New, new, new!

New city......new school......new friends! The girls started preschool last Monday and we were a little nervous....we've been talking about their new school and their new teacher for a while and it's always been met with tears and "I don't wanna new school. We have our old school."  Oh my. What do you say to that?  But. The day was here and our girls were ready......and we managed to get some sweet pictures before they really figured out what was going on - ha!

Sofia, Bella, Olivia

Sofia

Olivia

Olivia (l) Sofia (r)

Olivia (l) Sofia (r)

These have to be some of my most favorite pictures, I must say. Especially the girls hugging eachother. And Bella's expression was priceless. "You mean I get all the toys to myself?!?!!"  Ha! 

The girls are going 4 days a week and we left them in the same classroom together although we could have separated them. When we first registered the girls, the program director asked us if we wanted to put the girls in separate rooms since there are 2 four-year classes. It definitely gave me pause because it's not something we had discussed -- we've certainly talked about it for kindergarten....next year. So after thinking about it, we decided to leave them together this year given the new school and new friends. We did ask the teacher to put them at different tables, though. I thought that was a good compromise. 

I'm so conflicted about how we'll handle the decision next year. Of course.....it may be that the school district makes the decision for us -- I've heard certain counties require twins to be separated. It would be quite the easy way out for the decision to be made for us........but I want to do the right thing for our girls. The thing is....when D and I talk about it, we honestly don't think one of the girls is more dominant over the other. They both take turns being the follower....and they both take turns being the leader. They play well independently and they play well together. We do notice they tend to stick really close together in new situations, but they both ultimately get comfortable and branch out. There's another set of twin girls in their school and the mom split them up -- she said there was clearly a leader and clearly a follower. We shall see......that's a whole year away. One that I know will be here before I'm even ready!

So it's been a week now and so far so good. There are a few tears in the morning but they do pretty well. I'm excited about this year for them. The school uses a program called "Handwriting without Tears" to teach writing and it's the same program the school system uses so they will continue with it in kindergarten. Once a week there's a retired English teacher who comes in and works on word recognition and reading. Once a week they have math....and of course there's story time and play time (including bike day once a week). And just a few minutes ago, D gave me a pamphlet for a program where, once a month, someone comes in with cool hands-on science projects for the kids -- complete with their own apron and goggles. How exciting is that?! True to form, the girls rarely tell D much about their day but when I get home and ask them about it, I get lots of stories (usually!).

Because of Bella's late birthday, we're keeping her home one more year and we'll start her in a 2-day program next year and ramp up each year like we've done the girls. She didn't make the age cut-off for the preschool where the girls are anyway. I don't think she minds, though..she gets some one-on-one time with Daddy and, let's not forget, all the toys!

Here's to a good year for the big girls!

Olivia, Mommy, Sofia