Well, the first day of school has come and gone! And with it went some really good life lessons learned. Hahaha. First and foremost -- it's not a good idea to switch up the transportation situation on the first day, especially when you're changing it to something that you've NEVER done before. Secondly, it doesn't matter how horribly off the rails the kids' schedules and routines have gone -- when it comes to waking up on time and getting ready in record fashion, back-to-school is like Christmas morning around these parts. Hahaha. And finally, 5 months of quarantining has gotten me REALLY used to having everyone home all the time and I can't decide yet if I like an empty house. Of course, it's not truly empty YET -- Isaac starts preschool next week -- so maybe I'll be changing my tune in the next little bit. :)
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Like I said, everyone was up and ready to go yesterday morning with hardly any prodding from me or Scott. Ethan and Grace are doing seminary every morning via Zoom, at least for this semester, and they're the first ones out the door for school. Ethan graciously humored me with the taking of pictures before he and Grace took off, and I did my best to get it done as quickly as possible. {He doesn't like to be late.} Grace technically doesn't have to be at the school as early as Ethan does, but she likes to, so she goes.
ETHAN -- 12th Grade
This year, we've got an interesting hybrid situation going on with the school schedules. The older three will be going to school in person, Monday through Thursday, and working from home virtually on Fridays. Jane and Alex will be going 2 days in person and the other 3 online, at least for this semester, and Isaac will be doing his customary 4-days-a-week preschool starting on Monday. Each kid had their own level of excitement going for school to start and, interestingly, Grace and Sophie were the LEAST excited to go back. Which is super odd since they're more extroverted than the rest of us and are usually chomping at the bit to get back to the social aspect of school, if nothing else. As for the others, Alex was possibly the most excited, with Ethan falling slightly behind him, and Jane was pretty comfortably in the middle.
While the boys were all more excited about the actual school part of back-to-school, the girls were decidedly more excited about the shopping-for-the-first-day-of-school-outfit part of back-to-school. Hahahaha. Adding to the fun of our back-to-school festivities was a quick visit from my mom last week, who humored all of Jane's sartorial wishes and helped her pick out some cute new clothes as an early birthday present. {Her birthday is this Friday.} Grace and Sophie had each ordered some items online, but on Saturday, they convinced me to take them to Goodwill to do some thrifting to really complete their looks. Hahahahaha. They (i.e. mostly just Sophie) found a lot of interesting items that I never in a million years would have imagined they would be choosing for school clothes. If I had to sum up each of the girls' "looks" in a single phrase it would be: Jane -- "the 90s are calling and they want their butterfly clips back;" Sophie -- "make way -- it's the year of the blazer;" and Grace -- "I'm just wearing a t-shirt and running shorts." Hahahahaha. As for the boys, Ethan finally gave in on Saturday and let me buy him a couple new shirts (even though he kept insisting it was a waste of money because he already had shirts) and Alex and Isaac both went hog-wild ordering Pokemon and other themed shirts from Old Navy and Target.
SOPHIE -- 8th Grade
But I digress. After Ethan and Grace left for school yesterday morning, Alex and Jane were the next to go, with Scott dropping them off on his way to work. After giving Maxwell a quick walk around the neighborhood, Sophie was the last to go and I drove her to school with Isaac happily tagging-along while watching a movie in our new van.
Once Isaac and I were back home, he was happy to have screens all to himself, and I managed to waste a whole lot of time doing I don't even know what until mid-afternoon when I dozed off on the couch while watching a movie with Isaac.
This was probably the first error.
My next error occurred after I woke up when I decided I should still go ahead and start making the chocolate chip cookies I had planned on having for the kids when they got home from school. I was crunched for time, obviously, and in my hurry to finish making the cookie dough, I was cutting it close for my walk to school to pick up Alex and Jane, which leads us to the biggest error of all and had a trickle down effect on everything else that afternoon.
Even though the kids have always ridden the bus home, I decided with the whole Covid situation that maybe we should avoid that this year, just in case. Knowing how incredibly backed up with traffic the schools get (the elementary and middle schools are right next to each other), I decided it would be better to just walk to the school to get them rather than wait forever in a car line. I figured this wouldn't be too bad -- we live less than a mile from the schools -- and I could just dart on up there to meet them at the end of the day and walk them home.
Well, it WAS bad. It was so hot (95* with the sun blaring down on us) and I ended up having to take Isaac with me because, when I came up with this brilliant plan, I wasn't thinking about the fact that Ethan wouldn't be home in time to stay with him so that I could go alone. Less than a minute into our walk, I realized I had made a huge mistake and it was too late to do anything about it. So I trudged along, with my poor, red-faced, sweaty little 4 year old and started coming up with a plan B on the fly. First, I called Ethan, who was driving home at this point, and asked him to meet us near the back entrance to the school to pick all of us up. Then, I walked all the way up to the schools rather than waiting for Alex and Jane to come to the designated corner we had chosen the day before. Unfortunately, I made another error in not thinking to grab a mask before we left the house because I was never planning on going all the way up to the school! With my change of plan, I was not prepared and was told I couldn't be on school property without a mask. Doh! So, I scooted over to the far side of the yard (away from anyone else) and waited for Jane to walk over from the middle school.
After we intercepted her path, I sent her over to the benches where she was supposed to meet Alex, to go and collect him. Well, that was our next problem because he wasn't there and Jane had to go searching for him inside and ask the office for help. Double DOH! Apparently she got lectured about middle schoolers not being allowed to come over to the elementary school at the end of the day {WHAT?! They literally ride the same buses that are parked at the elementary school and walk over everyday to board them after school} and got no help from the office, who told her that Alex was a 4th grader and should know his own address by now and had probably just walked home on his own {Uh, NO. That would not be the case for this 4th grader -- yes he knows his address, but he would NEVER walk home all by himself. EVER.} Thankfully, Jane found him thanks to the janitor's help.
Thankfully, our comedy of errors was almost over for the day and after Ethan rescued us, we made it home safe and sound. But not before stressing Ethan out about the three younger ones not being buckled while he was driving because Jane's buckle was stuck and she couldn't get it out, and Alex and Isaac couldn't work around all the backpacks to get their buckles in. The cherry on top of the afternoon, though, was when we pulled into the garage and Jane literally got stuck in the door opening as she was trying to get out on her side of the car. (The car was too close to the garbage cans for the door to open all the way and she had already passed the point of no return with her exit and couldn't work her way backwards into the car to get out on the other side.) TRIPLE DOH!!! Hahahaha. Poor little lambs. It was a bit of a rough ending to the day. And in Jane's case, she had a rough START as well, when she couldn't find where her homeroom was supposed to be.
All's well that ends well, though, and after getting home I was able to finish making those cookies while Ethan took off to get Sophie and then Grace. I can't decide if it's because the cookie mess in the kitchen was too big a stressor for him to deal with after a long, hot afternoon, or if he just wanted to make a stop at Sonic after getting the girls, but I was grateful nonetheless for his second rescue of the day. ;)
Once everyone was finally home, I was able to get a mild debriefing from the big kids. And I do mean mild. The older 3 seemed to have a fine enough day, but things were odd once again when I didn't get any of the typical first-day-of-school-verbal-diarrhea from Grace once she was home. I guess it's just another data point to chalk up to the strangeness of the times! Hahaha.
By the end of the day, everyone was pretty much exhausted and went to bed on time without a fight. Well, everyone but Isaac, that is. He's been needing a haircut for WEEKS, so I finally decided to just do it, and forced him to get a haircut and take a bath before also forcing him to go to bed. He WAS exhausted though, so once the haircut, bath, and concurrent meltdowns were over, he fell asleep almost immediately after I finished reading him his 3 books.
What a day! Amiright?? Hahahaha.
Today was a LITTLE smoother -- at least on the afternoon end -- as I decided to throw caution to the wind and told all the kids to just ride the bus home. (I'm feeling really good about that decision, in case anyone is wondering.) Hahahahahaha. It's so strange to think that we're already at this point in the year. In a lot of ways, it feels like we've been suspended in time since March when the quarantine started and it doesn't even seem possible that Fall is already upon us! But it is, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that we won't end up having to quarantine AGAIN now that school has started back up. ;)
