Pinterest (damn you, pinterest!) is blowing up right now with picture ideas of littles holding miniature chalk boards with the date and "(whatever grader your kid happens to be") written on them. Some overachievers have their special snowflakes adding, for nostalgic impact (and perhaps a greater sense of failure later in life when one does not become an astronaut brain surgeon veterinarian), "When I grow up, I want to be: ____________."
Oh, how I wanted to partake in that fabulous fad, but these things don't always work out. (When he was a baby, I tried to wrap him in blue and white holiday lights for our holiday card photo, but he kept falling over and it looked more like I was trying to choke and/or hang him than take a festive photo, so....)
The night before school started, Husband and I had tickets with friends to see Steve Martin and his blue grass group, The Steep Canyon Rangers. Yeah, probably should have stayed home and bonded with my almost-first-grader. Made him a big healthy dinner and talked to him about his hopes and dreams and fears for the coming year. Tucked him in lovingly and wiped a little tear away as I looked in on him sleeping.
But. STEVE MARTIN! People, I can't really overstate my bordering-on-inappropriate adoration of Steve Martin. He's an actor, a writer, a playwrite, a musician, a comedian---it's just....I love him. Not as much as I love my kid, obviously, but I can love my kid 364 1/2 days of the year. Steve Martin's only around once a year, so, you do what you've got to do.
That means that Ethan split a frozen pizza with his sitter and ran around outside with the neighborhood kid until the sun went down, before collapsing into, mostly likely a sweaty heap in his bed. MOTHER OF THE YEEEEEEEEAR!!!!!!
I, on the other hand, behaved like Kristen Wigg's over-excited aunt character from SNL from pretty much the second the lights went down at the winery until the lights came back up, squealing and clapping, and a couple of times just shaking my fists in front of my face with excitement.
And then we came home, full of post-concert malaise (and red wine) and I realized I had not yet made my trendy chalkboard "FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE" sign, and that the little chalkboards I had purchased at the beginning of summer to hang on our kitchen wall with all the super! special! family! bonding time! activities we'd planned for the summer were actually STILL on the wall, and that those little 3M sticky tabs adhere to the wall REALLY REALLY well. So I couldn't use those. I managed to hunt down a small white board in my office & in my attempt to find a dry erase marker, I must have been distracted by something (it doesn't take much, I'll be honest) and the sign didn't get written up until the next morning, about 30 seconds before we left the house.
Behold, my janky sign (and my totally adorable FIRST GRADER!!!)....
His first-day-of-school, at least in his own mind, was meant to be much much fancier than the shorts & casual button down. When we went back-to-school shopping last week, Ethan picked out that shirt, along with an argyle sweater vest AND a black corduroy blazer. For the first day of school. In California. In August. We agreed after looking at the weather report for the day (um, hello 90's) that he's be more comfortable in just one layer of his intended ensemble. He's wearing a white tshirt under the button down and you can be 100% certain that when I picked him up at the end of the day, that button down was crammed down into the bottom of his Star Wars backpack, and he was running around the school yard in a white undershirt--we like to keep it classy on the first day of school.
After his father and I paparazzi'd ourselves out in the front yard, we took Ethan to school and I got the chance to stay with him for the first 1/2 hour as he explored his new room.
There was the science area, where Ethan met the class frogs, Trevor & Petie, and then looked at his hand under a microscope that was not turned on (he was underwhelmed).
There was the reading area, where Ethan did not do any reading. He did, however, manage to make some silly faces, and that's not at all anything like reading, but its cute.
At the end of parent time, he joined his 1st & 2nd grade classmates on the carpet and amazed me by following the very first directions without hesitation (thank goodness he can handle "If you're excited to be here today, give me a thumb's up!!!!")
After school, Ethan swung on a tree in the school yard. Natch.
Wheeeeee!!! (don't break your leg. don't break your leg. don't break your leg!!!!)
Then we went home and had a snack on the front lawn before a leisurely afternoon of bike riding (which included me falling off my bike) and a trip to my chiropractor (see first part of sentence).
All the excitement of the day? Makes a little boy sleepy....
1 comment:
Happy first grade!!! We start Tuesday. And a teacher strike is scheduled for the following Tuesday. Wheeeee.
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