My Son’s Fake First Day of Preschool

The whole preschool thing has been a debacle from the beginning and this morning was the icing on cake.

First, being a frazzled full-time working mom, I was blissfully unaware that I needed to be worried about preschool this year until friends with children the same age started asking me in the spring what esteemed toddler institution “B” would be attending in the fall. 

My answer was that we had "narrowed it down to a few great places" and were making some final classroom visits. The reality was I had done nothing, nothing at all. All the "best" preschools in my area were of course already booked solid so I started putting my name on the waiting lists hoping some family would move away and give “B” a slot.

My preschool problem was solved in June when I jogged past a huge sign that said "New Bilingual Preschool Opening This Fall. Space Still Available." Perfect! It was a five minute walk from our house and our nanny had been speaking only Spanish to "B" since she started two years ago.

We went to the open house. The teachers seemed nice, the toys were clean and our nanny confirmed that the staff really could speak Spanish (I forgot to mention that while my husband and I love the idea of raising bilingual English/Spanish speaking kids, neither of us actually speak the language). We signed him up.

They have been sending a bunch of emails throughout the summer and I usually read most of them. I honestly don't know how the most important email, the one that explained that today would no longer be the first day of school, slipped through the cracks. But it did. 

Last night, since this morning was supposed to be the first day of school for my little man, I was out at Whole Foods at 10pm buying his "friendship fruit" for snack time and I was up till 11:30 packing his lunchbox and laying out the perfect first day outfit.

Then this morning we were up early taking videos of him getting ready for the big day and proudly beaming at one another as he packed his new little backpack with his favorite treasures. My husband, B and I set off together arriving 10 minutes (fashionably) late to find our nanny in the doorway. "You're late. And by the way, there's no one here."

We looked inside the dark windows. We debated how this could have happened. Blame was definitely directed (fairly) towards me while I hypothesized about all the email glitches that could have occurred (spam folder, system failure etc). In the meantime, “B” sang The Wheels on the Bus loud enough that the owner of the school, who had just arrived to set up for the 9am parent/student orientation, noticed our sad little party of three out front. She informed us of the mistake and gracefully (likely falsely) took all the blame herself.

We then dragged B, kicking and screaming "I need to go to school," away from the building and into a nearby coffee shop to wait for 9am orientation. Hubby and I left our nanny to deal with the aftermath of our horrible parenting faux pas until they could go back to school and she could stand in for us at orientation and mingle with the parents who had their sh*t/mierda together.