In September, I told you all about Sophie’s first day of preschool.  And tomorrow, it will be her last day.

Well, her first last day, anyways.  Since she has a fall birthday, she will have two years of preschool. Thank God!  My heart literally hurts at the thought of kindergarten!

Sophie has changed a ton this year.  I mean a huge, huge change.  She already knew her ABCs and 123s, shapes, and colors, and all that academic stuff, but she was S-H-Y at the beginning of the year. She didn’t want much to do with the other kids.  Now, she is Miss Preschool Social 2011, and introduces herself to everyone that looks friendly at the park or the mall play place.  And, she who was once very protective of her personal space now enjoys invading others’, like she did to Andrea’s little guy Andon at our Tide Stain Release event on Sunday.

Poor Andon had no choice in the matter!

I could not be more proud of my little girl.  She has had a great year, made so many friends, and really picked up some great social skillz.  Not to mention cutting and pasting and drawing and writing her name and all that good stuff.

Sophie girl, I don’t know what I am going to do with you all summer!  But I sure am glad I got the gift of watching you become a big girl this year.  I love you SO much, and I LOVE being your mommy!

My little shy, anti-social Sophie has really started to blossom in the last couple of months.  She’s really starting to be more social in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that she l-o-v-e-s the other kids in her class at preschool.  But she especially big puffy hearts one kid in particular, and his name is Julio.

When Sophie started this particular preschool right after Thanksgiving, I was worried about her adjustment, but she got comfortable with the other kids right away. She mentioned Julio’s name within the first couple of days.  At first I was like “Julio? Really?”  - I thought maybe I was misunderstanding her.  But I asked her teacher, and sure enough – there was a boy in her class named Julio.  By the end of the week she had also mentioned a little girl named Ashley.   By the end of the second week, I knew the name of every kid  in her class (there are 12 including her).  She was excited to tell me about all her new friends, but Julio’s name is one she mentions without fail.  When I am dropping her off and she sees him walking down the sidewalk she gets so excited and yells, “Here comes Julio!” or “Look, Julio’s here!”

One day before Christmas when I went to drop Sophie off, I saw Julio’s mom dropping him off, and I tried to tell her how much Sophie luuurves Julio.  But, I discovered there is a bit of a language barrier: her response to me was to smile and nod and say “It’s cold!”  (Which it was.)  Dangit, I am really regretting that French minor I had in college!  Spanish would apparently have been much more effective!

A couple of days later when I went to pick Sophie up, the class was running a little late so they had me come in the room (usually they just throw the kids out the door at you).  As I was getting Sophie’s coat on, Julio kept saying “Bye So-PHIE, bye So-PHIE!” very energetically.  One of Sophie’s teachers smiled and said, “He doesn’t say much in English, so that means something right there.”

So apparently Sophie and Julio are members of the Mutual Admiration Society.

Sophie thanks Jesus for Julio every night at bedtime (usually either Ashley or another classmate, Dominic, also gets a shout-out to the big JC as well.)  She can now write his name, which along with her teacher’s name and Ashley’s name, is her favorite thing to write.

And every day after school, when I ask her who she played with at school, she yells “WHO-LEE-OH!” before I can even finish the question.

I’m super-excited that Sophie has made such good friends at school, and I think it’s just a LITTLE bit cute that her BFF is a little boy who speaks even less English than she does.

Also super-excited that it ties in so perfectly with a Paul Simon song.  I mean, really!  It’s Sophie and Julio down by the schoolyard, and I couldn’t be happier about it.