The pink bus

When Katie was born I avoided the color pink like the plague.  Her room was painted lavender and green, we bought yellow and purple outfits, her blankets had bears and duckies, there was nothing pink we bought for her.  She did have a few pink outfits that family and friends had given us but that was about as pink as we got, at least for a little while.

As she got older and was more able to assert her opinion on things (and boy does she have opinions), Katie made it very clear that PINK was the color for her.  If given the choice she'd pick something pink over any other color in the rainbow.  We tried to fight genetics, but apparently those two X chromosomes she was born with pushed pink all the way.

When Katie was 2 her brother got to go to preschool.  Oh the injustice, how was HE able to climb on that mysterious bus and travel the great distance to the exciting place called 'school'.  Oh, she got to visit Erik at school, and when Mrs. Shev came for her bi-yearly visits Katie got to show just how ready she was to go to school.  But no matter how hard she tried to prove she was ready she was just not allowed to climb on that bus and head off to school.

That did not sit well with Katie, it didn't sit well at all.  So she started planning........

The next year on her birthday she got a backpack.  A PINK backpack at that!  She also got notebooks, pencils, crayons, glue (all pink, of course) - all the things she'd need for school!  When Erik climbed on that bus to head off to kindergarten she was ready.

The first day of kindergarten comes for Erik.  We take him in to school and Katie gets to see this wonderful new world.  Preschool was nice, but there were a a lot of toys there.  Baby toys.  And clearly at 3 years old she was NOT a baby.  This kindergarten classroom was different.  Sure, there were toys there, the normal blocks and the sand table, the cars and the dinosaurs.  But there were other things, too.  Where were desks and journals.  There were books (not baby books but REAL books), and scissors and glue at every table.  They had workbooks and homework!  Boy did she want to go to school, and she had a way to make that happen.

One morning as we were getting ready to head out the door Katie was busy getting ready for her 'big day'.  I wasn't sure at that time what her 'big day' was, but she was determined about how she was to prepare.  She insisted on wearing her favorite pink outfit with the cute little pink corduroy skirt and pink ribbons in her hair.  She wore her pretty pink shoes and had her new pink backpack loaded.  She was ready.

This happened to be on a morning I had to go to work.  On those mornings I'd drop the kids off at Katrina's daycare and Erik would climb on the bus and head off for school. 

That morning as we shuffled our way into the house she refused to take her coat (her pink coat) off.  As we watched Erik climb on the bus and head off to school Katie made her announcement.  She told us that she was going to go to school for the first time that day.

Staring out the window she informed us that her teacher had called the night before (guess what color phone she called from...yep, pink).  She told Katie the plan for the day.  Apparently, that morning a pink bus was going to come and pick Katie up.  That bus would take her to her pink school where she would sit at a pink desk and read pink books.  Feeling confident in the plans Katie and her 'teacher' had discussed I told Katrina if that pink bus did make an appearance she was fine to let my little princess climb on board.

I'm sure you would be very surprised to hear that the pink bus never came.  She waited all day and the driver never showed up.  She was sure that the driver just didn't know she had to pick  Katie up at Katrina's.  She'd have to talk to her teacher, make sure that driver knew.  So the routine continued.  Every day she went to Katrina's she'd pack, ready to head off to her pink school on her pink bus.  She just knew it would come for her one day.

Luckily the next school year came around and she was able to go to the regular school.  If she hadn't been able to go to preschool and eventually on to elementary school she would still be sitting at Katrina's house, looking out the window waiting for her pink bus.