First Day of School! First Day of School!!

I actually prefer life when school is in session. It's good for the kiddos and I to get away from each other for awhile. I'll be especially excited when Micah goes to preschool next year. He's killing me, smalls.

It was raining pretty hard when Dylan left in the morning, so I let him take our umbrella. He was really, really excited about that:

Yeah, I know opening umbrellas inside is bad luck, blah blah blah. But I'm not really superstitious. Except when I was in fifth and sixth grade, I totally believed that boys paid more attention to me when I had painted fingernails. It was a theory that I tested out many times, and it ALWAYS proved correct. So that makes it a law now, right? When you test a theorem out several times, and it always proves correct? It becomes a law. We'll call it the Law of Painted Nails. I ran out of time to paint my nails when I reached junior high. And I always chipped it off in class, so it was a huge waste of time to paint them. (And I think I finally realized that boys did NOT pay attention to me at all, painted nails or not. Let's be honest with ourselves here.)

Ben loves long, painted nails. I tried to do that when we were first married, but it drove me crazy. I cannot stand to have long nails. I feel like there's all this trapped dirt up under the nail. And then the compulsive chipping of the polish. I just couldn't hack it. So now I am happily short- and bare-nailed.

Sorry for the deviation in the topic.

Here is Sadie-Pooh:

Her first day of school was a nice ease-in. Parents came with the kids that first day. The kids put all their supplies in marked bins and colored a paper to turn in to the teacher. And then parents and kids went home together.

Sadie didn't start riding the bus until the following week. I was so nervous about it that, on that first day, after the bus picked her up in front of our house, I followed it in my car all the way to the school. I think the bus driver thought I was crazy. When the bus and I pulled up to the school, I hopped out and showed Sadie where she was supposed to meet with her teacher. Then, after school, I waited at the doors where all the kids come out. I made sure Dylan found Sadie and walked hand-in-hand with her to the bus. And then I followed the bus all the way home. Dylan actually remembered to look for Sadie even before he saw me there. I thought that was pretty great. Sometimes he remembers stuff. Sometimes.

He has been so good about watching out for her. She really hates walking with him from the school to the bus, and then from the bus stop, home, but I require it. I do NOT want her walking alone. I'm way too paranoid that someone will abduct her. That is my biggest Mommy Fear. I think every mommy has a fear. I think Nat's is someone hitting her kids in the parking lot, right, Nat? And I think Pooh's is having a dog maul one of her kids. We all have our thing. Mine is child abduction. It's probably all of those true crime shows I watch. I really shouldn't watch those.

Anyways. One day, a couple of weeks ago, Sadie slipped away from Dylan when she got off the bus at the bus stop and hid from him. Dylan looked everywhere for her, and then he ran home and came into the house, crying so hard: "Sadie hid from me, Mama! I'm so scared! What if someone stole her???" Sadie made her appearance as soon as I put on my shoes to go hunting for her. She got into huge, huge trouble. It was so sweet that he was so worried. Dylan is such a caretaker. He was home sick today, and he was so nervous that I was going to miss picking Sadie up at the bus stop. He kept checking the time and saying, "Mom, make sure you go and get her from the bus stop. You need to leave in two minutes." It's really cute. He gets his caretakerness from me. And from my dad. Grandpa is a big-time caretaker. Always making sure everyone is comfortable and safe and having a good time.