First Day of School

The shame about being behind on my blogging is that I'm missing so many great milestones. For example, LR started school! His first day of preschool and he and I were both psyched! He wore his paper bear which had arrived in the mail the week before. His teacher, Ms. Marie, had sent it for the kids to decorate and wear the first day. He honestly wasn't that interested in it, but he humored me and wore it for the picture. The first day was only an hour, but he got a chance to meet his teacher, hang out with half of his classmates, and test run all the toy cars in the classroom. I stayed with him and all seemed to go smoothly. The next day was 2 hours and I left him on his own. He didn't notice when I left and didn't care when he realized I was gone. I thought all had gone well until a few hours after I picked him up. Then the call came from his teacher. She left a message on my voicemail... "LR had a few 'issues' today and I wanted to talk to you about it so that he has a good year... and all the other kids do too." *sigh* Guess it didn't go as well as I thought.

So, I obsessed about it and then made Daddy call her back. Apparently, he had trouble following directions and he left the room a couple of times to explore the other classrooms and what they had. (On the way in he saw a room with a water table and sailboats in it. I think he was trying to find it again.) And the kicker... he slapped a kid. Daddy asked if anything provoked him, but the teacher assured him that it was completely spontaneous. *double sigh* Okay, so our week of vacation with him turned into a week of discipline. Every time he ignored our instructions or requests, he went to his room. Fun fun.

On his third day of school, I went in for 1 of the 2 hours to help/observe/celebrate his third birthday and found that LR was being a typical almost-3-year-old. He does have a hard time listening, but most of the kids in the class do at some time or other. He tends to be more interested in the other children than what the teacher is doing. (When does that change?) He's a bit of an alpha-dog, class clown. I know it doesn't bode well, but I'm not really concerned either. He's happy and healthy and has a hard time sitting still during story time. Whaaaat-ever. Oh, and I found out that it's the teacher's first year teaching and that she doesn't really have the skill set that experience will give her. (said the woman with a masters in education who quit teaching within a year.) She has a few tricks up her sleeve, but doesn't have a handle on how to work with LR yet. He'll get used to the routine and she'll find out what privileges he doesn't like losing.

One of the bright spots in the week came when we got a chance to go peach picking. We ran into 2 other families with twins while there. Go Massachusetts! We palled around with a 4 year-old boy and his identical twin 2 year-old sisters. Then we hit the playground and played with fraternal 2 and a half year-old sisters dressed in matching OshKosh. The babies seemed to enjoy our time outside and we all liked the peaches.

Other milestones to come: Missy crawls, J Frog gets his first tooth, and LR gets observant.