June Starts Preschool!

Again, not knowing if we would be moving or not put a damper on preschool lists and preps for June. Ideally, I wanted to find another group of moms to co-op with (though my last group was so fabulous that I'm probably set for disappointment from now on). In our old neighborhood, there were a lot of little girls June's age but none of the moms were interested in doing a co-op. I didn't really push hard because I didn't want to organize everything and bail out if we moved. Instead, most of the moms there were signing their girls up at a cute home preschool of a friend, so I decided to go ahead and put June on the list as well. This is way back in January/February when you have to get on the list or else you're in no-man's land come September. My friend assured me that she'd be happy to put June on the list and if we dropped out she would have no problem filling the slot.

Excited to pick out a completely unnecessary backpack just for her.
 
As summer progressed and it looked like we were going to get the house, I called around to a few in-home preschools in the new area. Of course, they were all full and had been since January. They put June's name on a waitlist, but she was way down the list.

By the time we moved, I'd come up with a third option. The rec center that I love so much does little preschool classes. This is the rec center where we did gymnastics for $20/month, not the rec center where Willa did preschool, which would now be too far away. The preschool classes aren't quite full-on preschool, but they do work on letters and numbers and have a little structure. They meet twice a week and just for 45 minutes each time, so it's not like I'd be getting a huge break - and you're actually not allowed to leave the building during that time. But, they do have a workout room and gym, so I thought I'd drop June at preschool and get a little workout in for me just down the hall. So that's what we have been doing and it's been working great.

Honestly, if I could have picked anything, I would have gone with a great in-home preschool or co-op so that June could have a little longer class and I could run errands. But this has been a great compromise, it gives her the "preschool" experience this year, and then next year we are already on the list for an amazing in-home pre-k. Actually, this lady had a three-year-old spot open up about a week before school started this year and asked if June would want to come. I wanted to say yes soooo badly because it's such a sweet little preschool and I knew June would really enjoy it. The thing that stopped me was $$$$. Even though it's in home, it's expensive (at least in my opinion). It wasn't prohibitive, but the rec center was $35/month and it's hard to beat that.

If we hadn't moved, I think I would have done it, but with the new house there were/are more financial unknowns. We didn't know how much the pool would affect our energy and water bills, or what the price of chemicals would be each month. What would it cost to water the landscaped yard or to cool down this much bigger house? I mean, we had a general idea - but nothing specific. (When I called the utility companies before we bought the house to get a history, there was no way to get a clear picture of what the bills would be since it had been vacant and lot of the utilities hadn't been used or had been completely off.) I just wanted to give us a little cushion of time to get used to our new budget before I added a bunch of things onto it.

So preschool has been great, she has two teachers that she enjoys, Miss Donna and Miss Abby. They do cute activities, have circle time, and she seems to like it. It's a 2-3 year old split class, so that's a bit of a bummer because she's one of the oldest kids and there are some just barely 2 year olds in it who are so much younger at this stage. Still, the class is capped at 9-10 kids and with two teachers, it's been good.

Self-conscious smiles the first day because it's such a momentous occasion. Then she wanted me to take a video of her saying "Hooray for Preschool!" which isn't loading here and I'm too lazy to figure it out right now. 

Photo with Miss Donna and in the front of the class.