On the other hand, Gemma was counting down the days. She could NOT wait to start school. When I picked her up that day, she had a huge smile on her face. I asked her how her day was and she answered, "It wasn't as good as I thought it would be." I was a little surprised until she followed up with, "It was even better!"
She loves everything about school. Seriously, when I ask her every day what her favorite part was, she says "everything". She is making lots of friends, learning new things, and gaining confidence in areas she was already working on.
Although she has been fine without preschool, one area that I do think she missed was some peer classroom exposure. She had friends at church, dance, and other places, but the classroom setting with those her age was not there much. Because of that, she compared herself and her abilities to Kyran and Karyssa, and believed she "couldn't" do things because she couldn't do them as well as they could. Being around her peers has proven to her that she is good at a lot of things and has really helped her confidence.
She gets mad on days that she can't go to school, and says she's glad that the weekend is only two days. Last week, we had Monday off for Labor Day and Wednesday off for Hurricane Dorian (or Unicorn Diarrhea, as the big kids called it since it is an anagram for Hurricane Dorian), and she was very upset.
She has only had a tiny bit of homework, but I can already tell that's going to be a battle. Of course she wants to do homework right at bedtime (as a stall tactic), but hates having to do it right after school. I really can't blame her.
Along with her ballet/tap/acro combo class that she is taking this year (her third year in dance), she is also doing an evening theatre class (different class because of her age, but same cast in Frozen, Jr. as Kyran and Karyssa), gymnastics with Karyssa, and Daisy scouts. Her days are full and she is exhausted by the end of them (although she'll never admit it!)
One other big change that changed with kindergarten is that we finally turned her around in her car seat! The pediatrician recommends waiting until they're 32-35 lbs, and Gemma is just under 32 lbs, but we got the ok to turn her around to make carpool line easier. She never complained about being rear-facing, but does like to be able to see everything now that she's facing forward!
I'm getting adjusted to the new normal. I still miss her like crazy. Especially when one of her favorite songs comes on the radio or I visit one of her favorite stores (Target and Sam's - which she calls SAMples.) It's very quiet around the house, but I'm able to get a lot more done during the day which frees up my afternoons for spending time with the kids and taxiing them to all of their activities.
I miss her, but she loves school so much that I think I must have done something right. She's an incredible kid and I'm happy to get to share her!
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