Day 8 - Jake goes to school

(As I sat down to write this my internet was not working and I've had to wait until today to post them. I am keeping my Lent promise though, no thanks to big corporations with lousy customer service. More on that later) 

Today (Thursday) I took Jake to register him at his new school. I stressed over registering him. Not because I didn't know what school I wanted him to go to but I didn't realize the lengths I would have to go to get him registered. Let me explain. 

Holy Cross School in Kemptville was our easy choice because it met all of our criteria. It was Catholic, it had a French Immersion program (at this moment they are in the process of implementing it but by the time Jake is in Grade 1 it will be available to him) and it was in our bus route. Our friends' kids also go to that school so with any luck he'll be in the same class as someone he already knows. That was the easy part.

I got the application from the same friend who's kids go there and I began to fill out the extremely long and confusing set of forms. One was simple enough they wanted to know more about Jake, whether he had siblings, split parents, shared custody, learning disabilities and all the things that were very easy for me to just put a big N/A beside it. Another had pretty standard information, name address, birth certificate (oh no!), baptismal certificate (uh oh!) and immunization records (oh crap!) and a few other pieces of documentation that I had been lazy about and hadn't gotten around to sorting out yet. 

My first panic set in at that point. I got online and began frantically applying for his birth certificate. Thank God it was a very easy process online. For the Baptismal Certificate I managed to clarify that a parents baptismal certificate would do as we hadn't baptized Jake. So I made a call to Josh's mom. Thank God (literally) that she is organized and had it! And then it was down to the immunization records. Has anyone tried to make a simple Doctor's appointment lately? Darn near impossible, unless you are dying and then they refer you to emergency. Good thing I had pre-booked a doctors appointment because Jake had been sick, and I happened to have an appointment on the same day as the school visit so I will have it by then. Phew. Next. 

The last set of papers were a complete confusing mess. This is the form you need to fill out if one of you is non-catholic (that'd be me) and you want your kids to go to a Catholic school. The papers were basically a legal form (not sure how binding they are) that basically states that I am signing over my half of the house to my Catholic husband so that ALL of our taxes can go to the Catholic Board. And it wouldn't have been so hard had it not been in legal speak. 

So finally I have him properly registered in school. We went on the visit where Jake got to see classes in action and the play yards. He showed off his language skills and his map reading abilities and made the office staff laugh so hard they were crying. They have no doubt he is more than ready for school, and I'm about as proud as I could be.