Getting with the programs

Today both boys had their school class orientations - and both went to each other's, which made things extra interesting. First it was Z's class, which he's been talking about for most of the summer -- though since camp has ended, he's appended "and then we'll go to camp next summer" to the schedule following school. There had been no e-mailed announcement of his teachers or classmates, and sure enough when we got to the school there were lists printed everywhere of all of the kids and their class assignments -- working through the crowds to find Z's name in small courier font was an instant flashback to my own grade school. But from there we got to his class and saw a few familiar names from his kindergarten class, and got to meet his teacher, who seemed both very nice, had an exciting classroom of organizational materials for Z to comment on, and mentioned she recognized Z from when the kindergarten and first grade classes had crossed paths. He's very excited to be heading back to school on Tuesday; earlier this week we got a message from his former bus driver that she'll still be doing the route, so that'll be a nice familiar and friendly face as well!

And then we visited O's upcoming classroom; alas, it was at the height of rush hour traffic, so L had a sad time in the car on the long stop-and-go drive down. But once we arrived, everyone was happy, and O pretty much pulled us into his new classroom; we recognized two familiar names in the class roster, and O has been talking about other kids in his class that he knows from last year's playground activities. Got to meet both new teachers, who were super nice, as well as a few other parents. Besides constructing another couple of block towers of terror (alongside A, one of his two classmates from the prior year), O was particularly excited to be sharing a classroom with Alice, a large turtle in an aquarium in the corner of the room. Z in the mean time was a big fan of the classroom's tree-themed corner loft (filled with pillows, shelves of books, and dangling decorative stars, clumps of paper "leaves", and actual stick "branches".

We celebrated the nearing end of summer with a concluding family dinner at the boys' favorite local sushi-go-round; L smiled, chattered, and raspberried at everyone while the boys enjoyed alarming numbers of plates of cucumber rolls, gyoza, and edamame.