Meera’s First Day of “School”

Meera has been very forlorn and feeling left out since K & O started school last week. She really loved having them home all summer and despite how much we tried to prepare her for their back-to-school (and her back-to-big-chunk-of-the-day-without-them), she hasn’t taken it very well. Each morning after they get on the bus she begs us to “follow them” and talks non-stop about “Ky Ky and Ow Bo at school.” Finally, today, was her first day of Garden Gate. Garden Gate – or “Baby Day,” as Meera, and therefore we all five, call it – is a once-a-week parent-and-child class offered at our Waldorf School. I did this with Meera during this past spring semester and we loved it. So, we signed up for it again for this fall. It makes my life crazy to do this kind of thing (I pay for the time “off” by working late, late, late nights), but it is so worth it. I feel extremely grateful to have a career that allows for such flexibility in my work schedule. And I feel extremely grateful too that Meera gets to spend her early childhood with a tenured-Mommy (as opposed to poor K & O who had to spend their earliest years with a tenure-track-Mommy). Anyway, today was Meera’s first day and she was so happy to finally be the one going back to school. She was very cute this morning, all nervous and anxious about her big first day of Baby Day (she even had a massive clothing crisis at the last minute – insisting on a ‘“pink dress” with no such dress to be found… we finally appeased her by letting her wear her new fall “dressy coat”), but as soon as we got there she warmed right up and was the happy-go-lucky charmer that she tends to be. Even though we originally landed in the Waldorf world because of how it fit so well with K & O’s needs, it turns out to be a really great fit for Meera too —  I could write so much more, but, it is 11:20pm and I am just totally exhausted and needing to get ready for bed. Big day for the baby girl (and I guess for the Mama too).