First Day of School!

August 27th, 2012 – Ivy’s first day of Pre-K!

Holly: When the big day arrived, Ivy was up puttering around the house at a much earlier time than normal. By 6:30 she was putting on her new school clothes and ready to go! Ivy insisted on being fashionable and wore her long-sleeved white sweater over her uniform even though it was 90 degrees outside. She wanted to wear her ‘high heel’ shoes, but that is forbidden by the school so we opted for black Converse sneakers and scrunched-up pink socks. Whatever… she looks cute in just about anything (and she knows it!).

The doors at Helm’s Elementary open at 7:30, but we arrived a bit early along with hundreds of others people. The place was bustling with new kids and parents including – to her surprise – one of my co-workers was dropping off his kids off too. We escorted Ivy to Miss Garcia’s classroom and snapped a few pictures, grabbed a few hugs, and stole a couple of kisses, and then released her into the next 14 years of schooling. She was smiling and excited, but no tears or clinging. We’re proud of how she strode into the next big phase of life.

Joey: Her schooling actually started about 2 years ago, when she began spending each day with Imelda our Spanish-speaking babysitter during the week. I wanted Ivy to be immersed in a Spanish-speaking environment all day so that she would pick up words and phrases naturally. It was a success! Much better than I expected actually. She is already bilingual (English/Spanish) and does an amazing job switching back and forth depending on the person whom she is speaking with. We wanted to make sure to continue on a bilingual track through school, so Joey investigated several schools in HISD with dual-language programs and settled on Helms Elementary, which is about 3 miles from our current home. Score! The speak 90% all throughout the day, and gradually adjust it to 50/50 English and Spanish by 5th grade.

Joey: Helm’s Elementary offered a “Yahoo/Boohoo” breakfast to parents and kids. The excited kids were ‘yahoos’, while the crying kids (and parents) were ‘boohoos’. Fortunately, Ivy was a Yahoo! Well, for the first day anyway. On Wednesday she was a bit of a boohoo, but I think because she didn’t get enough sleep. She only was clinging for a minute or so, but then disappeared quickly into the herd of Pre-K kids as if she had completely forgotten I existed. Other parents weren’t so lucky and were still in the hall extracting horrified children off of their bodies.

Aftermath. School is exhausting!

Holly: We prepped Ivy for this monumental day by pointing out playgrounds and school buses (“escuela bus” she would shout each time we saw one). Also, Imelda’s son Eddie was her playmate until he turned 4 and started going to school last year. Imelda would walk Eddie to school and take Ivy with her. So she slowly became aware of the concept of ‘going to school’. This Spring she began asking “When does school start?” and “Is it my birthday yet?”. Joey bought a book titled “The Night Before Pre-school” and started reading it to her in the evenings. I took her to buy school uniforms which, of course, she insisted on wearing around the house a few times before school started.

So off we go! Look out, class of 2025 – Ivy Sommer Dutton is on her way!