One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned as a mom is to listen to your gut. Then evaluate what you’re feeling, think through it, re-evaluate, ask opinions, but at the end of the day, go with what your mom intuition says to do.

Despite feeling like we had found a great school for Baylor 6 months ago, when it came to actually going to school there, it wasn’t a good fit. As a family, we crave a community. We need to have those people that we run into a drop off and pick up, the parents who we see at school events, church and sports. While there was community at the first school, it wasn’t our kind of community. On top of that, the very strict on campus policies were adding to already difficult drop offs. The morning that I found myself in tears in the front office over an issue with the front desk, I knew something had to change.

So we pulled the plug.

It seems nuts on paper to switch schools just a month into the year. But my gut was screaming “hallelujah!” at just the thought of something different. I sent an email to a friend asking how her experience was as a new student at their school and gave a brief description of what we were working with. She immediately called me and said “you need to get over here, you’re going to love it”.

And she was so right. After a tour, we got an email the same day saying that B’s application was accepted and there were expecting her at the beginning of the next week. When I broke the news to B, she replied “that sounds fine – I have no problem going to a new school” – which seemed very telling to me.

Now going into our second week, I know we made the right choice. Baylor has gone from being dragged out of bed in the morning, begging to know how many days were left in the week and if she really had to go to school all before melting down at drop off, to bouncing out of bed with a smile on her face. She’s excited, happy and loving her fresh-out-of-college and full of ambition teacher. Peter and I are loving the families who have gone out of their way to seek us out, introduce themselves and then quickly include us in school and social activities. Parents have asked their kids to find “the new girl – she’s the really tall blonde girl” and make sure she had someone to eat lunch with and play with on the playground. We are so lucky-blessed-fortunate to have found the right place.

I think the smile says it all.

And yes, that is a new uniform. I am now the proud owner of several hundred dollars worth of uniforms for a school we no longer attend…oh well. The cost of getting it right!