Yesterday, Jayce had his first day at preschool. I wrote this blog post on Monday, because I want to get my pre-preschool thoughts out there before we dove into this in the first place. I meant to write about this last week, but remember that thing I said about never being able to blog about the current week anymore? Or perhaps you remember me saying how last week was rather stressful and Jayce wouldn't nap for me? Both of those things are major factors in this post appearing so late in the game.
Over the last few weeks many of my friends have mentioned their sadness regarding the upcoming school year. There are lots of "babies" attending preschool, kindergarden and first grade, and everyone is discussing how quickly time has gone and how sad they will be to send their little ones away for the day. I couldn't agree more.
But I'm also aware that Jayce doesn't have to go to school right now. 3 year old preschool is a choice that we made, and though I'm sad about, I'm also happy about it.
Part of this has to do with my new role as a momma of two. Jayce was my only baby for 3 years, so I had ample time to soak up each and every one of his developmental stages, revel in his milestones and the sweetness of our every day life together, and give him lots of undivided attention. But now, to some degree, my attention is always divided. I'm spreading snuggle time, story time, play time, bed time and bath time between my two babies.
So a part of me is looking forward to having these few hours to spend with Hannah alone, much like I had with Jayce when he was this age. I am really looking forward to this, particularly now that she is more and more engaged each day.
But the main reason that I'm happy about the upcoming school year is for Jayce. Every time that I think about him going to pre school I just get so excited for him because I know he'll just LOVE it.
Jayce loves Sunday school at church. He runs right over to the door and into the classroom without a backward glance. He is always coming home telling us the stories that he learned, singing the songs, and sometimes telling us the games that they play as well. I have thought for a while that I wish there was some sort of extended program that he could do and I think preschool will serve this function for him.
Like many kids his age, he loves to color, draw, paint, sing, and talk about letters and numbers. We used to do lots of this at home, but since I have less time and energy to do all of these things with him every single day, I'm glad that he'll still be engaged in this way.
We've been talking about his school since we signed up in April, so we were thrilled to get this sweet postcard in the mail from Jayce's teacher a few weeks ago. He was over the moon about it, and busied himself that day painting a picture for her.
I went to Walmart the next day to get his school supplies. I thought it seemed like a lot of things for 6 hours of class a week, don't you think?
As I was browsing the school supplies, I found myself thinking things like, "It costs more to buy two 8-packs of crayons than one 24-pack...Why do 3 year olds need #2 pencils?...glue sticks AND Elmers glue?." A woman walked by and informed me that she had just come from CVS and they had better deals on their school supplies than Walmart. I smiled that I was in a new stage as well, the "mom shopping for school supplies" stage. Of course I had to grab a few new packs of brightly colored post its for myself as well.
Then, out of nowhere, I felt a lump form in my throat and my eyes fill up with tears. I needed to get out of the school supply aisle to get control of myself, so I went after an employee to help me find an art smock. It worked.
I brought home the school supplies and started labeling everything, and putting it all into the "cool new Lightening McQueen packpack," as Jayce calls it.
The morning of the open house Jayce was bouncing all over the house, ready to go to school, but he had to wait until 10. He discovered that his backpack was full of goodies, so he pulled them all out and started lining them all up along the floor, grouping them with the like items. That's my boy. I was across the room, trying to restrain myself from making him keep it all together and organized. I was thinking, "Let's just leave the crayons in the box until we get to school," and "Don't put the pencils in your pencil pouch first or the other stuff won't fit..." But I kept myself quiet.
He had Chelsea label the pictures that he had painted for his teacher and put those in the folder too. Then we were off to school.
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