The bus guardian

This is our setup most mornings: Miriam waiting for the bus; Magdalena supervising the process. Since all the kids on our street go to different schools, and since a private school's bus stop = your front door, there is quite the procession of buses driving by our house every morning, starting at about 6.40am. We're not often outside early enough to see that one go by, but we usually manage to see the rest.

So even though none of the neighbor kids technically share a bus stop, they sometimes end up hanging out together until the buses collect them, one by one. And Magdalena is there to watch it all go down.

Even after Miriam leaves, Magdalena is loath to come inside for fear of missing someone's bus. When she hears the rumble of an approaching engine, she runs back outside to see whose it is, and then reports the information to me.

Poor thing - she pined to go to school all of last year. Now that she finally gets to go to school, she's looking forward to taking the bus some day, just like all the big kids in the neighborhood. It's a great consolation that she enjoys walking to school, which we've done the past few mornings. She walks the whole way with a spring in her step, wearing her backpack like anything.

In the afternoons, Magdalena will drop whatever she's doing to run outside and welcome Miriam as she gets off the bus.

I'm glad someone is keeping the neighborhood bus drivers on their toes, even if that someone happens to be all of three years old.