Preschool and Other Fun

Our little two and a half year old is in preschool!!  Avery started preschool on Tuesday.  Her first day was a little rough.  They have a younger class of one and two year olds that just does free play all morning, and then an older class of mostly 3-4 year olds who actually do singing, and ABCs and circle time.  Anyway the older class is just more of a class, and they younger class more of a supervised play-date.  After talking to the teacher, with Avery quickly approaching the 3 year mark, she recommended I put Avery in the older class. 

On her first day, she wanted nothing to do with it.  She sat outside with the younger kids and just did free play all day.  When I came to pick her up she was sitting in the corner just watching the other kids.  It was kind of sad.  The teacher said she didn't want to go to the park with her class, and when they tried to put the bright yellow vest on she lost it.  Hmm, interesting I 've never seen that side of Avery...  ;)  After we left I started slowly trying to talk up her next class.  She was like a roller coaster, one minute saying she was excited to see her new friends, and the next crying saying she didn't want to go back to school, she just wanted to stay at home with mommy!  Finally Thursday morning rolled around.  Avery and I dropped Hailey off at school and then got back on the train to head to Avery's school.  Right before we got to the class I bribed her.  I told her that if she could go to her class today, and be extra brave she'd get a big treat after school.  Probably not the best parenting technique, but it got results.  She stayed in her class all day, and even managed to put the vest on so she could go to the park with the other kids.  Today she was even sad when I told her she didn't have school.  She got mad at me and yelled, YES I DO HAVE SCHOOL!  She seems to really like it, and I'm relieved, because I've already scheduled a Spanish tutor to come during part of her school time.  I think now we are both feeling happy about it.  I still can't believe she's old enough for this though.

All ready for her first day of school.

She is doing class twice a week on Tuesday's and Thursdays from 9-1.  It's an all English preschool.  All the teachers I've met so far are American.  I would actually love to put her in a Spanish class, but I haven't found one that isn't all day.  The Spanish public schools here start at 3 years old.  And these little 3 year olds go from 9-5!  Often when I'm out with Avery during the day people look at her and ask why she's not in school, "colegio" and I say she's 2!  Anyway, thankfully Avery's school is nearby our new apartment.  In fact it's only like 2 blocks away.  Right now in our temporary housing it's about a 30 minute walk, but come October 1st, it will be just around the corner.  I'm so happy to have found it.  We'll have to debate a little on what to do with Avery next year.  I'd love for her to learn Spanish while we are here too, but sending her to school all day every day sounds sad to me.  Plus I'm not entirely sure how much Spanish a 3-4 year old would retain.  Any thoughts on the subject or suggestions are welcome! 

 

 

Cute sisters excited to go to school together.

I don't know why, but so far my Mondays seem to be my absolute worst days here in Madrid.  I think it's because I always decide to do really big dumb things on Mondays.  This Monday was no exception.  After dropping Hailey off at school Avery and I went to a new park to play.  The people of Madrid are not an early rising people, so we were about the only ones at the park at 9:30 in the morning.  We were playing and suddenly I saw something big out of the corner of my eye.  After being in New York I'm used to ignoring this because it's usually a pigeon.  I finally looked over to see this cute little guy.  I didn't realize there were rabbits in the parks here.  I don't know if this is normal or not yet, but this little guy was hopping all around the playground.  Avery was loving it.  We were calling him Peter Rabbit and she was running and chasing him all around.

Shortly after seeing him an old man approached me.  He walked right over and sat down on the bench next to me and started speaking in Spanish.  I quickly said, "Perdon, yo no hablo espanol."  Hoping to nicely end the conversation, but he didn't seem to care.  He kept on talking to me.  I could pick up bits and pieces of what he was saying, but almost never enough to actually know what he was saying.  Everyone says "Guapa" here when they see Hailey or Avery.  Anyway he was smiling and saying a lot of guapas, but honestly he talked to me for over 20 minutes with me barely knowing what he was saying.  Most of the time he seemed to be a sweet old man, a couple times I wondered if he was actually a perverted old man, and I just couldn't understand him.  Anyway, it was an interesting immersion moment, and was pretty funny.

After the park I decided to go grocery shopping at a new store.  A friend had told me the general location and when I found it I was so happy, because it's so much bigger than the other ones we have around here.  I loaded up with groceries.  I actually overloaded with groceries.  Then I went to check out.  As I was leaving I realized the bigger check out areas were being loaded into boxes, for delivery, I assumed.  I had no idea how to set up a delivery, and didn't want to figure it out.  So I went to the smaller check out areas.  They are smaller than the express checkouts in Utah.  Almost set up with the amount of space self check outs have, but with a person checking you out.  Anyway, I think I was going through there with way more groceries than the average person.  The other awful thing is that they don't bag your groceries for you here.  You have to bag them yourself, and you also have to estimate and tell them beforehand how many bags you'll need, because they charge you for them.  This has been difficult for me.  Anyway I asked for 5 bags, and started trying to unload and bag at the same time.  Finally I stuffed everything into the five bags, I probably needed 6, then started loading them onto the back of the stroller to get them home.  Finally I'm headed out and stop to buckle Avery into the stroller because if she gets out the stroller will tip over.  As I'm headed back the stroller tips over.  Luckily Avery didn't get hurt, but my baguette broke in half, and landed on Avery's head.  I handed it to her and told her she could eat it on the way home.  I seriously think everyone in the grocery store was staring at me.  I tried to fix it and got out of there as quick as I could. 

We finally get home and I make lunch for Avery and then she says she needs to go to the bathroom.  I take her in, and she says she needs to poop, and asks me if I'll shut the door.  I tell her to call me when she's done.  A few minutes later she yells, "mom I'm done!"  I go to open the bathroom door, and it's locked.  The locks here are deadbolts too.  There is no way to pick the lock, no key hole, the only way to get in there is either for Avery to unlock it or for me to tear or break the thing down.  I try to calmly talk her through unlocking the door, she tries, but nothings happening.  She of course gets frantic and starts screaming, and I felt completely helpless.  I try to give her directions on which way to turn, but while she likes to talk about right and left, she doesn't really know them yet.  This screaming and crying goes on for about and hour with me at times sitting by the door trying to calm her down and get her to work on the lock and other times having to leave the hall and sit on the couch because I'm afraid I'm going to lose it.  I finally said a prayer.  I sat there feeling desperate in the hall, and thought.  After a few minutes the thought came to me that she's been crying in there so long the lock could be wet.  Finally I talk to Avery and get her to go get some toilet paper.  I told her to put it on the lock and then turn as hard as she could.  She finally calms down enough to do it and it works!  She got out.  We were both so relieved.  It was exhausting for both of us and we both had a nap, and then went to pick Hailey up from school. 

Not as bad as last Monday, but just not a great day.  I really do feel so relieved and blessed though that Avery made it out of the bathroom.  I did not know what to do!

Not every day has been like this though.  In fact we are really enjoying our time here.  We've made some really good friends, and the expat community here is so nice.  We made friends with Fina, and her mom Sasha, our first week here after running into them at the park.  They are awesome and believe it or not Fina may even be more determined, than Avery.  It's been fun to spend time with them.  Sasha's husband works for the state department so she is in the know on all the good programs around for expats.  She's the one who found the preschool Avery's going to.  We're excited to spend more time with them.  Avery and Fina are two peas in a pod.  It's fun.