First day at school for two special 3 year olds!

I can't believe my two little babies are in school!!! OK, it's only 3 year old preschool, but they have to ride a bus!!!! Every day! Our local school district, which we love love love, has an early childhood program for kids who might need some extra help catching up: either ESL, speech issues, autism spectrum, etc. (many times identified during state early intervention programs). If your child qualifies for this awesome free program, then their siblings can also attend by paying tuition. It is such a great program: 1 teacher plus 2 aides for 15 kids. They have a speech pathologist, OT/PT, and a social worker that pull the kids out for 1-on-1 service if needed. It is such a sought-after program that my neighbor was telling me in this ironic twist "I hope my son qualifies!" Now the only downside of this, is that we are moving the first week of October, so we only get to benefit from this for one month!!! Boooo. The new district in Houston does not have such a program for 3 year olds, and so we are on a waiting list for another preschool. Oh well, so here are some pictures from the first day, which was only 45 minutes long and parents attended with the kids.

He was SO excited to be going to school!!! I had been telling him a lot about how he was going to ride a school bus to school. I wanted to see if he remembered China, so I asked him (knowing it wasn't true) "Do you remember in China, did you ride a school bus with Sha-Sha to go to school?" He thought about it for a second, and then said "No school bus. I walk with Sha-Sha to school." He remembered! Gillian (Sha-Sha) had told her mom that they walked to school together and soemtimes she would carry him!
Vivi was SOOO excited for school, and declared that she wasn't 2 anymore, so that is why she wasn't going to school with Miss Hogan (her teacher last year). She said "I 3 so I go to Miss Kris school."

Here is part of their little classroom- so cute!

Playing with pegs on the first day. They kind-of hung out together checking out all of the toys. I am so glad they are in the same classroom!

A picnic to celebrate the first day!

So technically this is the first day of school with no mommies:). They told us the bus would come around 8:20 and so of course we were ready to go at 8am! You have to understand that for Vivi and Tonito, the school bus was *the most exciting part* of school (quite the opposite for mommy!). We waited. And waited. And waited. And at ten to 9 I had to drive them because the bus didn't come! Apparently many moms and kids took a long time to get on with pictures and all the crying, etc. So I got to drive them on the first day, and then they came home on the bus!



Here they are on the way home!!! These smiles couldn't be bigger! They LOVE the bus, LOVE school, LOVE Miss Kris. No tears, no wishing they were by mommy (come on guys, you could at least pretend you are so attached to me that you were actually sad to leave me??).


On a side note, I felt so different with only Maya at home! We read lots of books, she got to have a very quiet nap while I cleaned and did laundry and email. On day 2 I went to work out at the gym and took her to the Kids Care (where she has happily gone since she was 3 months old). She started crying immediately and they said she was crying on and off the whole time. I think she missed her brother and sister- they are always with her in the younger room bringing her toys, making her laugh, and telling the caretakers if she cries, etc. Poor baby was all alone! She was so happy to see them when they came home from school.





Here is how she and Tonito like to play wrestle- he is SO gentle with her and lets her crawl all over him and give him slobbery wet kisses and hugs while he just lays there quietly enjoying her lovey-ness. They are really cute together- he will pull out all the chairs from the table in the dining room and she takes the Wonder Pets flyboat and he takes his "barco" (Noah's Ark) and they just make them go in circles under the looong dining room table and around the side.
Here she is blowing strawberries!

I think Tonito was pretending to be asleep;).