Our First Day of School: Fantasy vs. Reality

Better late than never, I always say. And so, on the totally random day of Wednesday, October 8, 2014, we commenced our first day of homeschool. I would have loved to jump in with all the other normal people at the beginning of September, but we had things like a two and a half month old baby, and a house closing coming up, and of course painting and moving into said house. So now that we're all settled in able to cook and shower with relative convenience, I'm obviously raring to add school to the chaotic mix of our days (which currently consist of feeding children, changing diapers, picking up discarded clothing [why do the under-4's have such an aversion to wearing socks and underwear??], and unpacking the occasional box, only to organize the same items 3-4 times as the children cheerfully "help"). When the kids asked today if they could go to school, and I responded with, "Sure!"....it was like I knew there were words coming out of my mouth, and I couldn't get them back.

Silent prayers of thanks to the Lord, who motivated me to print and laminate my little tush off during our last few weeks at Joel's parents' house. I have two weeks of lesson plans ready to roll, and the rest waiting to be queued. I think my reasoning in saying yes today was that as long as I could locate the bin with the purple lid, everything else would fall into place.

And it mostly did, except for a few teensy details. Like, oh, the time I needed to dig out dice to use with an alphabet review game. As I was shoulder-deep in 50lb library boxes excavating for board games, do not be deceived by my children's angelic demeanor into thinking that they did not require parental intervention not once, but three times due to ONE OF THEM (no names, Mr. Impulse Control Issues) "killing" the other with a small plastic king. Yes, big sister came wailing to find me because she was killed. This is an entire blog post unto itself, as the hilarity of me convincing my daughter that if she is able to feel upset and tell on her brother, then she is not dead, is just...I don't even know what to do with that.

ANYWAY.

The real point of this post is to show you that I am just like all the other Pinterest moms out there who capture the first day of school with such aplomb and matchiness and personalized chalkboards. JUST LIKE YOU. Other than the fact that my bubble letter skill is a relic of sixth grade art class, and that it took us no fewer than three tries to capture the perfect First Day shot:

(Of course a silly face pose. Oliver apparently woke up in between shots and joined the party.)

Why did it take three tries, you ask? Because my dinosaur of an iPhone chose not to save our entire first photo shoot, and froze up the second time around. And then they were all, "NO MORE PICTURES, WE WANT SNACK!!" So yes, we had our snack break before we even got pictures, let alone started the actual school part of things. We're morning people! By the third attempt, my kids were complete grump-heads (do I blame them?) and complained literally up until the instant before I hit record on our happy face video:

Incidentally, I can't help but notice that most of you other social media overachievers didn't have your kids "help" decorate your First Day Chalkboards. How mediocre. You must have planned ahead and artistically designed your chalkboard on an elevated surface, safe from little hands, while the kids were asleep or planted in front of an educational LeapFrog video. Me? I rose to the challenge. After first catching and then clothing my bare naked son, I trooped into the school room with my students and our brand new chalkboard and brand new chalk to DO IT TOGETHER. Mostly because I didn't know today was the first day of school until approximately seven minutes ahead of time, BUT STILL. I do hard, impressive things, no?

Then we did Calendar Time (which, it's not preschool without Circle/Calendar Time, amiright?) sitting on the floor while I nursed Oliver. Without a calendar. The only reason my kids humored me on this one is because I donned this huge, cheesy smile and said, "Good morning, STUDENTS! I'm your teacher! Welcome to school today!" Mikayla obviously bought into this big time and refused to call me anything other than Teacher Harriet for the remainder of the morning. Ok. But we sang our Days of the Week song!

Also? Our piano technician showed up to tune and repair the piano about 20 minutes into our school time. And Oliver didn't want to be put down for anything, which led to us discovering that he is ready to love this:

What I'm saying is, our First Day of School was so easy and just like I'd envisioned.


We duly completed our Alphabet Review games. Isaac only pinched his hand in a lowercase-letter clothespin one time, causing him to spiral into hysteria. Hopefully his parents don't sue the school. He took two turns in our Alphabet Board Game and then became distracted by the plastic legs of our shelving units, which make excellent telescopes and even better guns (which shoot by bopping people in the head, obvs). But Mikayla rocked it all with no problem, and we had a mini field trip to the living room to see how a baby grand piano works on the inside. Take that, Mister Rogers, who needs a Picture-Picture? Also we met our new regular mail carrier who is even cooler than Mr. McFeely and brought me a new central vacuum socket and my new mint-green case for my new iPhone 6 which arrived today, whereas my hubby's new phone won't be here til tomorrow. These are complicated times, when an iPhone 6 order gets split into two shipments, potentially causing great marital strife and discord, except we are way above that in our marriage, right honey? <3 nbsp="" p="">
You know what else is cool? I accidentally made a special First Day of School breakfast because I was tired of scrambled eggs and felt like baking last night. So we had Giant Breakfast Cookies! The only problem is that I didn't alert the children to the fact that it was a special First Day breakfast because I didn't know at the time that it was our First Day. So many issues when school starts out of nowhere, I am realizing. I'll have to tell them later, when we also have our special First Day snack of blackberry jam bars (I'm getting this).

Still, I started school within a week and a half of moving, and with a baby on my hip. I am feeling like a boss. The kids even asked if we can play the Alphabet Board Game again after naps, so obviously I am the funnest teacher ever. Plus I am wearing a scarf today that matches my shirt. Pinterest, I own you. Even if this happened in my house today:

Thanks for reading all of the thoughts that happened in my head for the whole day. Sheesh, epic post. This is Teacher Harriet, signing off.