Back to school!

Oh man, I have been so nervous about this day for a long time! I started getting really nervous Sunday night while I was getting clothes set out and prepacking the lunches. I've been letting images of all the horrible ways that Landon could react to this new school and situation, and most of them were too graphic to mention here, and they all made my stomach queazy! He has always known it as Bailey's school and I just knew that he was going to be confused and want to know why he's not riding his bus to his beloved preschool, and it could escalate to quite a scene if he got upset enough. He is in a regular kindergarten class this year, and just has an extra special ed teacher in there to watch him and help him if he needs it. I just don't want him to get upset and disrupt the whole class and make everyone think he's crazy!
Another problem is that he has been wearing the same dingy, stretched out, horrible yellow Wiggles shirt all summer, and it simply can't be worn to school!
It's been well loved, and I didn't fight him about wearing it every day over the summer because, well, I just didn't feel like it, and I didn't see the harm. He is so well behaved when he wears his shirt! We would have him take it off at night and put it in the washer, and if it wasn't moved into the drier so that he could put it on the minute he got up, well, he didn't wait for it very patiently.
This is Landon in the shirt at the beginning of the summer while Bailey was in Arizona and the boys had just had their hair cut.

This is Landon in the shirt in early July once Bailey had come back,

and this is the shirt in early August during Katherine's visit.

Making him wear a different shirt to school was definately going to make him mad, which I was afraid would have him give me even more of a fight about leaving him at a school he didn't know. Ben took off work that day to help out and to go to a meeting with the people at his soon to be new Peachtree City job, so Ben coaxed him out of the yellow shirt and told him he could put it right back on when he got home. We hung it on the back of the chair to wait for him, and everyone got on the golf cart to head over. We live too close to the school to have the bus come, but it's way too far to walk, so we always cart it over. When we pulled up, Landon kept saying "Bye Bailey!" and didn't want to get off. We tried to tell him it was his school now too, and one of his new teachers came over to talk to him, but he got frustrated and kicked his feet and started to cry. Then Bailey came over, put her arm around him, talked quietly and reassuring to him, and just walked him into the building. We saw through the door that she took him right to his room and handed him off to his teacher and then made her way down the hall to her own class. I'm not sure why she was the one able to calm him down, but I'm so happy he has her to help him!
I calmed down after that, but we did watch the clock all day wondering if he was being upset at school and disrupting his whole class. Everyone has been so sweet to him and about having him in the class, and I don't want them to get frustrated with him and wish he wasn't there. He's so very inteligent, and when he's cumfortable he'll show them how much he really knows, and I hope he falls into that soon. Devon and I headed over the get in the carpool line later that day, and his teachers that were out there said that he's done really well for it being his first day at a new school, and I took that to mean that he could have been better. I know he will be as soon as he learns the routine and gets familiar with everything. So I showed them my new card with both of my kids' names on it, they called them out, and they ran out together to wait for me to pull around.

Here they are climbing in after I pulled up.


Here, Bailey is holding up our new card with both of their names on it, and if you look at her front tooth, it's so loose it's sticking stright out.

This tooth has been loose for a long time but she just wasn't wanting anyone to pull it. It was sticking out at such a right angle that I really wanted it out before her first day of school, but any time we messed with it, she would yell and it would start to bleed so we left it alone. We were eating together later after school and she was complaining that it was bothering her, so I talked her into letting me give it a pull. I got a good grip on it and it came right out with a single tug!

So Bailey lost her front tooth on the first day of school, and we had a visit from the tooth fairy last night. Bailey said "I'll put the tooth over to the side so that you don't wake me up trying to find it." so I guess we're done pretending the tooth fairy is real.
We had another good morning this morning, although Landon really wanted to wear the yellow shirt, so I think that things will be fine and we'll all be back into our routines very soon!