Say Goodbye To Kindergarten

Today was Liam's last day of school but there was no schooling going on because today was Kindergarten Carnival day.

In our school, on the last day of Kindergarten we hold a carnival.  It's organized by the parents and everything we use for it, from game supplies to refreshments, is donated by the parents.  It's a chance for the kids to blow off some steam and celebrate the end of a successful year.

And celebrate we did.

All of the kids were given t-shirts with the school name and year on it.  We also got one for the teacher and had all the kids sign it before we gave it to her.

There was a short ceremony where the principal and the teacher handed out certificates of completion to the class and then we all headed outside to enjoy carnival day.

We played with a parachute...

And painted faces (or arms in this case).

They played silly relay games with balls between their knees.

We had story time with a snack (a welcome break in the shade)...

And blew bubbles during free play.

There was an obstacle course (Liam's favorite)...

And bobbing for marshmallows.

By that time we were just about worn out so we packed up all of Liam's stuff and headed out.  I felt like I'd lived 4 days in the space of 3 hours.

So, summer is officially here.  Liam has passed kindergarten and is a first grader come fall.  He'll get to ride the bus in the morning AND the afternoon - a fact he's relishing.  And that incoming class of kindergarteners?  They are tiny.  They look like babies to me.  I am not a single day older than I was when Liam started kindergarten (shush, you!) but he's so much bigger than he used to be.

Parent-Teacher Conferences and the Schedule From Hell

This week was completely insane.  It was parent-teacher conference week and the schedule they had us on was bizarre.

Afternoon kindergarten on a normal day runs from 12:35 until 3:15.  When Liam first started school, I thought this meant we needed to be at school for drop off no later than 12:25 so that the kids could get unloaded and then into the classroom by 12:35 to start their day.  I also thought that since they were not released from school until 3:15 that the bus would not arrive until, at earliest, 3:30.

I was wrong.

Drop off begins at 12:35 on the nose.  My child steps off the bus at our stop (which is admittedly the 3rd stop on the route) at 3:15.  This means that they do not really get down to the teaching until 12:45 and they knock off around 3:00 so that the kids can get their stuff and get on their buses.  He gets around 2 hours of instructional time a day.

You can imagine how I felt when, for three days this week, he had to be at school at 11 am and was home at 12:30.  He was barely at school long enough to turn around twice and take a pee before it was back on the bus to come home.  It was ridiculous.  I don't even know how they can get away with calling that a "full" day of school - they might as well have not gone at all.

It also messed with our lunch schedule and I was having to feed him a snack before school and lunch when he came home.  It completely threw him for a loop because he was totally unused to doing things this way.  Liam is not one to take to such schedule changes with ease.

On Wednesday, the schedule was even more crazy.  He went to school at 11:00, came home at 12:30, had 20 minutes to shove down lunch, and then we turned around and went back to school so that we could do his conference.  My neighbor and I scheduled on the same day so that we could tag team it with the childcare.  After the conference, we went to the book fair.  Then, we finally made it home.  It made for a strange day.

The good news is that he got a good report from his teacher and he's doing well in school.  I could go on and on and bore you with the details of his assessment but so far he's landing somewhere in the middle of the pack - albeit on the higher end of middle.  He's doing what he should be and that's what I'm looking for.

I'm really hoping that by the time Jamie goes to school, they'll have found a better way to go about scheduling conferences because this schedule was just dumb.

Life, Lately

I've been having trouble trying to come up with blog posts lately because we're so busy but life is also very routine.  This is good news in a lot of ways as it means Scot's health issues (which I haven't talked about on here very much) are beginning to resolve themselves and my stress level is beginning to reduce itself.  Thank God for small favors.  But, on the other hand, it makes for rather boring blog posts, no?

Instead, I'm just going to give you a "here's how it's going in the Two Kids and a Beagle household."

1.  Liam continues to attend kindergarten with gusto.  Loves school, loves his teacher, loves riding the bus, is making friends - what more could I ask for?  We don't have parent-teacher conferences until November but I'm hoping for a good report - both academically and behaviorally.

Liam is also continuing apace at Tae Kwon-Do.  Moving up into a color belt class was like moving from kindergarten to first grade.  It's not at all the same except that he's still supposed to behave himself and listen.  However, if he doesn't, he gets to do push ups.  But he's holding his own pretty well and he's already learning his next pattern.  The biggest change for him is that his class is now at 6:00 pm instead of 7:00 pm so he's busy from 5:00 (dinner time) until bedtime on TKD nights and that kind of ticked him off for awhile.  He's adjusting to it now, though, and pretty soon it will seem like it's always been like this.

2.  Jamie is now 19 months old and 28 lbs 12 oz.  He is, for lack of a better term, a tank.  I was honestly shocked when he weighed in because I expected him to be at least 30 lbs.  He certainly feels like he is - the kid is dense!  He, too, is enjoying his two days a week at daycare and practically throws his shoes at me if we're not moving out the door fast enough.

He's also expanding his language at lightning speed.  The other night, while I was at TKD with Liam, he looked at Scot and said "UPSTAIRS!  BATH!" over and over until Scot figured it out and said "you want to go upstairs and take your bath?"  Jamie snatched up his stuffed animals and made a beeline for the stairs as fast as his chubby little legs would carry him.  He certainly gets his point across, that's for darn sure.

3.  The beagle?  Continues to pee in my house.  There are no words.

4.  Scot and I will be celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary next week.  We've been together for 11 years now.  It's amazing how slowly 11 years seems to go when you're a child and how quickly they fly past when you're an adult.  And yet, here we are, with two kids, a dog, a mortgage, and being subversive in the suburbs.  ;)  When I was 17 years old, the thing I wanted most in life was to have children (and yes, I knew that college came first, thankyouverymuch, and then marriage).  I have my share of bad days being a stay at home Mom, but the truth is that I wanted this very much and I wouldn't chose differently if given a chance.  I love you, Scot!

5.  I remain corpulent.  There are no words for this, also.

6.  I become less enamored of my soccer mom title the longer soccer goes on.  The kids are fine; the parents are not.  They yell at their children from the sidelines.  They reprimand them for not being aggressive enough.  They give me dirty looks when I clap for the *other* team when they score (because, dude?  It's six and under and there's barely any rules.  The kids are trying and it's a good job reaching the damn net at all).  I clap when our team scores, too, but I don't feel the need to denigrate a gaggle of 5 and 6 year olds just because they scored against us.

The longer this goes on the more I hope that Liam loses his love of the game.  I'd rather be a dojang Mom any day of the week.  It's just so . . . suburban.  Or, more accurately, suburban nightmare.  I'm all for kids learning that not everyone is awesome and not everyone gets a trophy and how to be a good sport but this is U-6 soccer - most of these kids have never played the game before and it just isn't important at this age to be so damn competitive.

7.  Otherwise, life is life.  I clean the house, I run children to school, I pick kids up off the bus.  There's play dates and grocery shopping and bills.  One of these days there will be time for me - I begin to see a glimmer of those days but it's a faint glow on the distant horizon.  We'll get there.  Eventually.

On the Second Day of Kindergarten

Yesterday was the first full day of school for Liam.  So, we got to do drop off for the first time and he got to ride the bus home for the first time.

Once again, Liam was excited as a kid at Christmas.  While we were eating lunch I told him that we had to finish eating and then get ready for school.  He immediately added, "And then the fun begins!"

He did great at drop off and when it came time for the bus to drop him off we all headed up to the bus stop to meet him.

Waiting for brother!

Finally, the bus pulled up and the kids started pouring out.  I could see Liam waving at me from the window of the bus - right up front!  I managed to catch a shot of him getting off the bus.

He ran directly to me, gave me a big hug and said "It was so fun, I didn't want to stop!"

If I still hear that by the end of the year, I'll consider it a victory.

The Day He's Been Waiting Over a Year For Is Finally Here

Today Liam became a kindergarten student.

He's spent the entirety of the last week quizzing me on how many days he has left until school starts and randomly announcing how excited he is to start school.  The only problem was that today was an orientation day and we didn't go to school until 1:00 pm. 

It was like telling a kid that the stockings on Christmas morning were to hang where they were - stuffed to the gills - and were not to be touched until after Christmas dinner.  You can imagine what that made my day like.  I tried to keep him busy (Hello, Costco run!) but really, all he was focused on was school.

Finally, it was time and he was ready to go.

We headed off to school and met with other parents and kids and then met his teacher.  We went to the classroom and he found his seat and he got to color while the teacher talked to the parents about various administrative points.

Once we were done with that, the teacher gathered the kids together and read a story with them.

After that we went outside to find a bus waiting.  They got to meet a bus driver and a police officer talked to them about bus safety.  Then, it was onto the bus for a quick jaunt around the neighborhood!

With all that excitement out of the way, it was time to come home.  Tomorrow is his first day of school on the regular schedule and he's all ready to go.  He has his backpack ready and we know who his bus buddy is - an older child at school who will help him get on the bus and get off at the right stop.  It's one of the neighbor kids so he knows her.

He's so tired from all the build up of going to school that he's just exhausted tonight.  I'm proud of him, though.  He did fantastic!  Tomorrow, Jamie and I will be waiting for him when he gets off the bus and I bet he'll be all smiles.  I can't wait.

One Week

In one week, there will be a kindergarten student living in this house.

It seems like just a few weeks ago that we moved into this house with Liam as a 2.5 year old.  I feel like we've only scratched the surface of really settling into caring for our house and yet, here it is, three years later and Liam is starting school.  Time really does go by quickly.

Liam is excited.  I don't know how he could be anything but.  He's been talking about going to kindergarten for almost a year and a half now.  He's so very ready to be a big kid and ride the bus and have a backpack and learn all kind of great things.

We had a little welcome reception at the school the other night for the incoming kindergarten class and I could tell that it made Liam that much more excited.  He got to meet the other kids and run around on the playground with them.  We also got to see his classroom and meet the principal.  When we came home that night, Liam asked me if school were starting the next day and I could tell he was a little disappointed when I said it wasn't.

So now he has me counting down the days until kindergarten starts.  I'm so proud of what a great kid he is and I know he's going to do just fine.  I hope he loves learning and loves school for many, many years to come.

That first day of school, I'm going to be waiting for him at the bus stop and I can't wait to hear all about his day.

Hodgepodge, Part Deux

1. We finally received Liam's Kindergarten assignment in the mail a couple of weeks ago and he will be an afternoon session student.  I was hoping for morning but since I don't work, he was almost guaranteed to get afternoon since they save the morning session for families in which both parents work.  Liam is happy with it, though.  It seems that he wanted afternoon Kindergarten.  Plus, right about the time he starts to really get bored, it will be time to head to school.

Weirdly, the "first" day of school is on a Thursday and it isn't even an instructional day.  We have a one hour session in the afternoon that both Liam and I have to attend as an orientation session.  I assume we're going to cover things like getting on and off the bus, where the bathrooms are, arrival time, dismissal time, etc.  Then, the next day is his first day of instructional time.  On a Friday.  Why didn't they have the orientation on Friday and start fresh on Monday?  Or orientation on Monday, instructional time begins Tuesday?  SO.  STUPID.

2.  An orange crayon gave its life in my dryer last week.  It melted into a sheer patina of orange all over the drum of the dryer.  Luckily that patina seems permanent and isn't rubbing off on clothing.  Sadly, about three-quarters of the load that the crayon was in got melted orange crayon on it.  And it was a pretty large load of the kids' clothing.  I was panicked that I was going to have to buy all new shorts for Liam and try to replace as many of his beloved Star Wars shirts as possible.

I started looking around on the internet for methods of removing the crayon and they were all long, multi-step annoying processes that I simply don't have time for.  They usually involved some kind of solvent or oil based product (one called for car lubricant).  These are the sorts of things I do not have on hand.

So I decided to give OxyClean the old college try.  I figured it couldn't make things worse and on the off chance it worked, it would spare me having to go out and buy special items to clean the clothes.

I started by spraying the marked portions of the clothing with OxyClean spray.  Then I ran hot, hot, hot water (to get the wax to soften) into a bucket and added about three scoops of granular OxyClean.  I put the clothes in there to soak for several hours (at least three hours of soaking but some I left overnight.)  Then, I put the clothes into the washer on a heavy duty hot wash with detergent, liquid OxyClean, and fabric softener.  I did them in small batches so that they'd really get most out of the wash cycle.

Miraculously, this worked.  I managed to save the entire load of laundry and didn't have to replace a single item.  OxyClean really will clean ANYTHING.

3. I came home today to find my neighbor vacuuming our cul-de-sac.  Yes.  Vacuuming.  With a shop vac.

They're trying to sell their house.  His wife finally retired and they bought a house in North Carolina somewhere.  The house went on the market last week and he's been super double crazy obsessive about the landscaping being just so ever since the for sale sign went up.  Neighbor Man is a crazy lawn worshiper at the best of times but he has now officially gone off the deep end.  I fail to see how vacuuming up random bits of asphalt is going to help the house sell faster.  It makes me want to let Jamie run around naked on the lawn, peeing at will, while the rest of us work on putting a car up on blocks in the driveway.  Just to mess with him.

4.  Speaking of Jamie, he is officially pacifier free.  I've been considering taking it away for awhile now and he was down to using it only while he slept but after talking with another Mom about it (*wave* Hi, Burghbaby!) I decided to strike now while he can't fight about it.  Naps on the first day seemed to go OK with minimal chit chat occurring in the crib before sleep.  Bedtime the first night was hard.  He chatted for two solid hours before finally shutting up and going to sleep.  His morning nap the next day was also difficult - it took an hour for him to go down.  But, afternoon nap that day and bedtime that night were a breeze.  No chit chat, just sleep.  I couldn't believe how easy it was.  No fuss, no muss and it's bye bye paci!

5. Last on the hit parade is the fact that Liam has learned to whistle and he is awfully proud of this fact.  He can't whistle loudly.  He can't whistle a tune.  He can't even whistle more than one note.  But, boy oh boy, does he get as much mileage out of that one note as he possibly can.  He has gotten to a point that he doesn't even realize he's doing it so I repeat the phrase "Liam! Quit whistling!" about eleventy billion times a day.  It's become so annoying to me that I'm ready to send him on a tour of seedy South American prisons so that he can be used to whistle confessions out of criminals.  "Ok, ok!  I'll confess!  JUST MAKE HIM STOP WHISTLING!" If I could translate that into Spanish, I would.

(Because I'm curious, I just hit Google Translate and this is what I got in return:  "¡Ay yi yi! ¡Voy a confesar! ¡Hacerle la parada silbando!") 

I'm honestly unsure how I've managed to retain my sanity this long.  Of course, I'm sure some people question the stability of my sanity to begin with.  ;)