All Growed Up - Missing Teeth and Yellow Buses

Ava lost her first tooth yesterday.

I guess this shouldn't come as a surprise since she's only weeks away from starting kindergarten and already 5. She was playing legos with Nathan and used her teeth to pry something apart, then complained that her tooth hurt. Sure enough, when I looked in it was wiggly and loosey goosey. She got so excited and jumped around and asked for an apple to eat. Somehow she's got in her head that apples are required for teeth falling out. I milked it for all it was worth and got her to clean 2 whole rooms before she earned the apple.

After she won her prize she realized that it isn't too fun to eat apples with a loose tooth so moped around for an hour before I finally pushed on the thing and it popped out. From begining to end, it was about 2 hours of excitement.

The tooth fairy found her pillow just fine, even though the actual tooth was missing. She found it this morning, hidden in her safe spot next to the TV where she put it yesterday. The tooth fairy brought her a gold $1 coin and she's thrilled.

AND

Ava started school last week. Well, kinda. The local elementary school has a week of summer school for the rising kindergartners so they can get familiar with the whole bus, get up early, listen to the teacher, raise your hand thing. How many little girls are lucky enough to have their bus stop in the middle of their dad's work route so he can walk her to the bus? Lucky, lucky.

She loved every day of it and came home full of rules she had learned about the playground and the proper way to do things like use the bathroom and stand in line. It's funny how school becomes the authority all the sudden.

I loved that she caught the bus just down the road and that she had such a great time.
I don't love the idea of my little 5 year old being gone all day and riding the school bus with teenagers (we're so rural that they only have one bus route K-12. I may end up driving her most days). I also wasn't quite ready for the rush of emotions that that school bus brought back about my own childhood and the nervous excitement of school starting and getting all your pencils, paper and bookbags ready weeks in advance and choosing which clothes you'll wear for the first day and all that stuff that comes with school.


It's very weird to be on the receiving side of the bus, waiting for them to come home and having all that anxiety run through you, for them to have a good time and be liked and be brave enough to ask someone to open their string cheese for them at lunch and find someone to sit by on the bus on the way home. And this isn't even real school yet so I hope I sort this all out in the next 4 weeks.

Because she definitely already has.