Katie & Kindergarten

I would like to promise that someday I will post something coherent and sophisticated but that would probably be shooting for the stars. So here goes: Kindergarten. PM Kindergarten to be exact. Who exactly invented afternoon Kindergarten? It is annoying. In the morning, I get everyone ready to go to the bus. Sometimes being 'ready' is more like Tyler in jammies, Katie in some wildly mismatched clothes and James looking presentable (mostly). We clomp off to the bus like a rag-tag band of oversized lawn gnomes and send James off to school. We come home, I get ready for the day and then we squeeze in any activities/errands/etc. that needs to happen. Then we get ready all over again. I am learning rather quickly that Katie needs at least an hour to get ready for school. (I mean, yes, she is a girl...but still?! This is Kindergarten!!!) This is how it usually goes down: at 11am, I start by feeding her lunch. This involves offering her a few different kinds of tasty leftovers and she decides instead on the usual: a bowl of puffed rice. Not the rice crispy kind, but the actual super healthy (and pretty bland) real puffed rice. She loves that stuff. She also loves art. She combines the two by attempting to make a Picasso while shoveling cereal into her mouth. That is, if she's not talking. Because she does that too. She tells Tyler things like 'If you eat 3 more bites, I'll give you this penny!' and 'Tyler, when you're done we can set up a restaurant and we can sell donuts!' At some point, she will think of something she was going to do earlier and wander off to do it. I call her back to the table and she takes another bite. Then she draws a stick figure and wanders off to go to the bathroom. On the way, she sees something shiny and runs after it. She refocuses, onto something entirely different. In the meantime, I am sweeping the floor/getting her snack ready/loading the dishwasher. I see she has again wandered off and have a mental debate about redirection?consequence?tough love?does she have ADD?look, squirrel!! and send her back to the table. She finally finishes eating and it is time to get dressed. I don't know about your kids, but my kids can't stay clean to save their lives so she usually changes before school. She goes to grab her clothes and sees her baby doll, whom she decides needs to be held and cuddled. At which point she sees her rainbow loom and remembers that she needs to make bracelets for her 10 closest pals before we leave for school in 5 minutes! I remind her that if she doesn't get dressed she's going to school naked, which is mostly effective at lightly a fire under her butt. She then remembers that she's supposed to go to the bathroom BEFORE school and I remember that I should probably brush her hair, which is somewhat akin to trying to give a squirrel a manicure. She brushes her teeth, I brush her hair and we're ready to go. Except she can't find her shoes. Because she didn't put them back on the shelf. So we run around finding the shoes and finally she's ready to walk to school! Its a Christmas miracle! My theory is that if we had AM kindergarten, I could get everyone ready at once. Katie would still be a bit groggy from waking up and that's when I would pounce! I would get her dressed and give her breakfast before she knew what hit her. That's the theory anyway, which will stay firmly in the theory category since there's no switching now. You better believe I'm requesting AM Kindergarten for Tyler!