August 29, 2005 - Baxter's First Day of Kindergarten

It's a beautiful, sunny morning in San Francisco, and Baxter's off at school. As predicted, everything went smoothly this morning. Baxter actually slept until 6:30 (a rarity!) and was excited about school. We were ready early, thanks to last night's preparations and a check-list we made for him to keep track of his new morning routine, so Baxter had some time to play before he left.

He enjoyed his bike ride over to school with Matt, and I walked Lyle in the stroller (25 mins.) since it was his nap time. We met on the school yard, where we found Baxter's teacher holding her "Room 106" sign. The principal gave a brief, spirited greeting, and lead the kids in a Grattan School cheer. The kindergarten kids were adorable, standing out there wearing their backpacks, surrounded by new friends. My cousin Sarahjane joined us to see him off, which was very sweet and much appreciated by us all.

We went into the classroom, which is surprisingly big and bright and has bathrooms adjacent to the room. (Handy for the little guys!) The kids got nametags and found places at tables that were set up with playdoh, stamps and ink, and lacing boards. They sat down and played, talking a bit to each other and looking around furtively. A few kids were teary when they said good-bye to their parents. The teacher welcomed parents to stay all day if we wished, but when I left after about 15 minutes only Matt and one other parent were left. I think we all figured we should high-tail it before anymore tears started. I needed to get Lyle home to sleep, but Matt was going to stay a bit longer. Baxter said good-bye easily - he had a little bit of a nervous look on his face but there were no tears or pleas for me to stay, so off I went.

There was an article on the front page of the SF Chronicle this morning about the difficult process of choosing schools in this city, and our elementary school was the featured public school. (Kind of a fun way to start Baxter's years there...) The situation described by the parents of a child named Julian was exactly our situation (didn't get any of our top 7 choices, were assigned to D'Avila, and we chose Grattan) - luckily, his parents sound happy with this decision. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/29/MNGVJEERGP1.DTL

All in all, a good start. We'll see what he has to say this afternoon!