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July 28, 2006

More on preschool

So, as I already mentioned, Zeke started his summer session of preschool this week. This has been hard on Stazi, because first of all, she misses Zeke. Usually they hang out with each other and play games with each other throughout the day. There is a certain amount of fighting and bickering, of course, but I suspect that to the mind of a two-year-old, fighting and bickering with someone else is preferable to having nobody else around at all. I mean, except for me, and I'm not nearly as much fun to follow around and pester as Zeke is.

Also, she's used to having her own preschool class three days a week, except there is no summer session for the toddler classroom, so every day we go to drop Zeke off and she plaintively asks, "My school day today?" and I have to tell her, no, not for another few weeks. Actually not for another five weeks, I think.

Zeke is supposed to get dropped off at 8:30, but for most of this week we've been getting up a little bit late and then having trouble getting out the door -- look, YOU get out the door on time with two small children, a packed lunch, AND the car keys -- so I've been showing up closer to 8:45 or even, sigh, 9:00. This means that Zeke's class is already out on the playground, which is irritating, because then I have to go hunt down his classroom teachers at their playground stations, which is not always the easiest task on the mondo gigantic playgrond at the kids' preschool, and make sure they know he's there and sign him in.

This morning, for once, we were running more or less on time. The kids actually had a halfway decent breakfast, everyone was dressed in clothes that more or less matched and were unstained, and we were on the road by 8:15. Traffic wasn't terrible, and we pulled into the preschool parking lot at 8:29. This still didn't mean we'd get to the classroom by 8:30, because I have to haul both kids out of their carseats and then coax them up the sidewalk and away from the interesting tree with the crook in the trunk, the interesting garden plants, the interesting curb that you can try to walk on like a balance beam, and every interesting rock and piece of pocket lint that happens to be on the ground between the car and the school door.

Then we have to navigate the hallway. Which brings us to the really frustrating part of my morning. There's a drinking fountain in the hallway right before Zeke's classroom. Stazi stopped there and said she wanted a drink. I said no, you can wait until after we drop Zeke off, because we need to get him inside before his class lines up for playground time. Then Zeke said HE wanted a drink. I sighed. I could have told him no, but then I would have felt bad for sending him out to playground time thirsty, so I said, okay, get a drink but make it quick.

He then proceeded, not to the drinking fountain, but all the way back down the hallway to his cubby, where he wanted to hang up his lunch box while he got a drink. I personally would have just put the lunch box down on the ground beside me, but then I do not have the advanced logical reasoning skills of a four-year-old.

While Zeke is doing this, Stazi decides that by God she is going to get her drink too, and starts running full tilt the other direction down the hallway to the other drinking fountain, yelling, "I go this one now!" at the top of her lungs. I am trying to avoid bursting into Full Yell, since this is a Montessori school and all and they are probably anti-screaming here, so I am saying things like, "Get back here right now," and "Stazi, you are too far away," and "Zeke, please bring your lunch box back right now because it belongs in your classroom, not in your cubby" and nobody is listening to me one bit because, you guessed it, I am not screaming, and at least to my kids, speaking in a pleasant tone of voice means that the topic of conversation is obviously unimportant and can be totally ignored.

Zeke finally went back and got his lunch box and handed it to ME so I could hold it while he got his drink. I gave up on Stazi entirely and left her out in the hallway while I ushered Zeke into his classroom, where the kids were already lined up ready to go outside. This led to a shriek of outrage from the hallway, and Stazi dashed in after us pretty quickly. Then I had to tell Zeke three times to go put his lunch box on the lunch box table, while Stazi yelled at a few of Zeke's classmates who were invading her personal space inappropriately. (For some reason, a few of the girls in Zeke's class really love to touch Stazi, and Stazi hates it. Like, HATES IT.)

And then we left, and I wound up yelling at Stazi in the parking lot because she ran too far ahead of me on the sidewalk while cars were pulling in and out, and then I made her hold my hand, and she threw an all-out temper tantrum and I had to forcibly buckle her into her carseat while she flailed and screamed.

And Keith wonders why I go to the Starbucks drive-thru so many mornings. Hint: In the drive-thru, everyone is still in the car, which in the case of the small children in the backseat, means they are strapped in.

Next week Keith's start time at work is 9:00 and he says he can take Zeke to preschool all week. I say, that sounds like a really great plan to me.

Posted at July 28, 2006 9:13 AM

Posted by: Poodle at July 28, 2006 10:01 AM

Posted by: Heidi at August 11, 2006 10:57 PM

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