preschool1

  1. “What did you do in school today?” elicits complete silence or the popular refrains, “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember.”
  2. You are the “only mommy” who did not pack a lunch dessert for your child.  Apparently, strawberries don’t qualify as dessert, especially not if your child cannot open the Ziplock baggie in which they were stored.
  3. Your child must have a backpack even though they don’t have books or papers to carry back and forth on a daily basis.  Carrying an empty backpack is completely normal and necessary.
  4. The details you do learn of your child’s day are superfluous: “My teacher wears high heels!”
  5. Smiling while looking at the camera is an endeavor more difficult than the decathalon.
  6. Stopping to chat with other mothers for only a minute or two turns into over an hour and you wonder if you will soon be referred to as a yenta.
  7. Even though your child concedes that the Dora the Explorer pillow you provided for naptime is not actually alive, Dora still managed to grab and pull your child’s hair with malicious intent.
  8. Your child whines of hunger the second you pick them up.  Refer to #2 above.
  9. Once greeted by six hours of free time (even though that free time is spent with a 10 month-old baby) you should not start promising owners of Gymboree franchises that you will teach infant classes three days a week.
  10. Do not provide your child with the coolest new underwear from the most popular new Disney movie if you do not want her lifting her dress every five minutes to show her classmates.
  11. You can get up at 6:30am without being a zombie—just go to bed at 6:30pm.
  12. If you send your child to school in sandals, they will return home with black feet.
  13. Never before have six hours gone by so slowly…and yet so quickly.