The Wonder Years: 1st grade

School finally started in our neck of the woods, weeks after many of my friend's kids around the country were already in school. For some reason we start on September 8th around here, with preschool for Jaden starting today (Sept. 12th). Both of my boys are in school this morning, and it is a weird feeling being here at home without them. What do I do with myself now? For 3 mornings a week, from 9-11:45am, I am free of children. I can't decide if this is a good thing, a sad thing, a wonderful thing, or what. What I do know is that the time goes by very fast. By the time I get to Costco across town and through the checkout, it's time to rush back to pick Jaden up. I could go to the gym, but I'm already dressed for the day and don't want to get all sweaty. I could go shopping, but I have no money. I am already running into other mothers in my situation and we all look at each other wide eyed and ask ourselves, "What now?"

This is a good time for joining a Bible study, and I am actually thinking of starting one soon. It's also a good time to run errands, so that will take at least one day. And for the other free day each week, I think I will take some time for myself. Maybe I'll go sit at the beach with my journal and look for dolphins. That's only $1 for parking. :)

So right now I'm settling for blogging and drinking my coffee, and enjoying a few quiet moments to myself. While all of you with little babies at home dream of this day, it will come, my friends. All too fast.

Micah started 1st grade last week, and we were very nervous about who his teacher would be and who would be in his class. Last year was so difficult in so many ways, just the thought of this year stressed me out. All of my fears were put to rest, though, when we found out the night before school started that he was assigned to a wonderful teacher this year. She has a student teacher in her classroom full-time, as well as a full-time aide. That is 3 full-time adults with 30 kids - SO much better than last year's 1 teacher with 30 kindergartners.

We also found out that his best friend is in his class, along with 5 other kids he knows from his class last year. He had a GREAT first day and there were no tears at all. Although he was nervous, he did fine and on Friday announced, "I love first grade!"

Jaden started his 2nd year of preschool this morning. Next year is Kindergarten; my baby is growing up! I am so thankful that he's not in school full-time yet (or even every day at this point), because he has 12 more years for that, and I enjoy my time with him on his off days. I told him that every Tuesday and Thursday is his special time, and we can do things that he enjoys. His idea of fun is to stay home and not go anywhere, so that's exactly what we did last week when Micah went to school. We played cars, had marble races, colored together, watched some cartoons, ate lunch together, and then I cleaned the house while he played. It's rare to get one-on-one time with each boy these days, so I cherish that time.

He must have been very nervous about starting school this morning, because he wet the bed twice last night. TWICE! He hardly ever wets the bed even once! He woke up at 5:30am and said, "I don't want to go to school!" and we had to fight to get him to go back to bed. Thankfully he fell back asleep and when he woke up, he was more excited to go.