First day of school and a few interventions

The first day of school didn’t exactly get off to a great start yesterday. It started with this dreadfully wrong picture:

Our son attends a small Christian school and this is his first year attending class in the high school building instead of the elementary building. He said he was okay with it if we walked him to his class. So here we are – “the family” in tow walking across the parking lot and hallway amidst a bunch of high schoolers and middle schoolers with Mitchell. With every step it felt more wrong. I had this sick feeling in my stomach like we are screwing our kid up so bad. He is the only kid with his Mom and Dad and little sister following him to class. A flesh and blood family GPS. Mitchell makes it to his class and never looks back and we ran out of there realizing what an epic parental fail that was.

But we had a chance to redeem ourselves with walking our six year old to class. And walking your first grader to class is totally okay. She was sporting one of her new outfits which we had been saving just for school. She struts to the top of the stairs in her  purple leggings and colorful leopard print top and then falls into a heap of tears and starts clinging to me. Anxiety sets in and she can’t get control of herself. We pull her aside and talk to her. She’s afraid of first grade. Afraid of tests, afraid of quizzes. We’re like shocked this is coming out of our normally confident, school lovin’ little girl. We talked with her and assured her but it’s not helping. We leave her crying and that’s when I bolted in the Art room and had my own cry fest. Thankfully two friends came in and rescued me by praying for Sophie and me. What a gift. I was thankful for friendship in that moment.

Later that morning Sophie’s teacher sent me a text saying she was doing great. I was relieved even though Randy and I  knew she would be fine. At the end of the day I got in the carpool line – the wrong spot of course but got that worked out soon enough – and picked up the kids.  So we get home and they sit on the couch and they tell me all about their day. It was a great first day for both of them even though we forgot a few minor things like a PENCIL BOX with scissors, glue, pencils and rulers in it. But who needs that kind of stuff  for school, right?

Okay, so then I open Sophie’s folder at 5:00pm and I see it.

I see the note.

A genuinely sweet & short little note reminding us of the dress code.

And before you think it’s just a small petty thing let me set you straight. We’re not talking we missed it by forgetting a belt. Oh no, we missed it big time. Like her entire outfit was a violation of the dress code which was clearly laid out in the handbook…….that I thought I had read for my devotions one day this summer. Apparently not. I missed that big ole section where they state clearly students need to wear a collared shirt,  solid or striped tops and solid bottoms mainly khaki, navy or denim. So here I am finally understanding that literally everything we bought her was out of dress code. She didn’t even have one collared shirt to wear.   We have a “swap shop” at our school with tons of collared shirts and dress code clothes for $1.oo. Did I know about it? Oh yes, I sure did. I browsed though it looking for a logo shirt for chapel days but I totally dismissed all the color polo shirts thinking, ” Sophie hates feeling confined with shirts I could never get her to wear a collared shirt.” The dress code for K5 is just normal play clothes and so I was stuck in K5 mode I guess? Come on, throw me a bone. It was totally my fault though.

So this is where another friend provides an intervention for me. So sweet. She was near an Old Navy and offers to pick up some uniform stuff for Sophie. She takes pictures and sends them to me so I can not only see what the dress code looks like but I can choose what I want. Meanwhile Sophie and I are running around town looking for anything with a collar on it or with belt loops. We finally find a few things and between my friend bringing back belts and some denim shorts we are now rockin’ the school dress code!

And really people, I should know better, my son has attended this school for three years not to mention I’m married to the Spiritual Director of the school.

But hey….if we didn’t have screw up moments like these then our friends would be bored to tears.