Hi, Ho... Hi, Ho... It's Off to School We Go!

Alright, enough of the politics already. It's time to talk about something really important, like our daughter heading off to school for the first time! Yeah!!!

OK, it's just preschool three days a week, but still....

Our 4-year old started preschool in mid-September and loves it! We walked into the classroom on the first day and she made a beeline for a table where there was a large quantity of Play-Doh. I watched her for a few minutes and then went and said good-bye. She hardly noticed; no sobs or tantrums at all. I wasn't quite sure whether I should be proud that she was being so independent or a bit sad that she didn't need me around. {sniff... sniff}

She really has a great time. Her favorite activities are singing songs and show-and-tell. And of course they do all sorts of drawing and art-and-crafts projects (hardly a day goes by that she doesn't have some type of artwork to bring home). And they've had interesting guests like firefighters, police officers, etc. This past week they had a Native American come in and talk about American Indian culture. It's really kind of cool.

We've also been hit with our first (of many, I am sure, in the years to come) school fundraiser. She came home one day with order forms to sell Entertainment Books. The books are filled with hundreds of coupons and discounts for restaurants, stores, movie theaters, etc. We bought one of course, even though we don't go out all that often, and a couple of my wife's coworkers bought some as well. Pretty painless.

The one complaint, if you can call it that, about her going off to school is that now there's this rather large block of time during the day when I really don't know what she's doing. I'm not there, my wife's not there, and try as we might, sometimes our daughter is just not all that forthcoming with the nitty gritty details parents like to have. We really have to work to sketch out the details of the day which seems kind of weird to me since I've been home with her just about every day for the past 3.5+ years. I'm used to knowing exactly what she's been up to all day.

Now I know how my wife felt when I started doing the stay-at-home dad thing, and she would quiz me for the day's details. :-)