Goodbye, Playschool

Shortly after we moved here, we enrolled Evie into Evergreen Playschool which was only a 10 minute drive from Seth's law school and about a 5 minute drive from my campus.  The first time we went to visit there, Evie had such a good time in what would become her classroom she didn't want to leave.  We feel very lucky that Evie had a great teacher in Ms. Pam, a middle-age African American lady who greeted Evie every morning with, "Hey, Miss Evie!" and then a comment on how much she liked Evie's clothes or hair or shoes or smile.  She made Evie feel special.  She had songs for everything.  She adapted "Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee" to be instructive on how to wash their hands.  She taught them "X Little Monkeys Swinging in the Tree" so they started to count down backwards.  She had a color, number, letter, and shape of the week which she integrated throughout other lessons too, like learning about the weather or hibernation.  Honestly, I just thought the world of Ms. Pam and I was so sad when she left a few months ago without any warning.  Evie was too.  In fact, truly, just two days ago, Evie asked if she was going to Ms. Pam's house.  Evie has such a good memory.

Since Ms. Pam left, we've seen the quality of care there go down.  At one point, the teachers didn't even know exactly where Evie was.  The new teacher said things like, "Evie doesn't listen when I talk to her," but I discovered after listening to her for a while that probably Evie didn't listen to the teacher because she didn't even know the teacher was addressing her.  The teacher kept calling her "eh-vee" not "ee-vee", and since there is an eh-vee in the class, no wonder.

So, Seth and I decided that we would pull Evie out starting the month of May.  The school is moving to a new building at the end of the month and we weren't sure even if Ms. Pam had continued teaching there that we would make the move.  The new building is several minutes farther out of our way.  And we new she would be starting at a Montessori program in August.  So the question was, what do we do with Evie for the months of May, June, and July?  We knew we didn't want to keep her out of school the whole summer.  She loves playing with the other kids, and I love having her in an environment where people will provide a lot of educational opportunities.  I knew I would still be working and going to school over the summer, and Seth has a writing requirement to work on this summer plus he is likely going to be getting his tonsils out, so we decided to enroll her in a school not too far from our house.  But they only had a full time opening starting in June.  So, what to do in May?

Fortunately, my friend Cristal is available in the mornings, so Cristal and her 9 month old Nathan will be coming to keep Evie until nap time.  Then Seth or I - whoever is home and free - can put her down for a nap.  I know the transition back to school in June will be a little rough since she'll be used to being at home with both of us.  Hopefully it will go well.

So, yesterday was Evie's last day at her school.  I told her in the morning that it was her last day and to make sure she said goodbye to all of her friends.  She gave hugs to everybody before we left.  I told Seth that for me it was bittersweet.  He couldn't understand why.  He's been very frustrated with the school since Pam left, and so have I, but to me it just feels like the end of another chapter of Evie's life and I get kinda sentimental about stuff like that.  I mean, in just 6 weeks, she'll be 3 and she'll be a preschooler.  I've really loved watching her bloom over this last year, and I think she really learned a lot from Ms. Pam.  So in that sense, I hate that it's over.  My little baby is growing up.