KinderEffingGarten!

They woke before 6am, which wasn't a problem, as I had been up for hours. Olivia wanted a hair-do. This may not seem like a big deal, but it's pretty much the first time in her life that I haven't had to wrestle her to the ground just to comb her hair, let alone put anything fancy in it. She picked the biggest, brightest hair-bows we had. They walked around all morning with their backpacks on, until it was finally time to go. Mitch kept giving me sympathetic looks and I kept giving him the finger (okay, it was behind his back--sorry, babe).
Here they are about to enter through the doors of The System. I am still feeling pretty calm at this point. I'm even feeling optimistic that the waterproof mascara was for nothing.
They settled right in. I noticed that they had been placed at opposite sides of the room, but they seemed okay with it. This is the point where Mitch saw that a.) they were happy, and b.) I was about to lose my shit after all, so we hugged them goodbye hastily. He steered me out of the room quickly and I blubbered all the way to the parking lot. We were going to go out for breakfast, but the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and talk about this new chapter in our lives, so I sent him packing off to work and I went and ran errands.
They seemed to have had a wonderful first day, with a few exceptions. Apparently, I gave them two of Olivia's jackets and they had a fight and burst into tears at the end of the day, but I think it was probably due to the stress of keeping it together for several hours that sent them over the edge. Also, Grace had a hard time with the rule of raising your hand when you have something to say. "Mommy, that is a dumb rule. My hand was tired all day because I always have something to say." Indeed.

Olivia was ticked off that recess was only fifteen minutes and declared that she hated recess because of it. Also, they couldn't BELIEVE that one of the kids thought the sugar and cream bowls in the play tea set were CUPS! I said that maybe this little girl had never had a proper tea party and perhaps we should invite her over for one. The idea of never having a proper tea party shocked them into silence. Olivia said she made a friend, which I'm sure wouldn't have happened if they'd been placed next to each other in the classroom, so I'm filled with hope. We sat on the couch and they climbed on my lap when we got home. Olivia asked me to squeeze all the love out of her guts because it had been hurting her a little all day. *sniff*

Gratuitous cute shoe shot