Monday, January 11, 2010

Dropping Preschool

As you may or may not know, I was a school teacher for 4 years and I got my graduate degree in education. I care a lot about education and my kids' schooling, or in their case, future schooling. I've had Maija in a wonderful preschool in our area for the last year a half. She loved it and was excited to start classes again this week. So, it was especially hard for me to have to pull her out of preschool for this semester. In fact, Maija seems like she's fine about, and I'm the one who's had a hard time.

Even though I knew we needed to save every penny for our upcoming adoption, and even though I knew that Maija is more than ready for kindergarten already - I still struggled when I made the phone call to her preschool teacher saying that Maija wouldn't be coming back. Visions of Maija singing songs at school, doing her little preschool end-of-year program, bringing home cute projects and assignments she'd done all danced in my head.

I think the one positive (other than the obvious financial savings) is that I've gotten back in teacher mode putting together what I'm calling "Homework Days" every Friday, so Maija has at least some practice with sight words, letters, numbers and problem-solving. We did our first Homework Day last Friday with one of her friends, and it went really well. Somehow this whole preschool thing is bringing up all kinds of other emotions about all the change that is coming. Whether Forest's birthmother chooses to place his sibling with us or not, we've decided that we will adopt, so I know that a new baby is coming into our lives sooner or later. I think that every preparation we make for the adoption makes it more real to me that I am going to have 4 children under 5 years old very soon. I'm excited and terrified at the same time.

So now we're in a waiting game.... waiting for our baby to come, waiting for Maija to start kindergarten, waiting to one day be rich and have everything paid off... :-) I may wait on that last part for a long, long time.

4 comments:

Financial Aid for College said...

Oh, how sad! The little ones love preschool SOOO much! But it sure is a financial drain. The cost makes one wonder how they can get away with paying pre-school teachers minimum wage. Where does the rest of the money go?

You'll be a fabulous homey teacher! I pray for the right baby to come to you!

Lacey said...

She'll do fine!!! If you take advantage of it, you'll be so happy you had all that home time with your 3 kids before another one comes along! I can't believe your family is growing so fast!
Congrats!

Jen Johnson said...

i am waiting for that knock on the door that I won the Publisher's Clearing house contest! ;)I will share the wealth, I promise! We can only dream! I think we will both have a little more breathing room financially someday, though.

Omgirl said...

It occurs to me more and more the older my kids get how much of a give and take raising them will be (financially). We can never afford to do everything for our kids that we or they want. And in your case, preschool will be sacrificed so that another child can have a loving family. It is worth it!