Bella did great this week! She is learning how to follow the rules and what the new expectations are. It has definitely been an adjustment (more on that later), but I've noticed an improvement just throughout this first week, and her teacher agreed.
I, on the other hand...Steve may have looked at me today and said, "Sometimes your crazy comes shooting out like a fire hose."
I think I can honestly say, though, that I've turned the corner and started breathing again. Which is good, because I don't have Whitney here to lovingly agree with everything I say while showing me her best-friend-smile that says, "Girl, you need to caaaaaaaaaalm doooooown."
Some great memories and learning experiences (for both of us) from Bella's first week...
Carpool was a hilarious and traumatic moment for us! Preschool carpool is much simpler, and by the time the kids reach the "regular school", parents and staff have carpool down to a well-oiled machine. Unless it's your first time. On Thursday morning, we pulled up to the doors to drop Bella off only to realize that the school uses the 8th grade boys as helpers in the morning. The one adult happened to be standing about four cars away and was on his cell phone; when Bella realized a "big" boy would be opening the car door, she lost her mind. Meanwhile, I have a line of about eight cars stopped behind me, just waiting. I had to throw the car in park, run around to her side (while barefoot and wearing a too-short-to-cover-my-belly-the-whole-way tank top), grab her out of the car with her backpack, quickly plop her on the sidewalk, yell at the one adult (who, thankfully, we know) to get his attention and ask him to wave so that Bella would stop crying and realize she knew somebody (he did beautifully!), and then run back to my side and drive on! As I'm getting back into the driver's side, I hear one of our friends, Eric Baker, about four cars back, yell, "Hey lady! Get in your car!" To which I demurely responded, "Shut up, Baker!" Needless to say, he and I were a beautiful witness to any new parents that morning!
Bella's brought papers home each day, and most of them are clearly about following instructions. "Color the third ball green, the last flower yellow, etc." On Monday and Tuesday, I noticed that her papers were only about 70% accurate - she was coloring everything, but not the way the directions said. On one of her papers, Miss Thornton even commented that Bella had understood the instructions, but had chosen to be "creative". It also happened to be the one day that Bella's conduct report came home, stating she had gotten a warning that day for not following instructions. [This has been a major challenge at home, as well, and we've really been working on obeying, even when she doesn't agree. Sometimes you just have to obey because Daddy/teacher/grown-up says to.] So when the note on her paper came home, we talked about following Miss Thornton's instructions no matter what. Even if she wanted to choose different colors. Her conduct report got all stickers for the rest of the week and every one of her papers came home showing that she had followed the directions perfectly! We made sure to praise her a lot for this!!!
We also had a couple of chuckles...
Our friend, Jess, just started at Eastside as the PE teacher. She was in the hospital room when Bella was born, so she's known Bella's personality for a long time. She told us that when Bella's class can to her this week, the first thing she asked all of the kids was, "Who loves kindergarten?!" All of the kids raised their hands, except for Bella. When Jess looked at her and asked if she liked K-5, Bella tossed her ponytail and said, "No. I'd just rather be riding unicorns." Bella also pointed at Jess, and then looked at her classmates and said, "SHE knows my name is Bella Cole Wires, and SHE has known me since I was a baby." I'm telling you, this kid is going to be the death of us.
It's been nice to have some friends in the building who spy for us! Our friend, Ashleigh, sent me this picture this week...
This is Bella during her Music class. Ashleigh texted me to say that Bella was doing great and following along with all of the Music teacher's instructions! I had to chuckle at her socks, because she hated wearing the knee socks, and it's obvious that she shoved them down as soon as she left me on Wednesday morning!
She was definitely the most excited this afternoon as she got in the car, and I think it's because they went to the library today! She brought home a book about ponies, and she was thrilled!
Miss Thornton has given us little updates each day, and has told us how Bella has been improving and trying each day! We are so proud of her and have been praising her as much as possible! I've had to admit to myself that Bella's behavior in school has been a big source of apprehension and pride for me, so I've had to work on letting that go and focus on what's best for Bella.
Bella's behavior report for her first week of school. The day she makes it to the third row will be epic!
One of Bella's final coloring pages this week. She was really happy, because, after following all of the instructions correctly, Miss Thornton had allowed her to color the blue flower however she wanted! And she was very proud of the smiley stamp at the bottom of the page.
They worked on the letter "I" this week. Bella really liked the "I" song that she said Miss Thornton played on her computer.
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