Eeyore Goes to Kindergarten

As you can see, William is learning quite alot at kindergarten. He came home today with a lovely creation called "Life Cycle of a Butterfly", made of pasta. That project is exhibit A as to why I could never be a kindergarten teacher. I'm not nearly creative enough to come up with cute little projects like that. And it worked - William explained the basic lifecycle of a butterfly to a T.

I wish I could say that he's enjoying kindergarten more. He's struggling a bit with his transition. The first full week of school found him practically in tears as he got on the bus because he was going to miss me so much (his words). He was jealous of Tessa because she got to stay home with me more. He pretended that I was there to make himself feel better. Sigh. Its a good thing that he had two years of preschool; I shudder to think of the transition if this was his first experience away from me. I tried to explain that, if you count school (4 hours door to door) and sleeping (11 hours), we still have a whopping 9 hours to spend together every day. It is apparently not enough for William, the homebody.

I think he does OK once he's there. But it's hard to tell. We give him lots and lots and lots of positive reinforcement, but it's hard. He whines about homework. He doesn't like practicing his writing because "I'm not good at it" and "it's hard". The week after next I'll actually be volunteering in his classroom on Tuesday afternoons and I'll be interested to see how he interacts with everyone. I'm guessing he enjoys himself more than he lets on.

This is all new to us, because Henry was Mr. Gung-ho about school from day one. He has, on more than one occasion, cried when he had to stay home from school due to illness. He enjoys school and always has. So I'm not sure what to say to William when he says, "I don't think I want to go to school today." I usually mutter something about how school is what you do when you are a big kid and it's like his job and sometimes we have to do things that we aren't excited about but we do them anyway and school is SO MUCH FUN! Hopefully it will start to sink in. Soon. Someone please say it'll be soon.

On a positive note, Tessa seems to be (and I hesitate to say it because I really don't want to jinx it) potty trained. She hasn't had an accident in quite a while and is in underwear full time, even when we leave the house. She tells us when she needs to go and insists on going by herself, which is a nice change from our little Eeyore, who insisted on having company for months after he learned how to do his business like a big boy. She is even waking up dry most mornings but I still have two packages of princess pullups so I imagine we'll keep her in her "nighttime underwear" for a bit longer, just to avoid accidents. But she's doing great! And we're glad and so proud of her. I guess girls really are easier to potty train. Thank goodness. I don't think I had another months-long saga of accidents and tears in me.

A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away....

...a great adventure took place. Cue the Star Wars theme. Grab the popcorn and get ready for a fun movie.

Tonight we introduced the kids to Star Wars. The original. The movie that came out in 1977 and that I saw at least 10 times that summer (the summer I was 8). I loved that movie so much. I remember thinking what a dreamboat Han Solo was and holding my breath as Luke destroyed the Death Star. Good times, I tell you.

Henry started asking if he could watch Star Wars last week. Apparently he has been playing the Lego Star Wars computer game at a friends house and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I have the original movies on VHS tape (we still have lots of those around here) and we figured why not? There's nothing objectionable about them. They are fun. And there's something for everyone; even Tessa got on board after Henry told her that there was a princess in the movie.

They loved it! And Jay and I enjoyed it more than I thought we would, after all these years. We quoted dialogue to each other and laughed at some of the cheesiness of it all. William kept saying, "I love this movie", mainly after the battle scenes, and "This is just like Star Tours", a ride that they rode twice at Disneyland.

The only problem was that, from the computer game, Henry is aware of all kinds of stuff that comes up later - like Yoda and the Ewoks. So it looks like viewings of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are in our future.

I think we need to stock up on popcorn.

Rocket Man

During the month of August, Henry's Cub Scout pack (do they call them packs?) made rockets. He was quite excited about it. It took him two weeks to actually fashion the rocket and get it ready to launch. Last night was the big night. All the Cub Scouts (8, 9, and 10 year olds) launched their rockets. The results were mixed. Most of them did well - a few even flew past the big field behind our church into a neighbor's yard. A few crashed and burned on takeoff (luckily those kids had pretty good senses of humor about it). Henry's was about in the middle - it flew well into the field but not the farthest. He was happy and he and William had fun running after the rocket as it was launched.

You would have thought that Henry was a NASA engineer launching a manned expedition to another planet the way he approached this activity. Yesterday morning he informed me that he was planning to take it easy at recess today because he expected to be running pretty far to fetch his rocket after its launch. He invited the entire neighborhood, I think. Every person he saw received a "come on over to the church for rockets" talk. It was pretty funny. But he and other boys seemed to have fun, which of course is what the whole thing was about anyway.

A Child's Prayer

Jay and I are trying very hard to teach our children how to pray. We pray as a family each morning and before meals and the kids say their prayers at night before they go to bed. We try to remind them to give some thought to their prayers; we ask them to think of two things that they are thankful for and two things to ask for help with in each prayer. Some days are better than others, especially with the boys. They seem to rush through their prayers. But Tessa seems to be getting it, as evidenced by her prayer last night for Family Home Evening:

"Heavenly Father, thank you for today.
Thank you for my toy. Thank you for my poo-poo."

Can you tell we're potty training? Sigh.

It's actually going really well. The first two days were a bit rough, but she only had two accidents on Sunday and none since then. She did her first poop in the potty on Monday and earned a trip to Shopko to pick out a new toy (hence the "thank you for my toy" in her prayer). Hopefully she can make it the 2+ hours through preschool today without an accident, but I'll put a Pullup over her underwear just in case.

She even stayed dry through the night last night and went to the bathroom this morning when she got up. It's progress and we're happy about it. Once she is fully potty trained, we'll officially put the baby days behind us, for better or worse. I guess since we won't have to fork out money for diapers/wipes/Pullups anymore for the first time in over 8 years, that would definitely fall in the "for better" category.

The Raven

No, I haven't suddenly become a fan of Edgar Allen Poe.

Yesterday we had a huge raven (pictured above) flying around the neighborhood. We often see hawks diving for what we assume are mice and voles in the fields around our house, but never a raven. And this raven wasn't just flying around. It was flying from rooftop to fence to rooftop and flying really, really low. It landed on the stairs of the deck where Tessa has preschool and scared the kids half to death while they were playing outside. When I met William and Henry at the bus stop, I watched it chase a few kids down the sidewalk. So my friend Nicole called Animal Control.

Animal Control in Hyde Park is Rocky (also pictured above). I assumed that since The Raven was just sitting around that it would be fairly easy to catch. I was thinking he'd throw a net over it or something and take it away. But no. Rocky spent well over an hour and a half trying to coax The Raven onto his gloved hand. He fed it water and some kind of food. He recited poetry to it (yep, you guess it, "The Raven"). He even, if my ears didn't deceive me, whistle "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to it as he was trying to entice it to come sit in his patrol vehicle.

Anyway, he had no luck, since he refused to actually force it to come along with him. He left it overnight, saying that he'd be back tomorrow and try to tranquilize it or something. And all the neighborhood kids, mine included, asked to be driven to school today. Henry was afraid that The Raven would swoop down on him as he waited for the bus. We actually had to come up with a contingency plan, as in, "OK, Henry, if you see The Raven, come home. Yes, bring your backpack. I'll drive you to school. Otherwise you should be OK." Rocky had told us that if The Raven came at us, to stand still. I'm still laughing at that one. I don't think I'd be able to stand still, much less expect my 8 year old son to do so.

Rocky came by today about 3:30 pm. He was looking for his buddy, The Raven. He seemed genuinely disappointed that he was gone. And he had grapes in his truck - another peace offering, I assume.

Also, Tessa cracked me up yesterday as we were reading a storybook. We were talking about The Hunchback of Notre Dame and she kept calling it The Crunchback of Motor Fame.

Nevermore.

Riding the Bus

I just put William on the Kindergarten Bus. I'm not teary like I was on Henry's first day of Kindergarten. I'm more excited, because William is so ready to start his public school career. His backpack was full (too full, actually, but he just had some supplies to take on the first day), he had on his North Park Knights t-shirt, and was ready to go!

He did great on his kindergarten assessment earlier this week. His teacher asked him to count as high as he could and when he finally got to 100, he took a big breath and said, "can I stop now?" He's getting close to reading and I'm excited for him to be able to read to himself - that was a big step for Henry in kindergarten. His handwriting isn't the best yet, but that will improve with time.

I met Henry's teacher last night for the first time. He really likes her. When I introduced myself, she said, "He's a chatty one." Sigh. He's not disrespectful at all, thank goodness - he just likes to visit with his friends. So I'm sending him with lots of books to read when he finishes his assignments early and has a little time to spare. He took my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone today - that will at least keep him busy. We looked for some more books for him to read at the library today - I found a few new series books that he might like. It's a constant challenge with Henry - to find books that challenge him in reading but that still have age appropriate material for him. The first few Harry Potter books are OK, and then we'll go from there.

Tessa goes to preschool in a bit and then I'm free until 2:45! I actually have plans to help a friend with her pre-Calculus, but it's kid free helping. There won't be kids fighting or pestering or calling names this afternoon. I think I could get used to this.

Edited to add: I got Tessa off to preschool and ran something back to the library and to get Smoothie King for a quick late lunch and found myself crying. They are all growing up and as much fun as it is to see them try new things, it's hard to know that they don't need you as much anymore. I'm such a sap.

The Preschool Princess

Today was Tessa's first day of preschool. She has been excited to start school this year. We found a cute princess-themed backpack at Family Dollar a few weeks ago and snapped it up. So far she's kept her stickers and "scrapbooks" in it, but today she got to take it to school.

Her preschool teacher is a good friend of mine. Tessa plays really well with her daughter and has a pretty high comfort level going to their house, so I wasn't worried about her crying when I dropped her off. Before we left, she said, "Mama, I'm going to miss you." But I told her that I'd be back as soon as school was over to get her and she perked right up. It's strange that Tessa is getting ready to bop on off to preschool, because as a baby and young toddler she was incredibly clingy and didn't want to be out of my sight. She's always been a mama's girl but it's nice to see her show some readiness to branch out a bit. She was a little quiet when she first got there, according to her teacher, but she warmed up nicely. She was excited to see me when I picked her up and seems excited to go back on Thursday.

She practiced saying, "hi, my name is Tessa. What's your name?" all day. She wants to make new friends and have fun, which is just perfect because that's all I really want her to do in preschool. She'll learn alot, but at her age it's more about learning social dynamics and being around other kids.

Anyway, my baby started preschool today. And liked it. It was a good day.