The big day

He did it! Dominick successfully attended his first day of kindergarten. Mike worked from home today so that he could join us on that first walk to school. Our neighbor/goat lady/crossing guard guided us across the street safely. May I say how extremely lovely it is to live half a block from school? I had the same luxury growing up, although not until first grade. I rode a bus to kindergarten. But I digress.

The building and grounds were somewhat chaotic, but Dom picked his way through the crowd and led us to his classroom, showing Mike his star on the door. (We had visited the school yesterday after receiving a call on Friday saying that Dom's immunization records were not up to date. I had the doctor's office fax said records in July and confirmed with the school secretary two weeks ago that they had been received. Oh well. While there, Dom found his name on the classroom door and got further acquainted with his room and teacher, who was there setting up. He even helped by placing colored folders in the appropriate baskets. I loved how chatty he was with Mrs. C. And just like that, I've digressed again!)

So anyway, we got inside, and all was well until Dominick wanted us to stay, so I gave a quick goodbye and left him drawing at the table. Neither of us cried, which is quite a miracle. At pick-up time, the parents waited outside the main entrance, and the principal--great guy--came out to greet us and gave our kids a thumbs up. Shortly thereafter, the doors opened, and the morning kindergarten class emerged. Dominick was first (how nice it must be to be an A in school!) and came running to me. He was in great spirits. Later, he said that he'd had a "really good" time at school. Bring on day 2!

Meet and greet

Dominick attended his final day at preschool today. [sniff sniff] Mike picked him up early to take him to Six Flags for one last bit of fun before school. Only five more days until the first day of kindergarten!

Yesterday morning was our meet-and-greet at the elementary school, so the transition is in full swing. Dominick led the way as we joined the wave of parents and kids heading to the school carrying bags of supplies (crayons, glue, paper towels, hand sanitizer, etc.). I was surprised to learn that Ms. Walker, the teacher we met back on registration day, was no longer there. Word on the street is that she wanted to teach full-day, so she's now in a neighboring district. The new teacher is Mrs. Casey, who seems as sweet, energetic and enthusiastic as Ms. Walker. We also saw Dom's preschool friend Calvin, whose mom told me that he is also in morning kindergarten, so there will be at least one familiar face.

After leaving Dom's new classroom, the boys and I explored rest of the school. The art room is full of wonderful things. It even has a kiln! I didn't have access to one of those until high school. The gym has a climbing wall. The cafeteria seems tiny. Dominick got acquainted with one of the bathrooms. We bumped into some neighbors, and they introduced us to another boy in Dom's class. Dom and Noel didn't notice the tables full of donuts near the office. Everything went really well. Now for the big day...

The end of summer is near

The first day of kindergarten is only fourteen days away. We received our first school newsletter in today's mail, and a quick phone call to the school told us that Dominick will be in morning kindergarten. Now that we've gotten what we wanted, I hope we can really be ready and out the door by 8:20 every day. That will be a feat. The boys have recently started sleeping a little later, so that some days we don't actually get up until 7:45. (Don't tell Mike!) Dominick may be coming around to the idea of kindergarten. He was able to talk about school today without getting upset, so that's a good sign.

In other news, we harvested and ate the first yellow squash from our garden today. My blog entries have been rather few and far between this summer, so I don't think I've ever mentioned that we even had a garden. We started it in May after hearing Dominick talk constantly about vegetable gardens. Why not? I thought. So we found a suitable spot, prepared the ground, put up a little fence to keep the bunnies out, and planted peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, peppers, carrots, parsnips, cauliflower and cabbages. The peas are dead, the tomatoes are dying, and the watermelon and cauliflower don't look too impressive. We've had three grape tomatoes over about as many weeks. Still, we should have a sweet crop of root veggies; the peppers have rebounded from a sorry state; the cabbages look like baby cabbages; one cucumber has been picked and two more are growing. It's really just a big experiment, considering we've never done this before. The boys love having a garden. Several times a day, they ask to check on it, and Noel loves to water.

The garden about ten days after planting

Our first cucumber

Noel watering the garden