BACK TO SCHOOL!

Makes me so happy. I’m in a season of life with the girls where school is beloved — do you remember that as a kid? I so remember the vibe that surrounded going back to school. The temperatures outside were just a little cooler. I’d gone shopping and I had a new outfit and shoes. I would find myself up and at ’em early in the morning, hustling and bustling as the sun still rose, totally opposite of my slow-to-rise summer mornings. I’d pack my lunch and run off to catch the bus, totally thrilled by leaving the nest all by myself, even if it was for just a little bit. My girls have the same hype about it all, and it’s just so fun to see, if not to re-live. Your kids let you back into your former life in bits and pieces as they grow, you know. It’s pretty amazing.

Miss Olivia! She was so ready to go. She told me about a month ago that “Summer is the worrrst!” haha, so this was a long-awaited day. Sis is in a dual-immersion program, which she loves. She was a new girl again this year, actually, since I moved the girls over to the elementary school that our new house is zoned for. Claire made that switch last year during Kinder, but Olivia didn’t make it till now and she’d be lying if she told you she wasn’t nervous about yet another change. But thanks to some super kind girls (and their mamas – nice girls get it from their mamas!), and Olivia actually praying her heart out to feel brave and okay and to make new friends, everything has worked out. She loves her new school!

Miss Claire is roaring and ready for this year! Kinder was long and slow for her, so being in school all day and having an extra challenge through doing the dual-immersion program, too, has fueled her fire and she’s alive and kicking again. I’m so relieved, honestly, to see her happy about school, and to see that happiness leak into the other aspects of her life, too (last year was rough on my Claire). Mamas — if your baby girl or boy is cranky or mad or annoying or not acting like themselves, I encourage you to start digging and find out what in their life is agitating them. It’s so easy to jump to conclusions about a child, like that their temperament has changed and/or that they’re just “hard.” I have yet to see any of my girls being internally “hard” without having one or two external reasons as to why. Kids are inherently happy! Dig around in their hearts and minds and uproot the weeds in their little souls, then watch as their happiness grows back again.

And now for these two hooligans…

They are two HOOTS, and lucky me, I get to hang out with both of them for the majority of the year. Emmy Baby is up for her second and final year of preschool with the most amazing teacher on planet Earth, and Sister is READY.

Emmy thrived last year during preschool. I am so excited to see her soar again! I’m going to work through the most amazing book with Emmy this year — “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” — and we’re both so excited about it. That book turned Olivia and Claire into awesome readers, and Emmy’s been asking to learn to read, so we’re stoked. And my Tiny is doing something we’ve never done before — Tot School! One of my close friends from high school graduated in child development, too, and she runs a pre-preschool, basically, for 2-year-olds, and Miss Chloe is a lucky girl to be able to go. Chloe isn’t one to be left behind (she might be the queen of FOMO, being the youngest of four girls), so it’ll be fun for her to fly from the nest a bit, too.