Patty Cakes: Olive's First Day of First Grade

Lots of things change when you go to first grade like being there all day and eating lunch at school, waking up early, homework, and spelling tests. But Olive was pretty excited. Here she is making her own lunch for the first day of school!

I put together a little First Grade care package for her that had a new lunch box and lunch containers, an alarm clock, and some other little things.

She set her new alarm clock. She felt so proud and grown up.

First grade was a HUGE adjustment for Olive. It was pretty heartbreaking actually. Lots of things were very crazy at this time. We were living all in one room in Becca and Bruce's basement (which Olive loved), we were swamped with the remodel, and I think life was just, in general, kinda crazy. I knew that Olive was so excited about starting the Dual Immersion Spanish program but they also warn you that it is a hard transition. I mean, they have no clue what is going on for half their day. I feel like just the adjustment to going all day is hard, and now to have a language on top of it was complicating things. There were weeks of crying about school, fighting over homework and screaming in the mornings. Sometimes even refusing to get out of bed. For weeks Olive was crying on the way to school about how much she was going to miss mom. It was even worse than Scott and I had prepared ourselves for.

But, on the first day she was quite excited. Olive was nervous that she wouldn't know anyone and I remember so distinctly having those same anxieties going to first grade. I tried to help her and talk her through it and reassure her but I know she was still nervous. I was so relieved when I picked her up after school and she spouted off the list of friends that were in her class and I knew she was going to be fine.

It's been such a great experience so far. Her teachers are so kind and sweet and they adore her and that is all I could ask for. I feel so lucky because you really do leave them with these teachers all day and it is comforting to know that they love her and are watching out for her. She is a pretty tender soul and definitely wears her emotions and I think that has taken some learning for her to control those things. Her teacher talked to us once because one day where she missed two words on her spelling test and cried at school for a solid ten minutes.

After a kinda rough beginning, we were kinda worried that we had made the right choice, especially now that we live in this new neighborhood and we choose to keep Olive at her old school. But we had a really tender experience that I thought was cute, and it wasn't until I was relaying the experience to my cousin over the Christmas break that I got emotional and realized how important it was. One day Olive was going in to school late. She was so anxious about walking in late and everyone seeing her. She was so stressed. When Scott walked her in to class and the class cheered and multiple girls were like "Olive's here!". And then all the little girls in the class rushed over and lined up to give her a hug because they were happy that she was there. That was a definite confirmation to both Scott and I that she was in the right place, at the right school, and I could finally let go of that a bit.

On the first day I managed to keep it together for her until I got to the parking lot and saw my friend and we both started crying together. As the day moved on I thought a lot about what she would be doing and how her first lunch went. It was so bizarre for her to be gone all day and Milo certainly asked multiple times where she was.