Of course now I have a little more time to myself, so that's nice

Adele started preschool last week.

Well, it's sort of preschool.

It's more like - hey, why don't you spend an hour twice a week with other children and without your Mama in hopes that you can expand your language skills a bit.

I'd been contemplating having her evaluated for the city preschool for months.  The only way she could get in was if there was a developmental delay - such as with speech or behavior. 

I've noticed that it's hard for people who aren't close to her to understand what she says a lot of the time.  She'll get in a hurry and get excited so her words come out in a jumble.  For the most part I can understand everything she says, but I'm with her all the time.

I asked Adele's doctor what she thought about having the evaluation done and she said that any preschool is good, so it wouldn't hurt.  Which is kind of what I thought to begin with. 

I don't want to push Adele, or make her live up to some arbitrary timetable of what she should be doing/saying at a certain time.  But I also don't want her to have trouble, you know? 

So I took her in and they decided to have her come for an hour on Monday and Wednesday to interact with other kids and get exposed to that type of environment.  She'll do this for 6 weeks and then she'll be reevaluated to see if she needs to go for longer periods of time.

Last week was okay.  She cried for me one time - but she seems to be taking it all in stride. 

It's weird.  With Sebastian we had him in regular preschool at this age, but Adele just wasn't ready to start in August.  And there wasn't the build-up to the first day of school like we had, or the backpack or excitement.  But still, there was that rock in my stomach when I dropped her off the first day.  I didn't cry, probably because she was only going to be gone an hour and it still doesn't feel like real school. 

But still.  My baby.