Being Sara

He never looked back

Today was Xander’s first day of kindergarten.  We were prepared.  We’d been to the open house, we’d toured and visited the school and had endless conversations with Xander about what to expect.  We had plans for before and after school.  Supplies were purchased, clothes were ironed, backpacks were packed, forms were completed.  Last night near midnight though, I couldn’t stop the tears.  My baby was going to get on a bus, go to a school where I do not know every child and every adult.  He was going to spend his day with these people who barely knew him, and couldn’t possibly be prepared for his shyness.  And I was sure his shyness would prevent him from making friends, or from letting his teacher see how smart he truly is.

But, as I should have learned by now, my kids continue to surprise me.  Adding to my regular dose of motherhood guilt, I could not drop off or pick up Xander on his first day.  Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene threw off all of our plans, so PSU student move-in day landed on the same day as kindergarten started.

So, we jumped right into the regular routine.  Zach took the boys to the bus stop, and waited with Xander.  Parker was seriously unimpressed that Xander not only got to ride the school bus and he did not, but also that Xander was not walking into ‘school’ with him anymore.  After bouncing around with his backpack, lunch box and friend, the bus arrived and they both walked right on – never looking back.

It was worse than pulling teeth, but after much begging, I finally got some details out of the close-lipped kid tonight.  Riding the bus is his favorite part.  Pretty much everything else pales in comparison to that.  But, if he had to pick something he enjoyed most at school, that would be recess.  And, if he had to pick something in his classroom that he liked the most, that would be the science station.  He really wanted to play with the dinosaurs, but at free play only two kids are allowed at each station, and there were already two kids at the dinosaur station.

There were no tears and no complaints.  He met all of his friends (his whole class) though he doesn’t yet remember anyone’s name.  He has three other students who sit at his table (where his assigned seat is) but one girl is in the half day program, so she leaves early.  One boy at his table got in trouble today for yelling at another kid (but not him) and had to sit at his table for two minutes.  Rest time is nice, and Xander thinks I should ask my boss for a rest time at work.  I’m sure that will go over well.

So, Xander is clearly more ready for kindergarten than I am.  He went through the first day like it was nothing.  I’m not sure I’m ready for day two, but he can’t wait to go back (and ride the bus again of course).  Obviously not every day can be wonderful, but I am so incredibly relieve that the first day was.

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Xander had his ‘Kindergarten Connection’ (screening) meeting yesterday.  After touring schools and weighing our options, we finally picked what we hope will be the best one for both boys.  The connection meeting went pretty well – they certainly have it organized and down to a science.

We walked into the cafeteria and went to the registration table.  Xander got a name tag and we got a giant terracotta pot.  There were 4 ‘stations’ set up, and we were directed to the 1st station where Xander played with one of the kindergarten teachers (they are big on magnetic letters) on a baking tray (cool trick since it’s magnetic) while we chatted with the principal.  They got to test Xander’s letter recognition and organization and we got some handouts (which we could carry around in our handy pot).  Xander got to pick out a seed packet (to plant in the terracotta pot) and we moved onto the next station.  At each station they evaluated things like gross and fine motor skills, following directions, etc. and we met with people like the school nurse, the OT specialist, reading specialist and teachers.  As Xander finished whatever task was in front of him, he was given some sort of reward (a beach ball from the health table, gardening gloves from the OT table, a drawing/counting game from the academics table, etc.)

When we left and I asked Xander how he liked it, he said ‘it was ok… but they didn’t have any dinosaurs for me to play with’  On the other hand, this morning he asked me where he was going to school today, and when I told him, his current school he made a face at me.  I asked him what the problem was – he loves his school and he informed me yes, but he wanted to go to kindergarten!  So, I guess any qualms I had over him being ready (the OT lady’s first comment when she met us was ‘wow, a little guy – he just barely meets the cut off!’) are moderately relieved since he’s pretty confident that he’s ready

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We took a vacation a few weeks ago.  It was the first vacation Zach and I have taken in over 4 years.  The last one was a cruise when I was 4 months pregnant with Xander.  This was also our very first family vacation.  So where did we go?  Cape Hatteras, NC.  We rented a house on the beach with another family who has children the same age (quite literally, 1 month older than Xander and 4 days older than Parker).  It takes roughly 15 hours to drive there.  We left on a Thursday night and drove to Washington DC.  We arrived at 3:30 am.  Boy were we tired!  But, it was worth it.  The kids slept most of the way, although Xander shocked us by staying awake until 10:15 pm!  He passed out just before we reached the George Washington Bridge in NYC.  On Friday we went to the National Zoo and to the Natural History Museum and the Air and Space museum.  It was pretty awesome because all of the Smithsonian museums and the Zoo have free admission, so we saw as much as we wanted to, and then moved onto the next spot without feeling grumpy about how much money we had spent on admission.  We slept a second night in DC and then got up on Saturday and drove the rest of the way to NC.

Once there, the 8 of us settled into the house.  The view was beautiful, and being able to walk out the door and onto the beach was awesome.  The mosquitoes were a little too friendly for my taste, but they mostly left us alone when we were in the sun.  We spent several days just hanging out in the sand and sun.  The weather was beautiful.  The kids had so much fun running in and out of the waves.  And in the evenings, we sat on the couch and sucked up the free wireless (which was wonderful for those of us without home internet access) and often spent a little time in the hot tub before bed.  After 5 fun-filled days on the beach, we packed up again and headed out.

The ride back North was much more stressful.  We left at 11am, and by 3pm the kids had had enough of the car.  They were tired, and cranky, and sick of being cooped up.  We had to stop more often, and the frequent stops were stressing Zach out.  By 9pm we had arrived in New Jersey.  We stayed at another Marriott.  The first one was quite nice.  And while this room was slightly larger, the beds were hard as a stone slab.  It was a very uncomfortable night of restless sleep for the 4 of us.

On Saturday morning we got up and drove into New York City.  We stopped at Liberty Park and found a pretty awesome playground.  The boys had a blast running around and it was nearly deserted which was nice for us.  The wind was pretty unbelievable there, and after about 1/2 an hour we were all ready to retire to the protection of the car.  Then we drove into the city.  Xander enjoyed looking at the tall buildings for a little while.  Parker fell asleep.

We parked near Central Park, and walked through it.  I think Xander would have loved a horse-drawn carriage ride, but we didn’t really want to spend $50 on that sort of novelty.  They both had lots of fun at the playground  in Central Park, which was great.  Then we walked to FAO Schwartz.  And they of course fell in love with the giant toy store.  My favorite part was how much fun the employees were having.  It’s all staged of course, but in nearly every corner, there was an employee playing/demoing some new, fun toy.  They had hackey sacks and tossing games; skateboards and digital music displays and even a story hour.  Parker found a giant meerkat stuffed animal and fell in love.  It was (of course) $60 and much more than we wanted to spend on a stuffed animal.  Then Xander discovered it, and also fell in love.  We pried both boys away and wandered back through the store, trying to find a small souvenir, something more reasonably priced.  As we were walking out Zach told me that he had fallen in love with the giant meerkat as well, and really, how many times are you a little kid in FAO Schwartz?  I agreed.  Both boys were tired and hungry and starting to melt down, so we decided I would start walking towards the pizza place we were planning on for lunch (how can you go to NYC for the day and not have pizza for lunch?) while Zach got them their toy store souvenir and poked his head into the Apple Store next door.

As we walked to the restaurant I reminded Xander that he would have to share the toy with Parker and that the two of them would need to take turns, be good brothers, blah, blah, blah.  Zach caught up with us, and placed a large bag on the stroller, telling Xander that he had to wait until we got to the car to open it.  Surprisingly, Xander didn’t argue this point.  We ate some fabulous NYC pizza, although the restaurant we ended up at didn’t seem very kid friendly.  The hostess sort of sneered at our stroller, and the waitress took nearly a million years to even come for our drink order.  It’s the one time that cranky kids in a restaurant are useful – if you let them make a little noise, someone eventually pays attention to you!

Then we found our car.  It took a long time for the attendants to bring it up, and we were hot and tired, and ready to get home, so it probably felt even longer.  We finally got both boys buckled in, and then Zach opened up the bag and brought out not one but two giant meerkats.   The boys’ reactions were priceless and they were so beyond happy.  They laughed and giggled the whole way out of the city.

A few hours later, Zach mentioned that we needed to find an alternate route around Keene, since the pumpkin festival was going on that day.  We had been planning on stopping in Lempster to pick up Oscar from Zach’s parent’s house, and Keene is the most direct route.  I suggested that perhaps we shouldn’t find an alternate route, but instead should see if we could get a reasonable parking spot.  This is the last year that the current company is hosting the pumpkin festival.  Unless someone takes it over, it’s the last one.  I didn’t want our children to miss out on a Keene pumpkin festival, so we decided to swing by.  We got there at 8:30 pm.  We were lucky enough to park at the post office in Keene and did a brief tour of the thousands of pumpkins all lit up.  Then we were back in the car by 9pm and in Lempster by 9:30.  We slept in Lempster that night, and finally returned to our house the following morning.

It was a long but fun-filled vacation.  Parker got a bit roughed up by North Carolina (I’ll do a follow up post on that) and didn’t sleep well at all, which meant that Zach and I slept next to each other for a total of 1.5 nights during the 10 day vacation, but other than odd sleeping arrangements it was a blast!  The boys seemed to have a great time, and Zach and I had lots of fun doing new things and showing them around a few new parts of the country.

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I have 3/4 of a post written for today, but I’m too tired to finish it.  I’m too tired to focus my brain or my eyes.  If this chair I’m sitting in reclined, I’d be asleep in seconds.

Parker has been sick since Saturday (today is Thursday for those of you keeping track).  Every night since Saturday he has woken up somewhere between 12am and 2am.  Every night since Saturday he has stayed awake for anywhere between 2 and 4 hours.

You forget how much you enjoy sleeping between 12am and 4am until you can’t do it 4 days in a row.

Zach is also sick.  I have to give the guy credit though.  Despite the exhaustion and complete face leak he’s been suffering, he’s still gotten up with Parker and me every night, and helped with every other kid duty.  He’s feeling awful, but hasn’t let it slow him down in the kid assistance department which has been awesome.

But I’m still so tired.  The kind of exhaustion you feel when you have a 2 week old baby who nurses around the clock kind of tired.  Nearly falling asleep at your desk or driving your kids home from day care tired.

When is someone going to call me up and tell me that they’ve booked a quiet hotel room for me to crash in for a week?  Because that’s what I really need at this point.  I need a week of uninterrupted sleep, sleep and more sleep.  I’ll try to get a more coherent post up sometime after I’ve managed more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep…

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Parker has always been our rough and tumble kid.  He loves to wrestle.  He loves to be tossed about.  He loves anything that involves physical play.  In our house, most of the time, this is ok.  We separate the boys when Parker gets too physical.  I put him down when he tries to hit me.  We constantly remind him to be gentle, and show him gentle touches.  But the kid just loves rough play.  Last week at day care he chased another child.  He pushed the child down (the kid’s head bumped a table) and then Parker when in for a bite.  The teacher pulled Parker off of the other kid and reprimanded him.  He, in his typical Parker fashion, melted and collapsed on the floor in tears.  After the reprimand came the comforting and eventually they went back to playing normally.

After this, I asked the teacher what I should do.  Her response was vague – he didn’t actually bite, so they didn’t have a “no biting” discussion.  He’s not even 18 months yet, so lengthy discussions don’t work.  I let her know I was open to any suggestions, that we were trying everything we could think of and would try anything anyone else could think of.

I asked my mother-in-law and sister-in-law what they thought.  They have over 50 years of parenting experience combined, so I thought between all of the kids and grandkids maybe they would have come across this sort of situation before.  My mother-in-law talked about a friend of the family who used to bite her older brother when she was little.  Eventually the mother encouraged the boy to bite her back.  He did, and the biting stopped.  I thought that biting back wasn’t an approved solution, but I could be wrong.  This wasn’t exactly biting back either, since it was the brother who bit, not a parent…

I asked our pediatrician.  He said this behavior is normal, and that we should just keep doing what we’re doing.

Then last night Parker bit me.  Hard.  Hard enough to draw blood.  We were playing on the floor after dinner.  He was getting pretty rough, so I wrapped him in my arms and told him that hands were for hugs, not hitting.  While I hugged him, he bit me.  After I had pulled him off, and recovered from the surprise, I tried to explain to Parker that he hurt Mommy.  That we don’t bite, etc. but he was too riled up to listen to any words coming out of my mouth.

So, anyone who happens to stumble across this blog: How do you teach a 15-month-old not to bite?  Furthermore, how do you teach this particular 15-month-old boy to please, please be a little more gentle?

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