Happy Fall Y'all!

It is officially fall and I am SO excited for the holiday season this year!  As I mentioned in my previous post, we moved in June, so this will be the first year celebrating the holidays in our new home.  Isabella started preschool and, thank God, it has been a smooth start.  I prepared her for weeks by role playing (I pretend to be the child and she leaves me at school, etc.) and I can't begin to tell you how much this helped her.  I also made a photo book of her classroom prior to the school year and we looked at the pictures each night and talked about it.  Lastly, we read a bunch of books about starting school and being nervous. 

My absolute FAVORITE thing we did was our Kissing Hand necklaces.  We read The Kissing Hand and retold the story with our felt board a million times.  The night before her first day of school I gave her a special Kissing Hand necklace. 

It has her name on the back of her's and mine says Mommy on the back.  I purchased it from this wonderful Etsy seller HERE if you are interested.  Speaking of the night before her first day...we had our School Year's Eve party!

 Her Magic School Year's Eve pillowcase designed to bring her sweet dreams and take away her fears.  The racoon is Chester from The Kissing Hand :)

The Kissing Hand felt pieces.

 



Her first day of school was awesome!  There were tears when I left, but she did not cry long.  We had a blast in the moring!  She had heart-shaped waffle pops and got her Shultute.

 

She came home with a smile on her face and very proud of her first day certificate and coloring.

 She called Daddy and then Grandma :)

 She had a First Day of School lunch!

 And for dessert we celebrated with cookie-brownies and sparklers!

We have only had tears on two other occasions.  I am so proud of her!  Her time at preschool allows me to get some stuff done around the house or time to read my Bible and devotionals.  The best thing is that she has the opportunity to socialize with other children her age. 

School Year's Eve & First Day of School

It has been a while since I posted...we have moved into a new house and we mostly settled in now :) I can hardly believe it myself, but I resigned from my teaching position and I am officially a SAHM for the time being. Isabella is 39 months and we are going to give Preschool another try this year. She will go five days a week in the mornings from 8 to 10:45 am. I am VERY nervous! We tried Pre-K two days a week when she was two, but she cried and cried. My mother was watching her full time and could not handle watching her precious granddaughter cry and call for her...so Pre-K was short lived. The decision to enroll her now is primarily because she has no playmates her age and she really wants to play with other children. My main concern is that we are in a new home, she finally potty trained, and moved into a big girl bed over the short course of six weeks. I worry that all this change will cause her to just fall apart when school starts and she realizes Mommy can't stay at school with her. On a lighter, and much more festive note, I can't wait to have a School Year's Eve celebration again! Here are some pictures of what I did for her last Pre-K stint:

 What would any Back to School or First Day of School event be without the book The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn!?!  They also have an adorable cookie cutter that makes a perfect cookie treat for during or after the story.  I also purchased the felt pieces for the story :)

 Our School Year's Eve dinner table.



Placemats I made at school...the perk of being a teacher myself ;)

 These are actual School Year's Eve pajamas!  Adorable (although costly for PJs) ~ you can buy them at Chasing Fireflies



She loved her hand cookies!

We had a blast that night!  The next morning was fun too, but I was really anxious.  We started with a her getting her very first Schultüte (German School Cone) and a  First Day of School breakfast:

This school cone is adorable!  We purchased it from KinderCone.

The First Day of School plate is a treasure we will use every year on the first day of school.  That was an Etsy purchase.  So was the First Day of School banner below.



Her First Day of PreSchool outfit!  Another Etsy purchase ;)

Bella with her cousin who was also starting Pre-K, but one year older.

We continued the celebration that evening after dinner with a cake that was baked in a loaf pan and inserted into her Littel Poeple bus.  We added pictures of her in the windows.  It came out so cute!





For now, I am going to try and focus on the excitement of a new schol year and push my nerves and fears aside.  Any advice for a mommy with a child starting Pre-K?