Hannah's First Day of Kindergarten

Hannah is in Kindergarten and we are so proud of her! She was super excited and so ready for her first day of school. Meanwhile, want to guess who wasn't excited or ready? Her mama. Sending Hannah off to school in what is one of the worst waves of COVID in this country (thanks to the extremely selfish, ignorant humans who refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks), is just excruciating to me. 

The week before school started, our terrible superintendent failed to mandate masks in the schools in our county so that unleashed a very angry Mama and Papa Bear. Hannah- when you read this one day- know that your Daddy and I will do absolutely whatever it takes to protect you and make sure that you are safe and healthy. We both emailed the superintendent urging him to reconsider and do the right thing to protect the kids. When those emails went unanswered, I emailed the entire school board individually. Stephen emailed our governor and the public health director. You get it- we sent lots of emails. The school board members at least responded to me, although they couldn't really do anything. We even started looking into homeschooling options since we felt so helpless and abandoned by the leaders who are supposed to take care of our kids. 

Then two days before school started Stephen called the superintendent's office and actually got him on the phone. Y'all- Stephen is a waaaaay better person than me, because the superintendent actually told him that he was the nicest caller he'd had all day. He told him to wait until 5pm that day and that we'd be very happy. Around 4:45 that afternoon our amazing governor announced a state-wide mask mandate for all schools and daycares in Kentucky, because he's a true leader and he cares way more about keeping kids safe than politics or people being mad at him. He has done the hard, right thing over and over again throughout the pandemic and I'm just so grateful that there's a real grown up in charge that we can trust. I added one more email to the list that week and sent the governor a message thanking him, parent to parent, for protecting Hannah and all the other kids in Kentucky who aren't yet eligible to get the vaccine.  

Hannah has had a great first few days of school. She's already making friends and she really likes her teacher. I can't wait to see how she learns and grows this year- hopefully all while staying healthy.