Continuing our torrid pace, we’ve uploaded another set of photos this weekend. This one focuses on Julia’s dance class, with a few other snapshots from earlier this year thrown in for good measure. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be caught up in a few short weeks; it helps that we took dramatically fewer pictures this year than last.

Joe’s all set for his first day of preschool tomorrow morning, so it should be an interesting day. I’m expecting the drop-off to be a bit rough. Back in the infant center, he was usually OK if I got him there early enough that the kids were still inside playing; if they were already out on the playground, tears were almost sure to be shed. I think the added noise and confusion were just too much for him to deal with.

Preschool will be even tougher, because even when the classes are still inside, the different age groups are commingled until class officially starts at 9:00: the two-year-olds like Joe are mixed in with bigger kids who are four or five. The older kids tend to be a bit more rambunctious than the little ones, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Joe were to have a hard time coping. We’ll see how it goes.

It’s been an eternity since we posted any pictures that were less than eleven months old, so we spent a few minutes this weekend scanning this year’s class pictures and created separate albums for Julia and Joseph. The plan is to keep these albums up-to-date as the kids move through the school system, or at least until our freebie scanner kicks the bucket.

Now, the scary news. We got a bit of a surprise in the sign-in book at Joe’s daycare this week: written notice informing us that he’s going to start visiting the preschool this Monday and will be moving up for good on November 17. Obviously, this is a good thing: Joe’s been the oldest kid in the infant center for a month or two now, and a lot of his friends have already moved up. Developmentally, he’s more than ready (though it’d be nice if he showed a little more interest in using the toilet). Still, it’s a bit of a bittersweet change for us: after four-plus years, it will be very strange not to have anyone to drop off at the baby school, as Julia calls it.