12 Things I Learned at Preschool

After what was starting to seem like a very long summer, preschool finally started last week.

Miles goes for 2 1/2 hours four mornings a week, and Alice goes one morning a week. Simon goes no mornings a week. (Doesn’t Alice look thrilled to be going to school? She loved it once she got there!)

After just one week, I’ve learned several things from preschool…

1. Two and a half hours is not a very long time. At all.

2. It takes approximately 12.5 minutes from the time we walk out of the house until we’re all buckled in and ready to pull out of the driveway.

3. Teaching Miles and Alice to buckle their own car seats has added three minutes to our routine, bringing it to 15.5 minutes.

4. Preschool frowns on you leaving your kids in the car while you drop someone off at their classroom.

5. It takes approximately 7 minutes to unbuckle everyone, get out the stroller, get everyone out of the car, hold hands, walk across the parking lot, smile at the other mothers and arrive at the classroom door.

6. If you’re five minutes late to drop your child off, this doesn’t mean that you get to be five minutes late picking him up. (But I think it should.)

7. By the time you drop off your child, chat with the other moms, get the other two kids loaded into the car and are leaving the preschool parking lot, you have 2 hours until you need to be pulling back into the parking lot.

8. While blogland appears to be very gung-ho about limiting processed foods, artificial food dyes and sugar – they’re practically sipping Coca Cola through Twizzler straws at preschool. Oreos for show and tell? Absolutely – as long as you brought some to share. Two cupcakes for snack? Hell yes! I’m pretty sure they gave Mile pop rocks last week and told him to chug a Mountain Dew.

9. They’d really like you to be FIVE minutes EARLY picking your child up – and you may get the stink eye if you don’t show up until the time that school is supposedly over.

10. Preschool also frowns on you leaving your kids in the car while you pick someone up from their classroom.

11. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in 2 hours when you only have two kids with you.

12.Two hours can make a huge difference in my sanity level.