Why does it not surprise me that one of Ruby’s teachers told us, on Ruby’s second day in preschool this week that “she’s acting as if she’s been here forever!”? While I wasn’t freaked out ahead of time that it would be a huge adjustment, I was expecting it to be a little adjustment and that she would maybe be anxious about me leaving. The only adjustment we’ve seen is that she goes to bed earlier at the end of the day! We’re loving Ruby loving her new school experience.

Of course, we should have known better. Ruby is becoming a confident kid who trusts people enough that she knows she’s always going to be okay. She loves connecting with people if people connect with her. When we were getting all the papers signed a few months ago, she was with me in the school office. I was busy so she wandered off and within minutes she was telling the school secretary I don’t know what, they were playing, reading a book and both happy to get to know one another. It helps that she is extremely verbal; I have no fear that she can’t get express her needs or concerns with the teachers!

A little about the school: she’s going to the Brooklyn Montessori Day School, Monday’s and Tuesday’s. It’s a 5min bike ride from home and on the way to my office, which is another 5mins from her school. Her main teacher, Mr Reid, was away this week, but she seems to be bonding nicely already with Ms Marie (yeah, just like her caregiver who has watched Ruby for over two years now!) and Ms Frances. Her teachers represent Brooklyn well, in that they are Black, Latina and (possibly) LGBTQ. Her 13 or so classmates are a little less so, in that most of them are white.

While she is there she has indoor and outdoor playtime, including trips to the neighborhood playgrounds. They have structured class time (not quite sure yet what they do in that time yet) and they also have activities like yoga (Ruby got a zebra stamp on her hand from the yoga teacher this week) and Spanish. And she’s about to go on her first field trip, to an apple farm to pick apples!

People have been asking me if it was hard for me to see her go to school. I know it’s a rite of passage thing and for some parents that means a new phase, which means the babe is growing up and time just flies and before you know it they’re off to college. David and I talked about this, because we didn’t have that experience with this new phase in Ruby’s life. We concluded that it might be easier for working parents to transition from a baby to a preschooler because they’re already used to handing their child over to someone else.

What struck me more than anything else is the field trip business. Dropping her off in a school in our neighborhood feels safe and normal. Having her leave the city without either of us, and have experiences of her own that we cannot relate to immediately (because we don’t know the farm, because she probably won’t give us enough feedback to get a clear vision of her time on the bus and at the farm), that feels like an amazing new phase. One where she can get to deepen and explore her own sense of who she is. While I have, of course, an inkling of who we will see emerge from her own experiences in this world, I am curious as hell and in that sense, time doesn’t fly fast enough!