Where the streets have the same name: The story of Anna's first day of school

After orientation last Thursday our countdown to Kindergarten continued.  My goal was to start getting Anna up earlier in the mornings to prepare her for her 6am wakeup call once school started.  You can guess how well I managed that.  Saturday morning I did manage to get up a little earlier than normal, but only because we were heading to Charlottesville for the first UVA football game of the season.  So our countdown got sidetracked by football over the weekend, but on Monday we tried it again. 

Monday was semi-successful.  We got up earlier, but not early enough.  We still made the walk to the bus stop so Anna could feel what the walk was like, but we would have been 20 minutes late. 

Tuesday was the big day!  We got up on time and got going.  Anna looked so cute in the outfit she picked out for her first day at school.  The only downside was that it was pouring down rain, so the whole family drove to the bus stop.  We even got there early!  And then we waited and waited... and waited... and waited.  I thought it was curious that only one other car pulled up.  I thought maybe all the other parents were driving their kids to school, considering that it was pouring cats and dogs. 

Then Seth asked me, where did they say the bus stop was again?  The corner of Ridgefield Green and Flat Branch Dr, I said, right where we are.  Then Seth asked, doesn't another Ridgefield Green connect to Flat Branch at the bottom of the hill?  And I knew he was right.  And I panicked, but then I thought, no no, I have the right spot.  That is until the bus drove by us heading out of the neighborhood, without stopping.  And I silently cursed whoever it is that feels multiple streets in the same neighborhood should have the same name.  At least there was one other parent who had done the same thing, so I didn't feel like a total idiot.

So Anna was driven to school on her first day.  At first she was terrified that because we'd missed the bus, she wouldn't get to go to school, but I reassured her that was definitely not the case :) When we got there, it seemed that no other parent but me and the mother in the van in front of me had read the instructions for dropping off your child.  These instructions specifically state that the school has a serious lack of parking, therefore you shouldn't attempt to park and walk your child in, you need to pull up to the front and let them out.  Nope, everyone wanted to park, then would realize there was no parking where they were trying to go, then they would attempt to reverse, which all lead to a big traffic jam at the entrance, and the whole time I thought Anna might just jump out of the van so she could hurry up and get there already.

We finally made it to the entrance.  They were collecting the kids in a group as they were dropped off, then teachers and older kids were leading them to their classrooms.  Anna didn't even look back at the van, she was ready to go.  And there she went, my big five year old, ready to take on the world.

I got her off the bus in the afternoon (which was quite a bit late), and the first thing she asked me was if she could go back tomorrow.  Of course, she barely remembered anything about her day when I first asked her, although later it came out they'd seen a play about how you behave in the cafeteria.  However, the main thing she remembered about the play was that she didn't get to sit next to her friend from preschool.  At bedtime she remembered that the boy who sits next to her is named Martin.  I'm chalking it up to first day overload, but hopefully she remembers more than that as the school year goes on!

Today, day #2, she was up on time, ate breakfast, dressed, and we actually made it to the correct intersection for her bus.  She waved at me from the window after she got on, smiling and blowing me a kiss.  There goes my big girl.  Not on the first day, but today is the day I got teary-eyed watching her go.