We were excited to get here a month before Blair and the kids started school, but it turns out we're really accustomed to our Christmas moves where everything has to move at the speed of light. We got all settled in, took some walks to learn our way around the neighborhood, went to a movie, went to the zoo, then kind of sat around looking at each other. Summer days when you don't know where to go or what to do or who to play with can get pretty long. Of course, now that school has started I think we'd all gladly go back.
Blair's school schedule is pretty nice. One class in the morning and one in the afternoon with lots of time before, after and in between for the mountains of reading he has to do. He treats it like a regular workday, leaving about 6:30 and getting home around 5, so he's not trying to read while the kids and I and all their new-found friends are running around making a racket. Still, five o'clock is so much earlier than he's ever gotten home before and we're really loving having nice long family evenings. And because everything is closer here, even the nights the kids have activities aren't as busy as they used to be.
The kids school is huge! 12 classes in each grade compared to 4 at Bicentennial and 2 at Emma's private kindergarten. I was terrified for them imagining them trying to find their way to class through that sea of people. I walked them in every morning of the first week and that seems to have calmed me. I'm not sure they were ever worried. They both like their teachers and I have no qualms with the amount of homework (I was prepared for third grade to be awful). My biggest problem, and everyone I've talked to agrees, no recess. None. No recess. In New Hampshire, school ran from 9-3 and they had two recesses. Here, we start and hour earlier and there is none. The reasoning seems to be that because they have PE every day, they don't need recess, but I think there's something different between doing an organized athletic activity and getting to just run off steam on the playground. Ethan's day is broken up a bit because his PE is about 10:30, then he has lunch at 11:45, but Emma's schedule has reading from 8:20 to 11:30, with lunch, math, PE and snack all crammed into the afternoon. Are they seriously trying to tell me that 6 year olds can study reading for three hours straight without getting wiggly and obnoxious? Could they not take a 20 minute break somewhere in there? The assistant principal fed me that line about having PE everyday and I'm really not buying it, so I may have to take my argument up the food chain.
My days at home are long and calm and quiet and I'm loving every minute of it. I exercise or run errands first thing in the morning, come home and do some chores or putter around on the computer. I read or watch TV while I'm having lunch, then have a lovely little nap before the kids get home. It's nothing special, but at the same time it's amazing. I've joined a book club (A Thousand Splendid Suns this month), a bunco group, a mom's group bible study and a lunch without kids club. And that's just enough.
The kids have tae kwon do Monday and Thursday and Emma has gymnastics on Friday, but like I said it doesn't feel like too much. Both activities are less than 10 minutes away, so that helps. It beats driving all the way out Amherst Street from south Nashua 8 times a week. We haven't settled on a church, so we're not doing the Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night thing yet either and may not ever, we'll just see how that feels when we find the right place. We miss our Thursday night small group from Nashua and joke that none we find down here will have a mandatory beer run before the opening prayer.
I also really miss my house. While living there, I complained non stop about lugging groceries upstairs and laundry downstairs, but it turns out that house was home to me. We really fit there. All of our stuff fit just right and we weren't under each other's feet all the time. The kids could go in the playroom or their rooms and we didn't have to tell them to be quiet all the time. Sound really carries in this house because all the living areas are completely open. It was also the first house I had that was completely decorated. I had drapes in every room and everything was coordinated. Now, because we're just trying to make do for a year everything's all a jumble again and I don't like it.
I miss New Hampshire. I miss my church family, my tae kwon do family, my house, my neighborhood, Bicentennial school, trees, the weather and all those fun historical things there were to do. Even though we didn't get around to do most of them because we were simply enjoying living there. We didn't have much time to be tourists, which is just fine with me.
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