Brave

Tomorrow's a big day for the family.  No, it's not the new iPhone announcement.  That's next week.   And no, we're not buying a minivan.  I WISH.  No, nothing that momentous.  Just a tiny little event called:  Finn's first day of real school.  

Yikes!

For the first time since he was just a few months old, Finn will not be making the trip to Jena's in the morning.  Well, actually he will, but that kind of ruins my story.  More on that later.

As I was saying, for the first time in ages, we won't be picking Finn up from Jena's in the afternoon... wait a minute.  Actually, we will be picking him up from Jena's.  Give me a second to remember what's changing.  Oh right.  It's the stuff in the middle.

Starting tomorrow, and for MOST of the day, Finn will now be attending pre-K at West Seattle Montessori instead of with his pals at TinyTribe, though his oldest buddies Reid, Layla and Grace will be joining him at his new school as well.  

I don't know much about this whole Montessori thing, so I'm just going to assume it's a Ninja Training School, where his schoolmates are giant mutant turtles and his professors are all anthropomorphic rats.  Or something.

Either way, what I do know for sure is that the only one that isn't completely shaken up and terrified about this whole thing is Finn.  For weeks now he's been asking about when he gets to go to his new school.   We finally went to orientation last week - where the picture above was taken - at which point, upon being informed it was time to go, he begged to be able to stay for another half hour.  When I told him this morning that he would start his new school tomorrow, he threw his hands up in the air and yelled, "Yay!"

This is pretty much the opposite of how his parents are handling this, though we have maintained our composure in his presence quite well.  It's only when he's in bed that we'll start talking about what it will be like for him in a new place and how he's going to react if he gets scared or nervous, and how we're going to handle that.  But of course, that's life.  And we all need to learn how to get through those situations.

Finn of course doesn't seem terribly concerned.  We were talking the other day and he asked me what it means to be brave.  He said that he wasn't always brave because sometimes he got scared.  I told him that everyone gets scared from time to time, but that doesn't mean you're not brave.  Being brave is doing what you need to do, even when you are scared.

He thought about that for a minute.  And then he said, "Yeah, like when I'm fighting bears."

Exactly.  I think with the help of his new Montessori buddies Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Master Splinter, those bears won't stand a chance.

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Further to the Jena comment above, as she is determined to have us forever in her debt, she will also be taking care of Finn both before and after school.  What a sucker.  (Hi Jena!)