"I'm freaking out a little bit..."

Tuesday, August 24th was Owen's first official day of school. It was an odd culmination to the months of preparation for Owen enrolling in DC Public Schools, since we'd spent most of the summer convincing Owen (and ourselves) that it was ok he wasn't going to Peabody only to find out at the 11th hour that he was.

After finally meeting his teacher, Mrs. Murdock, for 15 minutes the day before and re-doing all the paperwork we'd done for Ludlow-Taylor back in July, Owen started at Peabody Early Childhood Campus the next morning. We got there a bit early in order for Owen to enjoy the playground and for us to get the lay of the land. Once the bell rang, Owen dutifully lined up with the rest of the first half of the alphabet of (the second half would attend Wednesday before they were all united on Thursday) and we escorted him up to classroom 5, where he dropped off his backpack in the closet and grabbed his yellow folder before heading into the room to find his name on the circle-time rug. We stuck around for a few more minutes before we were politely asked to leave. And while Owen looked a little taken aback, he didn't cry at all (nor amazingly enough, did his parents, at least not until much later).

We're not completely sure what transpired during the day. When I met Owen at 3:15 for dismissal, Mrs. Murdock commented that he'd slept under his mat rather than on it and all we could get out of Owen was that he'd had chicken and a peach for lunch and played bear on the playground, which apparently involved him chasing various children (wittingly or not) who'd happened upon his lair.

We're all still adjusting. When Allen took Owen early on Friday so he could have breakfast in the cafeteria, Owen informed him of his current mental state -- the title of this blog entry. Allen told him it was ok as he was freaking out a bit too. We still haven't completely worked the kinks out of drop-off and we're still trying to resolve aftercare, but overall we're feeling pretty good about this school year. Provided Owen willingly goes back.