We weren’t expecting it until around next year, but as luck would have it, we found a vacancy and Angela started pre-school the other day. One minute she’s my little baby girl and I’m changing diapers and smelling her armpits and the next she’s got a backpack, new friends, and totally forgetting about me standing at the doorway tears streaming down my face. Next thing you know she’ll be graduating and getting married. Waaaahh!!!!

I wasn’t sure really if she was going to be difficult but being how she is, it took about two seconds to adjust and bam, I suddenly have all this time in my hands and for the first time in more than one year in Sydney, I had a cup of coffee in a sidewalk cafe. And it was quiet.

I hung around for an hour though just to see how she handles this new environment where she isn’t the centre the universe. The first thing she does is ask the teacher if she could do some painting, and since we were a little early, they more or less had open activities. It was incredible that she was sharing and not scratching out other kids’ eyeballs or screaming bloody murder into their faces. (Whew, pat on the back for mommy!)

Then came story time, it took a while for her to get the fact that story time meant the teacher was the one to tell the story and not her, which usually is the case when Angela and I do it. I get as far as “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away...” and everything else she “reads” herself. She makes up the story based on the pictures. At times it amazes me how she actually comes up with this elaborate story while reading “Programming with C#: MS Official Course”. Anyway, so she finally decides to sit down and find out if this lady (read: teacher) is any good at telling stories. And after about three words out of the teacher’s mouth, a little hand shot straight up into the air, waving, with a little voice going “Oh teacher, teacher, teacher!” frantically. This of course was Angela. The teacher had to acknowledge her, and Angela ran to the bookshelf, pulled out a book of her choice and asked if the teacher could read this one instead. I was in a corner, snickering and thinking to myself, “Oh you people wouldn’t know what hit you. Good luck on a very long day. Mwahahahaha.”

The teachers were all quite amazed at how confident Angela is. She didn’t have any trouble at all socializing with other kids. And her impatience and restlessness was due to the fact that she was 3-years old. Not surprising, she didn’t eat any of the fruit served at tea time, but at least she ate some of the chicken that I packed for her lunch. It was also good news that she didn’t have any toilet-related-accidents because although she is toilet trained, she sometimes holds out telling us about needing to go to the toilet when she is distracted or doing something particularly fun or new.

I took a few pictures and you can see them here. I couldn’t take pictures of other kids because the school had a confidentiality thing, that is some parents do not agree to having their kids’ pictures taken.

Labels: Angela, School