Preschool?!?

On Thursday, my one and only tiny baby Willa went to preschool.  Except that she isn't a tiny baby.  And who would have ever guessed that I would be the kind of mom to CRY?  I made it almost out of the building before I did it, but I don't think I get any points for that.  And just so I don't feel like a complete sap, Brad doesn't get the "not crying points" either.  So there.

Here's the run down on the education of Miss Willa.  She goes two days a week to Dimensions at First Plymouth Church.  They are a very sciency/natury based program and they do lots of things outside and in a greenhouse with gardens and composting and plants and stuff.  Very cool.  We are going to have a very hippie child, even if I can't keep a plant alive for anything.  We are so very excited to see everything that Willa learns there.  Her teacher's name, thank goodness, is Mrs. Katt.  Pretty sure the only other way she would have remembered it was if it were Mrs. Dog.  When Tosha and I picked her up from school on Thursday, we had about a bajillion questions for her about what she learned and about the other kids and she didn't really want to answer any of our questions.  I thought that was something that happened in the teenage years, but ALREADY she is annoyed with my interest in all that she does.  The teacher did tell us (and wrote on her little daily progress sheet) that she REALLY enjoyed painting.  Her sheet, in fact, said that "she painted and painted and painted."  I am going to take that as a nice way to tell me that my child is obsessed with painting and it might be a problem:)  Next week, we are going to work on learning the other kids' names, and making sure that she is helping to pick up after all the painting.

While I am so excited to watch Willa learn, I still have this little nagging sad feeling in my heart.  I realize she is still very young, and we have many more years of school and childhood left but for some reason I feel like this is the beginning of the end.  All of a sudden, there are other people, teachers, peers, other parents, involved in the shaping of my child's personality and future.  Its like preschool is the very beginning of a world of making friends, peer pressure, trying to fit in, getting along, finding your "place".  And while I am inclined to want to shield my little lady from all of these things that could potentially hurt her little feelings, I also kind of want to see how she handles them.  I want to see proof that what we are doing at home, and what our values are, are going to hold up out in the real world and that my daughter will be an asset and a ray of sunshine to those around her.  Wow.  Heavy. Time will tell, I guess.  I need to get back to blogging about something less serious.

Oh yeah.  We did eventually get Willa to show us how to walk like a dinosaur, like her note said they did.  Sooo there must have been a few minutes where she wasn't thinking about painting.  She also talked me into taking her out for ice cream after school and getting a balloon animal from the clown at the Fallbrooke farmer's market.

And then this happened for most of the rest of the evening.  Not gonna lie, I was in a very similar position on the other end of the couch (when I wasn't taking pictures for her graduation slide show:)