Educating Mommy

So I am a bit late with my updates lately. I have had so much going on and it’s been so busy here at home, so I feel like I have sort of an excuse. The good news is, I am not on my soapbox today. I guess I am just playing catch up. And things are moving fast, believe me. Our beloved Jenda has started kindergarten.

MY BABY STARTED KINDERGARTEN!!!

I knew it was coming, and tried to prepare for it as best I could by living in denial until the last possible moment. The schools here in Forsyth county sent out a list of needed supplies that was about as long as ‘War and Peace’ so I knew that I would have to find the strength to get to the local Walmart and get her all of the things she needed. And let me tell you something. For the uninitiated (parents sending their kids to school for the first time) that is a terrifying experience. Those experienced parents buying school supplies at Walmart are savages. They kill their own.

So I had Jerry with me to fight our way through the throng of crazed parents buying everything from pie tins to tie pins. I had to fight with one crazed mommy for the last Disney Princess backpack. Suffice it to say that I won, and fortunately, her injuries were not life threatening. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t me. I yelled to Jenda that it was the last one and she jumped into the fray. That’s my girl!

We got all of her supplies together in a U-Haul and drove them to the school for orientation. The school was mobbed, so we had to stop and ask for directions from one of the teachers in the hallway. She was most helpful. “Y’all just keep walking down this hall, past the liberry on the left, and then turnleft at the end of the hallway and her room is right there on the left.”
At the point that this teacher said ‘liberry’ my eyeballs popped out of my head and dangled there. Jerry handled it beautifully. He said, “Oh thank you. You’ve been a tremendous help. By the way, what do you teach?” Of course, she teaches math so my eyeballs went back into place and I was much relieved. So we went past the ‘liberry’, turned left, and sure enough there was the room. We met with the teacher and her assistant and they were very nice. They let us know that Jenda’s first week would only be two days. Half the class would go Tuesday and Wednesday, and Jenda and the rest of the class would go the next two days. Just to help them acclimate, which I thought was a good idea. They mentioned that they would be starting the children on computer training, at which point Jenda asked if she could bring her learning dvd-roms and proceeded to go launch the internet. The teacher said maybe they could find something else for her to do. Then, the teacher made her fatal mistake. She said that parents could come in the following Monday, the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, to observe for a little while.

So in we went. Obviously, the other parents have either been down this road before or just don’t care about their children. Jerry stood there snapping some pictures, and I stood there crying. Jenda was mortified, and her teacher kept waiting for us to leave, which I finally did when I heard the words ‘recess’ and ‘call security’. What can I say? This is all new for me. Jerry was so excited to have grown up time alone together with me. He asked, “Do you know what this means?”

Yes. We’re repainting the upstairs bathroom.

We managed to get through the first few days with no major calamities. That is, until Jenda lost a stick. It would seem that someone on staff worked for the CIA or was a math major at MIT or something, because they have this reward system that only a licensed code breaker could have designed and can figure out. So it works something like this. Each student starts the day with three sticks. If they behave all day, they keep the sticks and then earn stickers for certain multiples of sticks. You lost yet? Yeah, me, too. Once they have accumulated a certain number of stickers, they get to go to the prize box and pick out some little doo-dad. Well Jenda made it to Wednesday and then she lost a stick. Did you all feel that big jolt? It was the earth no longer spinning on its axis. It was the sun falling out of the sky. It was global meltdown. She cried all the way home. She cried all the way through homework. She sobbed all the way through dinner, which in my case was a handful of Xanax and a glass of Shiraz. We finally convinced her that the sun would in fact rise the next day and all would be well. Of course, it rained.

The good news is that she didn’t lose anymore sticks and was able to get a toy out of the prize box, and life has gone on pretty much as normal. She is doing well and seems to like school and I am dealing with the separation anxiety without the Xanax and the wine. I have been making Jerry do home improvement projects and I am now on an HGTV moratorium. So life is good, really good.

Until someone loses a stick!