There's A New Kid In Town

Yesterday afternoon the three of us went to a "Kindergarten Meet n' Greet" for Jarrah's new school. The sun was out (after weeks and weeks of gray, this made us all a bit blinky) and the park (how nice that the school has a neighborhood park attached!) was hoppin' with name-tagged kids and their parents. (I wore a name tag, too, even though David said it was goofy.)

We were greeted by one of the teachers, who seemed very nice; somehow we didn't meet the others. The best moment was when the the principal, who seems very young and hip, extended his hand for Jarrah to shake and she high-fived him so violently that he looked like it'd been burned. He probably went straight to the office and put a little note in her file: "This one's on notice. Aggressive tendencies."

Jarrah was especially enamored of the tire swing, and enjoyed several nausea-promoting spins with various and sundry children. I was pleased to see that some of them were bigger, and some were smaller. You could kind of tell the ones who weren't quite five yet; they looked a bit more uncertain about the the whole enterprise and sometimes hid behind their parents. Jarrah had no use for us other than swing pushes and occasional demands for water. She was in full cotillion mode the whole time.

After we'd been there a while, she figured out that a few of her preschool friends were out in the field, and after that, they formed a posse. I did notice some others drifting in and out of their ranks. While I knew that Addison, Jacob and Sophia from her class would be joining her at the new school, I hadn't known that a DIFFERENT Jacob friend (from her after-school classes) would be there, and the two of them are clearly tight. In short order, Jarrah had everybody playing "blood-sucking vampires," and I cringed lightly waiting for someone's parents to speak to me about her viewing choices. Anyway, new Jacob's mom, Melissa, is an absolute delight, and an elementary school teacher and former theater major so we had lots to discuss. Turns out she was also a student in Muir Writing at UCSD when I was TEACHING it, which initially made me think I was about 20 years older than her (I'm not--I always forget I was a baby myself when I was doing that.)

It was so weird (in a good way) to say goodbye to her and realize that it wasn't really goodbye, that I might actually be seeing her daily for another six years. Wow. I guess we are launched. But I definitely have to get over my shyness--on the way home, it occurred to me that I hadn't introduced myself to a single new parent, and David had met several. I'll never get elected to the P.T.A. if I behave like that.