My oldest child, Christopher, has officially gone to school. I thought I’d be more prepared but I found myself scrambling at the last minute. School shopping started exactly a week before his first day. I quickly found out how detailed these school supplies lists are and was thankful I walked out the store with just about everything that was on it. I only had to Amazon Prime the Seventh Generation wipes and black felt letter board (that was for me).

His after school program reached out to me asking for an up to date physical and I panicked cause I only had a few days left before school started. His pediatrician was booked all the way out until October – no good. I Googled any and every doctor that could take him and found out that there were clinics in NYC that took same day walk-ins – thank goodness! That was that and Christopher was all set.

The night before showtime I could not get to sleep. How and why would I be so anxious about his first day? After all, it was just pre-school. I stayed up laminating all of his pictures and placed them on his folders and book bag. I also used my label maker to print his name and conveniently placed it on everything that would be brought to school the next day.

After managing four hours of sleep, we woke up, got dressed and rushed downstairs to take some last minute pictures. Christopher  wouldn’t stay still for long so I had to be swift and thankfully someone was in the lounge to capture an image of me and him – because I usually get left behind the camera. We were done.

• 

• 

Then it was off to catch our Uber. That’s right. Not the bus or the train, cause I had luggage with all his school supplies and did not feel like lugging it around the streets of NYC or the subway. Christopher was a total city kid. Our Uber arrived and we were well on our way, despite the traffic that was holding us back. We only ended up 15 minutes late to orientation, just as they were starting – I might have had a moment of mom guilt. But all was good. The first day of pre-school was a success.