Back to School (and blogging)

Lucy started her first day of school today. It's hard to believe she's a 2nd grader now. We moved into a different house over the summer (same town), so she had to start at a new school. This is Lucy's 4th school in 3 years. I guess that's the life of a military child. Fortunately, Lucy is pretty out-going and has been blessed with the talent of making friends fast.

Lucy isn't a big fan of the whole school scene. Some of you may recall the first half of last year. She cried almost every night and I had to drag her to school every morning. Even after she got over the crying, we always had a hard time on Monday mornings or after any breaks from school. So, needless to say, I've been nervous about this year starting, especially because there would be very few familiar faces. Listening to her talk about the new school year has been pretty entertaining. In a matter of 2-3 minutes she'd go from excited to stressed, back to excited, mad, nervous, excited and then nervous again. She'd always say, "It's going to be fun for a couple days and then I'm going to be mad that I have to go."

This morning we walked to school and she got in line with her new class. We were so happy to have met a couple girls at our neighborhood pool a few days ago that have the same teacher, so she at least knew them (I have been so nervous for her and when we met them on Monday, I knew my prayers had been answered). Her teacher came out to get them and I said, "She looks like she'll be a nice teacher." Lucy then said, "Not really, old people are usually mean." Nice, very nice.

We said our good-byes and I proceeded to cry the whole walk home. I'm not sure why I'm so emotional about it this year. I just get sad when I think about all that time that other people are influencing her and the person she'll become. There's 6 hours of the day that I don't know what's going on with her and how she is doing. I'm sure many of you can relate. (I wasn't sad enough to consider home-schooling, though. I'm not sure Lucy would survive it.)


When I went to pick her up, I tried to get her to talk about her day. Here's most of the highlights from our conversation: 1. Recess was boring (the playground is not up to par) 2. They don't ever get to talk 3. She only got one drink during school 4. They can only go to the bathroom once a week (except for during recess and lunch, of course). When I asked her what her favorite part of the day was, she sighed and said, "Lunch, I guess." Later she told me she enjoyed language arts when they wrote about themselves.

Here's hoping this year goes a little better than last!