Saturday, we had the first playdate/meet and greet with Savannah’s Kindergaren classmates. First of all, how wonderful is that? Kindergarten is scary and unknown enough to begin with and the fact that she’ll know these girls a little bit befre the first day of school is such a relief to her. We could eliminate the ‘What if no one likes me?’ fear right off the bat. Because, as expected, that was not a problem.
The girls are diverse and lovely, as are the parents. Amazingly enough, a friend of Conor’s and mine from high school is the parent of one of Savannah’s classmates. It was SO great to catch up with him and meeting his gorgeous girls and awesome wife (We are going to be friends, I’ll tell you that right now).
You have your Mama’s girls, the loud ones, the quiet ones, the funny ones, the tall ones, the tiny ones. You can see how the Kindergarten class was ‘composed’ by the admissions director. It’s a nice blend. We all wanted to make a good impression and have our daughters make a good impression. I could quite easily put other parents at ease be retelling the ‘Oh MY kid threw her shoes at me during the group evaluation.’ Other parents LOVE those stories. I know I do. It makes me feel normal and human as a parent to share the ‘Oh MY kid…’ stories.
We had a lot of fun watching the girls work together and see how different from boys they are. It’s a lot of teamwork and imagination and less jumping off of things and shooting. It’s not better, just different. It was funny to see how the playground was very quiet for about 10 minutes and then the conversations started and the groups broke off and mixed and mingled.
At one point, one of the parents said “I hope they get along, because they’ll be together for NINE years.”
That seems so long from now, but I can honestly remember the day we brought Savannah home from the hospital and the fact that we were so terrified that she would be cold, so we bundled her up in this giant snowsuit and THEN didn’t know how to loosen the straps on her carseat, so we just stuffed her into it and she was like a salami that couldn’t move her limbs in that thing the whole way home.
I remember having NO idea how to put her into the stroller despite reading the manual 100 times. I remember sobbing the first time I dropped her off at Mother’s Day Out. The two years she’s been at Petite Ecole are just a blink. My kid speaks French now! How did that happen so quickly? She barely fits in my lap and I have a hard time carrying her at this point. I used to have to sing her to sleep.
I find myself mentally photographing the times she stops to lay on my lap or asks for a hug or a kiss or holds my hand in public or tells me that I am the best Mama of all the Mamas, because I am holding my breath in anticipation of the first time she is totally embarrassed to be seen in public with me. I get that these things are going to happen. I know they are part of the development of a human girl, but I can’t help feeling like it’s going to be tomorrow that my girl is graduating from The Girls’ School and is on to high school and prom and college at The Sorbonne and we’ll be telling stories about the first day she met her classmates at The Girls’ School playground like it was 15 minutes ago.
I am not someone who wants time to stop, because she is a more amazing person each day I know her, but seriously, how do moments turn into years SO quickly?