We have two elementary schools in our district.
One is for the kindergarten and first graders, and the other is for the second, third and fourth graders.
In 8 days — EIGHT DAYS — we start school
Thank you, Jesus.
Every year, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade school has a meet and greet day.
It’s a day where you can come check out your classroom and potentially meet your teacher, and then afterwards the kids all play on the playground and they have a treat for the kids.
We only went to this thing one time like three years ago because I usually can’t find the motivation to make myself look presentable and attend it or I never pay close enough attention to even know when it is taking place.
This year Number 5, 6 and 7 will all be in the same school, and they are all very excited. Excited to ride the same bus. Excited because they all have some of their good friends in class with them.
(Here they were waiting for the bus three years ago. Number 5 and 6 on the bus together and Number 7 still home with me. Boy did that fly by fast.)
Number 7, who lucked out and got Number 6’s teacher from last year who is basically the best teacher in the Universe AND who has her BFF from last year in her class is REALLY excited.
She’s excited to start at the new school, excited for her teacher, excited to be able to play on the nicer and bigger playground at this school, and, for the first time since she’s started her very short school career, looking forward to the first day of school.
So I wasn’t gonna keep her from the meet and greet this year.
Plus, this year there was going to be an ice cream truck there AND a food truck, so there was the potential to take care of dinner at the same time.
We got ready yesterday.
We put on unstained clothes and we brushed hair and we looked less feral than normal.
The classroom visiting part of the meet and greet was from 3:00-4:00.
We were running a little later than I had planned, but we got to the school at 3:30 which gave us more than enough time to see all three classrooms.
We pulled inot the parking lot.
And it was empty.
Well, not totally empty.
There were maybe eight cars in it.
This does not look good, I said to myself.
“WHERE IS EVERYBODY,” yelled Number 4.
“Ummm, hold on a sec,” I said.
I pulled into a parking lot and got my phone out to check the date and time.
The kids asked if they could go play on the playground. I was more than happy to have them out of the car.
The scattered in different directions, and I nervously checked my phone.
It took me about five minutes to find the email with the information on the meet and greet.
I had written down the correct day.
But I had written down the incorrect week.
We were a week early.
Shit.
Well, it could have been worse.
It could have been the week earlier.
We could have completely missed it.
But Number 7 was basically as excited for this event as she was for Christmas.
So there were some hysterics.
Like a lot of them.
Poor Number 7. She was crushed.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “Sometimes mommies mess up, too,” I told her. “Everybody messes up.”
“YEAH, BUT WHEN KIDS MESS UP IT’S LITTLE MESS UPS BUT THIS IS A REALLY HUGE ONE!” she cry-yelled at me.
Here I was thinking this was a little mess up.
Funny how the six-year-old perspective is quite different.
But this was a significant disappointment for her. In her world, this was a huge mess up.
She sobbed in my lap for about five minutes while the rest of the kids were happy for the change of scenery and to be playing on the playground.
Number 5 came over and very sweetly invited her several times to come play with her.
She eventually wore Number 7, who was gradually becoming calmer, down. And they both ran over to play on the slide.
So it’s not the end of the world, clearly. It would have been catastrophic had I completely missed the meet and greet altogether.
And Number 7 still has something to look forward to.
But boy did I think I had my shit together for this one!
Nope. Not this time.
Unless I change my perspective.
Because as someone who is also chronically late — a habit I don’t love about myself and one that I’m working on changing — I wasn’t actually late for this one.
I didn’t just get there with a couple minutes to spare. I was a whole week early!
I can say with certainty that I’ve never been that early for anything. Ever.
So I can call that a win. Right?
In either case, if you fucked up yesterday, just wanted to let you know you aren’t the only one!
In every failure, a lesson is learned, and you are receiving the opportunity to grow.
But today I’ll be happy if I just hold steady. Cause I did plenty of growing yesterday.
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I have to say I am late 150% of the time. To the point where if we’re having a family event at 3pm, I am told it’s at 1pm. My kids pediatrician tells me “it’s okay you have a lot of kids” every time I’m late to an appointment. And to be quite honest I embrace that reasoning for being late. Not to say that I wasn’t late before I had kids, because that would be bullshit. I can identify with this post so much, especially in a sense that I would see being a week early as a win too (and I have, I’ve done this kind of thing twice).
Oops! Better early than late! I just want to say, I love that you just put it all out there for us! You’re a Rock Star Mom!