End of the Year

This is Clare's last week of preschool. Today was her End of the Year Celebration (and the great mommy forgot to bring the camera!). We were in charge of bringing cupcakes in, so when I dropped Clare off this morning, we had our bag of carefully-selected store-bought mini cupcakes with us. (When Clare's teacher asked me to bring in cupcakes, I usually take pride in baking myself, but the thought of making four dozen mini cupcakes was just too much right now.) Clare saw her teacher and started dancing and singing, "cake cake cake!" She was very excited about having a party at school. Mid-morning, I headed back over to the school with Jamie and Simon and met Shawn there for the party.

Clare was sitting on the rug with the rest of her class when we walked into her classroom. She immediately exclaimed, "Daddy!" and stood up to come over to us. Her teacher reminded her to sit back down, and I was proud to see that Clare followed her directions. We watched Clare sing two silly songs with her class (complete with hand motions - oh, I cannot believe I forgot the camera!), then they neatly filed over to the snack table and chose their snacks from the array of goodies (after all that fuss over cupcakes, Clare took a cookie and cheese and crackers). After they were settled on a different rug, we watched a slideshow of the class over the past year. All the children were excited to see themselves on the television screen, including Clare. ("That's me! That's me!") I had to bite down hard to keep myself from bawling. Just seeing Clare be a part of her class, follow directions, and gaining so much joy out of being in school was overwhelming. I think back at how petrified we were as Clare's third birthday and the start of preschool loomed closer and closer. Now all those fears have melted away, and I can see Clare is thriving in school.

Clare will only have two full weeks off school before her summer session starts in July. We are going to take advantage of those weeks by sleeping in (at least, that's my hope - at the very least, not be rushing out of the house every morning!), planning lots of activities, and hosting our first Williams syndrome barbecue.