Her next great adventure

She loved the frog backpack, the frog lunchbox, and the promise of sitting next to her friend Hannah. She even kind of liked the idea of her one-day-a-week homeschool kindergarten class.

What she did not like was the reality of actually going to kindergarten. Until she got there, that is.

"But Mommy," she argued. "You're  my teacher. You need to come with me to kindergarten."

Nope. Nothing doing, I told her. Once a week, it's just her and 11 other kids and two teachers that she has to refer to as Mrs. So-and-so.

"Are they real teachers like you?" she wanted to know. I like this question. It shows me she takes our school-at-the-breakfast-table seriously. I assured her that yes, they are real teachers, totally qualified to teach her nursery rhymes and do math manipulatives and help her open her juice box.

The whole family made the trip to drop her off for the first day. You know all those bus stop photos of kids in their too-big backpacks walking off to their next great adventure? We totally did that. Minus the bus.

It's a good thing she's only going one day a week. That was almost too much for me. I missed my little helper all morning, and tried to remind myself that she was having a great time and surely didn't miss me. (I was right.) And I milked my time with my boys, finding it very easy to give Caleb and Jacob some rare uninterrupted Mommy playtime since I was off the hook for teaching kindergarten for the day.

And Abby, true to form, dove right in and loved every minute of her kindergarten classroom experience.

Her favorite part was eating the gingerbread man that escaped from the oven after they tracked him down, and sitting next to Hannah at lunch.

Her one complaint?

They didn't do enough math. (I told her we'll do extra math on Monday to make up for it.)