Preschool-Time at warp speed

The days and nights are flying at the speed of sound, it feels like. My brand new baby is approaching 8 months old, and my old baby is three and a half. We don't count her age by months anymore, just half years. My beautiful girls will be 12 one day and these days will be etched in my mind...Gillian dancing in her blue ballerina skirt and tutu, Addie and Gillian laughing in the hallway, reading Gillian books at bedtime and telling me silly stories and "talking about our day"... and I know I will wish I had been more present, even though I'm doing the best I can.

My baby starts preschool this September. SCHOOL. Time is like sand, slipping through my fingers. I had a moment of panic thinking about all the scary things Gillian will be exposed to, even in a Catholic school. People who just don't love her (she is unfamiliar with the fact that sometimes people just don't), mean girls, mean boys, sexual advances, drugs, drinking, lying, staying out late... God, what I would do to keep my precious baby from all that is ugly on earth. So, I am trying extra hard to love her like a blanket, mindfully- enveloping, soft, comforting. One day she might not want to be seen with me, so I should enjoy the moments when she wants nothing more than to be with me, regardless of what we're doing.

SCHOOL. So, I didn't agonize. I didn't visit multiple programs. I didn't ask hard hitting questions about HOW they would enrich my child. I'm not prepping her for Harvard next year, it's preschool. But I know LOTS of people who agonize, and who approach "getting in" to preschool like it's medical school, and who have visited ALL of the "best" programs in town. I am officially a slacker. We go to church at St. Gerts, and it's a wonderful community of people with lots of young families. There is so much community outreach, charitable work, and sense of unity there that it was a natural choice for us. It feels like home, and we want our children to be part of that. So, we applied to one and only one program, which is the St. Gertrude Parish school, Northside Catholic Academy. We also wait listed for Loyola Preschool, but that was a just-in-case kind of deal. I didn't truly apply there... So, Gillian "got in" and will start preschool at NCA this year, and I am delighted. It is probably on the cheaper side for private schools in town ($6600 a year for a parishioner), and it would be a cost savings if we still didn't need Anna for Addie's care. No one said having kids was cheap, by any stretch.

Yes, NCA had a 98% first choice placement rate at the top (free!) magnet high schools in the area. But we just LIKE it. We like the people, we like the vibe, we like that it is aligned with out values. We like that as far as Catholic churches go, it is pretty progressive. We love that our priests are gregarious and funny. We love the guidance and caring we get there. We love that when Gillian was born unexpectedly early, we got a phone call and a card offering any support we needed. We like the Gillian will be instilled with a sense of service to others through school programs to help the poor, the homeless, and the elderly...we love that she will see her peers doing the same. There is a lot of work to do in Chicago along those lines, to be sure.

And really, I think regardless of the program your kid goes to, a good portion of their performance academically is tied to how you engage with them. So, even if we couldn't swing private school, she would survive. I did, even with minimal attention from my parents (though I am convinced that my dad's efforts with me as a toddler when he was taking his early child development programs in undergrad had long-term payoffs with my conscientiousness in school).

So, Gillian is going to preschool. !!!!