Jumping in, feet first.
And just like that, d’été est fini. We spent August living in an apartment in the city, walking to the playground and going to the market on the corner when le lait ran out. We had a tiny little yard, we fell asleep to the sounds of garbage trucks making the rounds on Tuesday nights, the kids learned many many sidewalk safety skills as we ran up the miles on our crappy little umbrella stroller. We spent way too much money on ice cream cones and wine. (It was all so close!) We walked to the touristy part of town and watched street performers, happened upon festivals, wandered into shops. Basically, my dream life. 
We also spent a decent chunk of that time house hunting. NOT my dream life, house hunting. But that’s a story for another day. Spoiler alert: we found a house. But since we don’t move in until the end of September, we had to do an extra move, as our apartment in St. Roch was only available for the month of August. So for the month we are living in an even MORE awesome neighborhood in the city, in the upper town, we’ve been there one day and I already love it.
The one down side to the situation is of course, the school issue. Much to my chagrin, our new house is not in the city. Turns out nobody else was as jazzed as I was about multipurposing every square inch of space and living with one bathroom, and nobody else waxed poetic about the sounds of garbage trucks. So we ended up outside the city. I’m on board, but it does leave us with a bit of a driving situation, especially since the school in our new town is full to bursting and we got shuffled to the school in the NEXT town over, which is like 35-40 minutes from our current apartment in Montcalm. Soooo that kinda blows. But it’s only for a month. And I will make sacrifices to live in such a cool place and live my city fantasy life for just a few more weeks.
ANYWAYS.
Today, with a healthy mix of excitement and nerves, my Violet began kindergarten. We sent her off with big sister’s old sac à dos, the wear and tear covered up with some brand new patches that I stitched on last night (because of course last night). I probably could have sent the backpack back to LLbean and gotten a shiny new one, but I think my girl liked the idea of having a piece of her sister close to her. I also told her that I stitched the patches full of love. I hope that helps. She was excited this morning but then balked when the reality of me leaving hit.
And Fiona headed off to première année with a smile. (Yes, first grade again. The age cutoff here is Sept 30 and they felt with that plus the language barrier she’d do well to repeat grade 1, and I do not disagree.) She was much more nervous than her little sister was this morning on the way to school, but once we got there and found her teacher and she lined up with her class she gained back some courage, and she flashed me that Fiona grin as they went in.
That’s my girl, in a flouncy skirt paired with brand shiny new Ninja Turtle sneakers.
I am so proud of them both. So incredibly brave, jumping into a brand new environment like that. We did have some tears, but that’s to be expected. I’m really looking forward to hearing how the day goes. I know they’re gonna crush it.