Kindergarten update

We are a week into having a KINDERGARTENER and I just wanted to document a little bit about it so far. 

 

First off, Collins absolutely LOVES school.  (don’t most 5 year olds though?!)  She seems to be adjusting wonderfully and handling the longer day and earlier mornings like a champ.  

 

But, let me tell you….this change in schedule has been tough for us.  My kids have always had a bedtime of “around 8:30”…  I like a schedule, but I also like flexibility.  That seems contradictory, huh?  I am a firm believer in providing structure/schedule especially when they are babies and establishing a night time routine…but in my experience once you do that….my kids have always been able to adapt to staying up later some nights, or whatever is thrown at them.  So, with Collins going to preschool (half day) the past three years…yes, our bedtime has been around 8:30 and she would sleep until 7-7:30 and we’d be out the door sometime between 7:45-8:15, depending on who was taking that morning.  She also napped regularly up until she was FIVE…and then still continued to nap a few times a week the past 6 months.  There was never a worry if we were “running behind” on bedtime one night, because I knew if she was tired she’d be able to nap and it would be fine. And it was, always. We never had any issues.  

 

However, now…Mikey is the one that takes Collins to kindergarten every day because his commute is longer and needs to be out of the house earlier than I do, so that’s just what makes sense.  They leave the house between 7 and 7:15….our school is overcrowded and the carpool line is AWFUL…we live two minutes away from the school but it’s necessary for him to leave that early to drop her off and get to his office at a decent time.  She is generally going into the school sometime between 7:15 and 7:25, our tardy bell rings at 7:40 so it works out perfectly.  So, our mornings….are starting a weeeeeee bit earlier.  Although waking her up right at 6:30 doesn’t seem much different than when she would wake up on her own around 7:15, it is.  Those last thirty minutes matter.  We are working on getting her to bed earlier…but it’s SO hard. There are so many things to do between 5:30 and bedtime and that’s also my time to spend/play with my kids.  So we are certainly working towards getting her in bed a little earlier so she’s ASLEEP by 8:30, but for example…last night we took the kids shoe shopping and before I knew it we were still running errands and it was almost 8!  YIKES.

 

Combining us never having early mornings and SUMMER, it sure has been an adjustment.  We take full advantage of our summers, and def. don’t keep the kids on a rigid bedtime schedule.  Sure, most nights they were getting in bed around 8:30…but there were certainly nights where we were still out on the boat at 8!  And weekends?! Ha!  We definitely let them stay up later then.  My kids have never been early risers though and they also will still sleep the same or even later if they stay up late, hallelujah for that!  So anyways, the point of all this rambling is that it has really been hard for me to stay on schedule/get into a routine with school starting.  I miss our carefree summer nights!  I guess I better get used to it though….school days are here to stay for the next 15 years!

It's almost the weekend, cheers!