last year with the current crop of two year olds. She does great there, actually-- I'm so proud of her. There's always somebody screaming and crying, and there's lots of pacifiers and non-verbalness but she gets right in there and plays with them and helps her teachers and it's wonderful. But on Tuesdays, oh, glorious Tuesdays, the three-year-old class is small, so the teachers arranged for Lea and two other 2006-born kids to spend the morning upstairs. The big kid class.

Every morning, Lea asks if it's Tuesday. She loooooves Tuesdays. She gets to see her best buddies, and do very grown-up things like carry her own paint and learn a new song every week and make crafts all-by-herself. She still loves school every day, but on Tuesday she comes home with a twinkle in her eye.

And I start to feel the wheels turning in my head, fast-forwarding to kindergarten and grade school and wondering: will she be challenged enough? Will she get to do things that excite her, that make her proud to be growing up? And this isn't even an age-related worry, although I do kind of wish we'd at least have the option of sending her to kindergarten at almost-5 instead of almost-6. I think it's just the first time I've really been faced with the concept of my children's academic lives, and how much control I will really want or be able to exert on them. And it starts a whole slew of other lines of thinking about the public schools in this region (not too great) and in Virginia in general (way too ruled by state Standards of Learning, as far as I can tell). I know people who homeschool for that reason, and I know people who just go with the flow and hope for the best, and I also know people who choose public school but very intentionally supplement that education with family reading projects and educational trips and real-world learning in the form of planning and planting gardens, or building things, or extra art classes.

It's a lot to figure out, but it's three years away, so I know that the best thing to do right now is just nurture Lea's love of learning whether it's a Threesday or a Twosday or not a school day at all. And soon enough, Susanna will start to go to school too (although she's ten times more stranger-phobic and cling-to-parent than Lea ever was, so we'll see how that goes). I hope very much that I can send them off to school with confidence, and that they both come home most days with twinkles in their eyes.

*

While I'm here, I should also mention that Susanna is crawling all over the place, pulling up on furniture, eating some solid food, babbling away ("Dada" might be intentional-- it's hard to tell), but still not sleeping any better than when she was about 5 days old. We switched our bedrooms around so all the girls furniture, and theoretically both girls, are up in the big room on the top floor, and Brian and I in the smaller room that used to be Lea's. It's working out really well in terms of space usage and storage, and it looks GREAT, if I do say so myself. And Susanna does start the night out in the top room, and typically has one early wake-up that can be dealt with quickly, allowing a swift returning to the crib in that room, but. Invariably, there is a freak-out sometime between 1 and 4am during which the child is so enraged and so unbelievable loud, we're way too afraid to try to deal with it in the room where Lea is still sleeping. So, down to our room Susanna comes, where she snuggles in contentedly and drifts off, clearly very satisfied with herself for getting exactly what she wanted all along. Not sure how to deal with that.

She's wonderful, though. I love this stage of babyhood, the way she's soaking up everything and interacting more and generally being very happy and bubbly. I will miss it when she's big. But there's a lot to look forward to there, too, as I see glimpses of what it will be like to have two kids (rather than a kid and a baby) who can actually play together and have similar experiences and enjoy each others company instead of just regarding one another with amused tolerance.

And now Susanna is awake from her nap and I didn't do any of the things I meant to get done during that (short) kid-free time. Oh well. Maybe I'll post again before a month passes.