they both can't wait to get in

Cass starts primary next month. And he's thrilled. He's got big plans - how he's going to sit with the bigger boys on the bus and run really fast in gym and share all his toys and raise his hand and gets straight A's in everything.

He has requested a backpack with a dragon on it and a lunchbox with a knight. (Although I'm thinking we could probably win him over with dinosaurs, since that will be so much easier to find. Right? Crap.)

We paid a flat fee during his orientation that covered all his pencils and pens, crayons and notebooks, so getting him ready for his first year in school! seems anti-climactic.

The biggest thrill on the first day, every year, for me was sorting out all my new trapper-keepers and deciding which color folder best suited each class. Remember how pristine everything was? It was almost as if having a tidy notebook was going to help you be smarter.

And for weeks before school started I'd flop on my bed with Seventeen magazines and a pair of scissors, cutting out words and pictures for my locker. (Okay, that was later on - I'm quite sure I didn't have a locker until junior high.)

But he's excited. And while I admit to being a little worried that he'll be bored*, knowing that he thinks of this as an adventure soothes me out a bit.

I'm not looking forward to the six weeks in between Cass starting school and when R starts pre-school, though. She's mad enough that we won't let her go now (despite the fact that even the teacher isn't there yet) that the wait for her third birthday is going to be excruciating.

In the meantime, we're having conversations like this:
Me: Rosey, where are you going?
R: (headed out the door, my purse slung over her arm) I need to go to school, Mama.
Me: But school hasn't started yet.
R: (drops purse, stubborn look.) Wess**, Mama. It has. I go.
Me: Nope. Come back and show me how you sort these numbers.
R: (jaw juts out) Mama, NO! I GO!
Me: No.
R: Wess! Wess! Wess! WESS!
And then her head whirls around and she gives me the evil eye and stomps out to the kitchen. Rosey has spoken. I should be fearing for her teenage years, right?


*C missed the cut-off date by four days last year, and so will turn six this October. While he isn't a wunderkind, he has had a lot more exposure to reading and numbers than some of the kids have. And he's totally over the rest period idea. Woe be to the teacher that tries to make him lie down on his little rug.

**Rosey can say You and Yellow and Yoyo and Yuck. She can't, however, say Yes. It's Wess all the way. (My Germanic ancestors applaud.)