Ch-ch-ch-changes

It's hard to believe Megan is in preschool now!! She started on Tuesday at Happy Times, and she'll go twice a week. So far she loves it, and almost seems like a different kid already. She's told us all of the rules, who she sat next to for snacktime, and that she couldn't paint on the first day. Hopefully the second day?? She's very curious about the teachers, too. Just tonight at bedtime she wanted to know what car her teacher drove and where she lived. Hmmm, can you say stalker??

Here, the girls before they got in the van. They took their bagels to go. Bridget insisted on wearing a backpack too. It's even labeled :)

And, me with our suddenly very big girl. Wait, that's just her kindergarten-size princess backpack!

And, although I can't say we really planned it this way, another big change happened for Megan right before school started. The pacifier fairy finally came to our house!! Yes, Megan is 3 1/2 years old and up until a week ago, she still used a pacifier, or a "pappy." A very specific, chewed up, newborn sized pappy with a little bear on it. The pacifier fairy eluded us for far too long - she circled our house many times, but didn't fly through the window with her princess loot until last week after Megan lost that pappy for about the thousandth time. We looked pretty hard, but Megan finally agreed that the pacifier fairy could come, find it, and bring it to her workshop to repair it before she flew it to the littlest Stecher, baby Brendan. It was a big moment :) She came for Bridget's pappy as well, but there wasn't nearly as much drama with that exchange. (Bridget's drama happened last month on the beach in Tahoe when Clara took matters into her own hands, er, teeth, and de-nippled Bridget's poor little duck pappy. This didn't help Bridget and Clara's already strained relationship!) We are officially a pappy-free house now, since the babies don't use pacifiers (for better or for worse!).

The biggest change of all is our new routine on Megan's school days. Suddenly, we have somewhere we have to be pretty early in the morning, with all of the girls fed and dressed, including me! Hopefully all future preschool mornings will go more smoothly than Megan's first day - good thing it's only twice a week!