Our Jilly Bean starts Pre-school

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Today was Jilliana's first day of pre-school.  This has certainly been a month of decisions for me.  First deciding whether to homeschool the girls or not and now whether to send Jilliana to school so early or not.  She has only been here 6 months.

 We signed her up back in the Spring since there is always a waiting list for the pre-school that the older girls went to.  Her speech therapist thought it would be good for her.  I  had my doubts and fully anticipated that we would go, she would cry and not stop, and then I would bring her home and wait until next year to send her.


Jilliana has never even stayed at Church yet by herself.  Either Mike or myself have stayed with her.

 Pre-school is from 9-12

 I took her for a pumpkin muffie after dropping the girls off at school.  They go to school at 8:00.

 Jilliana always amazes me.  I think she is really, really, smart.  We walked up to a table that had name tags for all of the kids coming today.  I was looking for her tag and the next thing I know she has found her name by herself and picked it up and told me here it is!

 It was 100 degrees today!  The sun was very bright.  Her teacher let all of the kids bring a stuffed animal on their first day.  The school knew that I was expecting Jilliana to cry.   They assured me that they would call me if she did not stop.  They are aware that she was adopted just 6 months ago and may not be ready for this.

 She was really happy to have a potty and sink that she could reach all by herself!

 She went right for the play-dough

 Then it was time for me to leave.  The Teacher told me I could stay if I would feel better, but I was ready to find out if she would be going to school or not.  At this point I told her Mommy was leaving and that I would be back.  She started crying.  The Teacher told me, "She will be ok".  Yes in "normal" circumstances I would expect a child to be ok, but these are uncharted waters.  When is really the right time?  I really thought that it was going to not be now.  Even when I go to the grocery store and she stays with Mike, when I come back she acts like I have been gone for a week.  She runs to me yelling"Mommy" and hugs me.  So I walked out the door.  And you know what happened next?  I started crying.   Here I am surrounded by all of these young moms and I am crying.  They are all telling me it will be ok.  I can hear her crying and I wait.  After just a few minutes one of the Moms looks in the window for me and tells me that she is sitting on the teacher's lap and is not crying.  I wait a little longer and she is still ok.  So I leave after telling the director to call me if she starts crying again.  I did some shopping close by so that I could be back in 5 minutes.

I never got a call.  When I came back to the school this is what she was doing.

 She just looked up and said, "Mommy" and kept on digging.

I had a hard time getting her out of the dirt.

This was not what I had expected at all.  She had a great day and was excited about her school.
She will be going two days a week.  We will see how she feels on Thursday.  We are very proud of our big girl!