Seedlings Turn Overnight To Sunflow'rs...

Sniffity-sniff-sniff:

First off, it doesn't get much cuter than a little girl with half-emerged front teeth, remnants of summer's bruises and scrapes all over her legs, wearing hard-won Hannah Montana shoes on the First Day of School.

(The shoes are "hard-won" in that she only received begrudging permission after much pleading because they don't actually say Hannah Montana on them and because they were the only shoes in her size left at Target yesterday - yes, we are awesome parents who are totally on the ball when it comes to getting ready for school.)

She was nervous, but definitely excited this morning. It helps so much that one of our neighbours goes to the same school and rides the same bus - the two of them were giddily running around while we waited for the bus and their mothers snapped pictures of them. I'm told the bus driver is super nice; this helps to quell some of my maternal fears.

I'm less worried than last year, as she's linguistically caught up to her peers, and I know she'll actually be on time. I'm a bit concerned that she'll find her way around, but I'm sure all of the teachers will be looking for wide-eyed, frightened-looking little ones. My worst fears are that I've missed one of the dozens of forms somewhere and she's gone off to school totally unprepared in some way - that she'll find out to her extreme embarrassment that she doesn't have the right supplies or that her lunch isn't right or that her "nutrition break" (heaven forbid we call it "snack") doesn't meet the exacting dietetic standards.

My heart stopped when the neighbour girl came out wearing a uniform. I thought - did I miss a memo?! I immediately began making plans to head out to St. Paul where I know of a uniform store, and panicked that The Girl would be the only kid in school not wearing one and was enraged that the secretary didn't tell us about it. Of course, I could have just asked the girl's mom - which I finally did - to find out that they don't have uniforms but her daughter just likes the look of them.

(It's pretty clear I'm more nervous than The Girl is. I had the triple-whammy-school-butterflies dream last night: I was two weeks away from a Canadian politics exam and hadn't attended one class yet, I was working for my tuition at Smitty's where an errant decimal place was charging customers for $8,000 breakfasts, and I had been conscripted into Ed's ensemble choir because they needed altos to bring along on their trip to Europe. Seriously - I was very glad when the alarm went off this morning.)

And so the year begins. I'm excited about the return to routine and am anticipating even more a year full of friends and knowledge and enrichment for my kids. The Boy goes on Thursday for the first time, so watch this space for part 2 of this story!