First day of school 2016/17

Reuben and Simeon woke up and got ready for school without a hitch. Simeon told me, "I'm not excited. I'm not nervous. I'm not happy. I'm not sad. I'm just Simeon." Jasper was in a good mood. I made breakfast burritos, daddy even stayed to eat one with us. 

We took pictures and then we were off. 

We found their teachers on the playground. Talked to a few friends. Hovered by others. Then I hung back to observe.  

I hate sharing my children. They are amazing kids, and I worry that others won't treat them well enough. I also worry that I pass down my social anxieties and awkwardness. 

I had been up since three worried about the prospect of the day and year. The time had come for me to watch them walk inside of the school. I cried a bit as I pushed Jasper in the stroller and talked to a few of my friends and hovered my others--then went in myself to peek through doorways. 

I walked between their classrooms for a half hour. Then left. 

Jasper and I played, he went down for a nap without objection. I worked on some calligraphy. Then it was time to meet my big boys. I woke Jasper up and we walked to the church. Reuben and Simeon ran to us, taller then they were a few hours before. 

Reuben got to meet the nurse and new principal. There were wasps crawling down through the lights in Mr Flynn's room, he told me. One finally stung Reuben on the finger, then hovered around, landed and was attempting to sting again. Reuben tried to kill it with the paper he had on the desk, causing a disruption, Mr Flynn gave him the evil eye then realized what was going on, and finally killed it. Then Reuben got dizzy, and had trouble breathing, and his hand and forearm went tingly. He was sent to the office where the secretaries greeted him as "a Cook boy" and the nurse just happened to be in. The new principal walked in and started talking to the nurse then noticed Reuben, he was nice and concerned about the wasps in the room. I interjected in his retelling, "why didn't you call me?" Reuben's answer, he didn't want to remember his first day of 5th grade as the day he went home early on a short day. He returned to class, where they were doing a reading comprehension assessment, he didn't have to do it, instead wrote about his summer.  

Simeon's day was not nearly as eventful. Mrs Bradford is so nice! And Emmett sits at table 4 with him. They were the quietest table. The recesses were long. There are two Bridger's again, but this time it's not Bridger R. He had to write a sentence, "The five boxing wizards jump quickly." "Isn't that a weird sentence?" He said. "It's a pangram, it has every letter of the alphabet in it." I said. "We didn't get to take it home," he said "Probably because she wants to keep it to show your first day of school handwriting--did you do your best handwriting?"

They cleared the dishwasher with no argument. They practiced the piano. Reuben did some math. They played with Jasper. Then they had screen time.