Kindergarten Girl

Today was the big day!  Julia's first day of kindergarten!:

She was chomping at the bit to get to school today, which made things a little hard, seeing as she's in the afternoon kindergarten class.  Ohhhhh, how the morning seemed to drag along, in her eyes.  She was asking for lunch at 9:50am, and who can blame her.  She knew that I'd be taking her to school after lunch, so in her mind, the sooner she got to eat, the sooner she got to head off for her first day.  When the time FINALLY came to leave for school, Julia and Madeleine were out the door and waiting by the car before I even had a chance to get my shoes on or lock up. 

I wasn't sure if Julia would be nervous or homesick as she headed off to class, so I lingered around in the lobby after the kindergarten teacher came to line up the kids and bring them to their classroom, but off Julia trotted with nary a backward glance.  What I didn't anticipate, however, was that my OTHER daughter was going to be sad about Julia's departure.  After all, we have dropped Julia off at countless programs over the past few years: preschool, camp, swim lessons, birthday parties, play-dates, etc.  No matter; Madeleine truly felt that some deep injustice had been done to her when her sister was taken away, and she sported this pouty expression the whole way home:

MADELEINE: (whimpering pathetically)
ME: Madeleine, honey, what's wrong?
MADELEINE: (plaintively) I want Julia to come BAAAACK!

Over the past few days, anytime anyone asks Julia about kindergarten, Madeleine has felt the need to pipe in with: "But I have to be FIVE to go to kindergarten."  I'm glad she understands the fact that this is Julia's time for kindergarten, and that Madeleine's time will come; however, I think seeing Julia depart in the flesh was a whole different story than the mere intangible concept of being five and going to kindergarten.  Luckily, while the two of us were back home this afternoon, Madeleine came up with a wily way to get herself into Julia's school.

MADELEINE: (around 1:30pm) Mommy, I want to go to Julia's school now!  I want to go to KINDERGARTEN!
ME: Madeleine.  How old are you?
MADELEINE: Um...(smiling impishly) I'm FIVE.  I'm...five and three QUARTERS.
ME: You are, huh?  You're five?
MADELEINE: (brightly) Yes!

Aha.  So in order to circumvent the problem of needing to be five in order to join her sister at kindergarten, Madeleine cleverly decided to lie about her age and sneak into the class under false pretenses.  I worry about what she'll be doing once Julia turns 21...

Julia was a happy kindergartener when Madeleine and I picked her up at the end of the school day, and as we walked home, Julia filled me in on her day.  According to her synopsis, they "learned about RULES," they had "that SPORTS class with the EXERCISE teacher" (aka Phys Ed), they got to play on the playground "but only for a SHORT little while," and they read a book about kindergarten.  And best of all is her overall sum-up of the kindergarten experience: "It's TOO FUN!"  

Tomorrow she heads back for day #2, and I hope she continues to have too much fun, even though she won't have sports class with the exercise teacher again until next Thursday.  After all her nerves leading up to this day, I'm one happy mama to know the first day was a success!