the Graduates

Reckless and Stretch graduated from preschool Thursday night.  Finally.  I suspect that my husband and I felt a little like the parents of those college kids that take like seven or eight years to finish their Bachelor’s degrees because it seems like the girls were at that school For.Ev.Er!

They started there in September of 2008, when they had just turned two.  I only sent them one morning a week, and it was basically so that I could have three and a half hours alone to contemplate the reasons I shouldn’t run away from home, which can be a hard thing to resist doing when you have two two year olds and a four year old.  Not to mention, I was worn out coming off of the previous year of having two one year olds and a three year old and I had pretty much faced that year in a stupor because before that I had two babies and a two year old!

The next year of their preschool life, they attended three days a week until November.  Reckless had a horrible, serious bout with pneumonia that had her hospitalized twice in one month, and the pediatrician recommended we take the girls out of preschool because if she contracted any other respiratory viruses that fall or winter, it could be life threatening.  Stretch hadn’t been as sick, but even though they were awful at sharing toys, they were great at sharing germs.  So, instead of taking a semester off to travel Europe and experiment with drugs, the girls took a semester off to watch cartoons and take steroids.

They made a triumphant return to school in April and finished out the year with their three year old class.  Sure, they only knew A-E and U-Z, but part of an alphabet can get you pretty far on the playground these days.

The next year, 2010-2011, they were in the four year old class and what we thought was their “senior year” of preschool.  Their health, thank God, had improved drastically by the time they were four.  And they’d both nailed down a major – Arts and Crafts.  But, when spring came, the teacher encouraged us to hold off on kindergarten.  She felt that since their birthday was so close to the cut off and they were born five weeks early and one of them was barely going to pass Calculus that year, they’d benefit from one more year of preschool.  She was so right.

We split them up into different four day a week pre-K classes this last year, allowing them to make separate friends, cultivate their separate personalities, and have at least a few hours a day to share germs with other kids, not just each other.  Granted Stretch was so tall by this year that many of her classmates confused her for a teacher’s aide, but that’s okay, she’s going to be a legendary basketball player as soon as we can figure out a way to keep her from running off the court crying.

At this point, they’re more than prepared for kindergarten.  And I’m more than prepared to have all three of my kids in full time, year round, school.  I survived off of one morning a week; I rallied when I had three; I finally saw some productivity out of myself when they were all out of the house four mornings a week, so this six and a half hours a day five days a week thing should have me thriving!  I can catch up on all of the books I’ve been wanting to read, the laps in the pool I should be swimming, the projects I need to tackle.  With that kind of time on my hands, I should be able to launch an effective campaign for the presidency and solve our nation’s fuel crisis!  I guess I’ll see how it goes organizing and painting the office and take it from there.