For as much chattering as Catie does, it’s amazingly difficult to get her to talk about her day. It was a problem in Kindergarten, when we officially entered the “What did you learn at school today?” “Nothing.”Phase of our relationship. Our agreement was that I would tell her something about my day (in which I struggled to make going to the grocery store more exciting than it was) and she would tell me something about hers. One story at a time, I got a pretty good idea of what she did the six hours she was at school.
Now in first grade with a new school, twenty-two other kids in her class, a new grade, etc. there’s even more to learn. And the good news is that she’s very chatty about it all.
The bad news is that she has one topic of conversation:
The Bus.
Maybe it’s because it’s her last activity of the day. Maybe it’s because she knows Sam would willingly give away his security blanket to ride a bus to school, and she just can’t help but brag.
Or maybe it’s because the bus is Just So Awesome.
True, I’ve had a bit of an Extreme Commute these past couple years. Last year I was in the car nearly three hours a day to deliver the kids to their school forty minutes away. The year before that the twins were so tiny and even though we only lived five minutes from school, getting three kids dressed and fed and ready to go for a ten minute commute was just as painful.
But the bus? Comes to our street and takes her to school. All her friends ride it. She loves it.
Of course we’re still working out the kinks..like the fact I still don’t know the names of her new non-bus friends. Or what she does all day.
But I know all about the twenty minutes she’s on the bus.
And that’s why first grade will forever be known as The Year of the Bus.
I saw her at school today walking to lunch. She was happy and smiling and waved to me! School is also all about the bus for Ibby. It’s the reason he gets up in the AM and the reason he’s happy to stay at school after I see him in the afternoon for snack. He tells me to go home and wait, he’ll ride the bus.