Whew...

We made it! We are officially on summer vacation. Well, Owen is. I'm on an abbreviated summer schedule which is not unlike my during-the-school-year schedule but I won't be working all the days of the week unless it's imperative.

Last night during our prayers Owen said he was thankful for making it past first grade. I am thankful for that too. SO THANKFUL! It was a lot of work. There was a mommy blogger on the Today Show this morning who had written about how around the end of April or early May she basically checks out. I can empathize. When I was teaching I felt like that about that time of year and I know the kids did too. I also didn't have air conditioning in my classroom so if it was a hot spring it was doubly bad! Being on the other side of the table has been interesting. I don't think I noticed it as much last year as I did this year. Kindergarten, for a variety of reasons, was a crazy and disjointed year. This year was long and hard but full of a lot of success and we were all ready for the end and some time away from the grind.

Owen had a fantastic teacher this year. She has a lot of the same beliefs about teaching that I do and a rather similar teaching style. She is basically who I was 10 years ago. A dedicated, childless parent dedicated to being a good teacher and helping her students do the best they can. And this year, more than before, I realized how being a teacher without children is very different than being a parent or a teacher with children. Which is a big part of why I no longer teach. I want to raise my son and not be a teacher at the same time. I loved my students, as Owen's teacher loved her's; but it's not the same as the way I love Owen. And one cannot know the difference until one is a parent and is (or was) a teacher. And many times this year I found myself thinking back to my years of teaching and wondering if my students' parents thought I was a tough as I thought Owen's teacher was.

This year Owen struggled with reading. The foundation that should have been laid when he was in kindergarten was not, and we weren't aware of the extent of that until he was into first grade. Thus we began the hard work of working on reading with a child who was not happy about doing so much reading and writing and math both in school and at home. And his confidence in his ability to be successful was quite low. As a teacher, one approaches it from a problem solving angle. What skills is the child missing? What strategies will best help the child build those skills? Is there an underlying issue that is keeping the child from progressing? And those are all things that I asked when we began this journey but Owen is also my baby and it broke my heart to watch him struggle and feel so bad about himself. Mamas don't want to watch their little ones hurt and not be able to fix it. And since my experience with first grade was limited to one semester of student teaching almost 15 years ago I was rusty and inexperienced in teaching reading. But the even harder part is that Owen attends an immersion school so he's learning everything in Spanish not English! I feel like I'm a good enough teacher that if I need to teach something I can figure out how to do it and what will work but that's near impossible in a language that I don't know. I don't know how people who don't have a fluent Spanish speaking person at home do it and I'm so thankful that Morgan is. In the end I did a lot of research and applied the same strategies I would use with an English speaking class to working with Owen is Spanish. I just didn't understand a lot of what he was reading or the words he was learning!

Owen's teacher listened to us and our concerns and we listened to her and her concerns and together we came up with a plan that included lots of intervention and tutoring and working on skills at home and reading, reading, reading. And like anyone else, once Owen started to experience some success in what he was doing he began feeling better about what he was doing and what he could do. And things slowly got better from there.

We still have work to do this summer and he expressed his discontent about that on Saturday when I said we were going to the school store to find some stuff to work on for the summer but he eagerly went along after I bribed him with a trip to Dairy Queen after the school store. And because it is so difficult to find materials in Spanish we ended up with a great science experiment kit on Light and only one resource for practicing reading skills! We are also going to begin working on learning to read in English this summer which Owen is quite enthused about. And since he's build a good foundation of reading skills in Spanish I think those will help him immensely. 

This week we jumped right in to summer activities with VBS camp this morning and a Lego engineering class in the afternoon. While Owen is off doing those things I am getting all his learning materials ready! I'm sure he will be so happy when he gets home!

We also have a nice bucket list of summer activities which we've all contributed to. Chief on Owen's list is to go visit his cousins and stay at a waterpark hotel. Today is seems like we have nothing but summer days stretched out ahead of us but I know how quickly it will go so we are going to do our best to relax and enjoy it and each other as much as we can!

And just like that...

Owen is a kindergartener. Not unlike many major events in a person's life, there was all kinds of preparation and anticipation and then, in the blink of an eye, it began. And as is probably often the case it was the most traumatic for the mama (or me). I sobbed Monday evening (as I mentioned in my previous post.) Tuesday I woke to, "Mama! What yur doin'?" It was not yet 6 am so I was, as you may have guessed, still asleep. That day O and I were scheduled to go to his school together for just an hour of school. The goal was to meet the teacher, see the classroom, meet a few classmates, bring our supplies and see how the typical daily routine would be. We were supposed to be there at 1pm. Owen was ready at the door by 7am. He dressed himself in the appropriate clothes for school from the drawer in his dresser that holds all his uniform clothes. 

Earlier in the summer these uniform clothes were the source of a big meltdown. He needs to wear polo shirts. Polo shirts have collars and buttons. Owen is not a fan of either. Meaning he would go naked in a snowstorm before he would choose a shirt with a collar and buttons. When the shirts arrived (I ordered them from Lands' End) he of course noticed the box and was eager to see what was inside. He loves packages! I explained what the shirts were for and he promptly became a flailing, sobbing, screaming mess of a boy. He did not want to wear THOSE shirts with buttons! And it was the edges of the buttons specifically, that he did not like. I told him at his new school all the children wear these clothes and he declared that he did not want to go to a school where he could not wear his own clothes. I explained that they were his own, I had bought them for him. "NO! MY REGULAR CLOTHES!" ie., no buttons, collars or boring colors without pictures. I put the shirts away and decided we would talk about them another time. Perhaps when he was in a more sane and rational mood. Yes, I know I'm referring to a 5 year old. Eventually, weeks later, I washed the shirts and got him to try one on for about 30 seconds just to see if it fit. There was not a meltdown but he was still not happy about the shirts. Fortunately, I was able to find pants in kahki and navy blue that do not have buttons or zippers. Oh yes, there are rules for the kinds of pants he will wear too. I was able to get him to try on the pants to check for size and he actually said, "Oh, I like these pants." and then, "I like the shirts too." I had a moment where I wondered if he and Morgan had been drinking beer together before I got home, but he smelled fine and his eyes were focusing so I figured maybe he had done some adjusting to the uniform concept. 

Okay, so as I mentioned he was ready by 7am. We didn't need to be there until 1pm. It was going to be a long 6 hours. We talked him out of his shoes and backpack. He had some breakfast. He played some legos. He watched a tv show. He asked me three times if it was time for school yet. He played outside with the daycare kids. We had some lunch. Finally, it was time to leave! I love that Owen approaches most things in life as a new adventure. Provided he has enough time to anticipate the event. If we hadn't spent most of the summer talking about and getting ready for school, he may not have been as eager. But he was definitely ready. 

When we arrived he was a little taken aback by his teacher talking to him in Spanish. But being a teacher she was able to recognize this apprehension and direct him out of it. I believe it also helped a great deal that I was there with him. For both of us. 

He found his hook, and his cubby and chose a seat at a table in the front of the room. He chose a seat at the end of a table facing the front of the room. I was so proud! He has a prime seat for all the action. His teacher took us through what a typical lesson would be like in the classroom and Owen was engrossed the whole time. 

(Frankly my head was starting to hurt! I think his teacher did a wonderful job with the lesson and teaching immersion is no easy task. It is very much hands on and requires a lot of energy. Both on the part of the teacher and the student. I have a hard time because I'm always trying to picture in my head how the words she is saying are spelled. I can read things in Spanish (not with a lot of understanding) and pronounce them because I know how the letters sound and I do this with English words too. For instance, I have a coworker who's name is Elisha. It is pronounced Alicia. I always want to pronounce it E-lisha, because of how it's spelled. And there are so many words in Spanish that sound the same (to me) but are spelled differently that I feel like if I see the words then maybe I will be able to remember the meaning. Obviously this is not how immersion education works!)

After our hour was up we waited for O's friend to have his hour (the A-H kids were first then the I-Z kids) and then we had a brief play at the park with his friend and a snack. On the way home O fell asleep. He slept for at least 2 hours. He also fell asleep on Wednesday, tried to Thursday but I gave him chocolate milk, and on Friday when he fell asleep on the way home I just let him sleep. 

Tomorrow he begins going to the before kindergarten program, which is specifically for K students who are in 1/2 day but need all day care. The program builds on what the kids are covering in their regular class and includes lunch and recess. Then he goes to his afternoon class and comes home. I'm sure he will be wiped out again. He's been getting up around 6am everyday and he goes and goes all day! 

All ready for the Pre-first day!

At his seat in his classroom.

Cheezy smile on the actual first day.

Beginning a new chapter...

Besides writing about Nikki I think this is probably one of the hardest posts I have written. I've only just begun and I'm already tearing up. 

Tomorrow is Owen's first day of school. Sort of. Tomorrow we go together for about an hour and then Wednesday he begins. On his own in Kindergarten. This seriously brings me to sobbing tears. My baby is going to school. Everyday. On his own with other kids whose parents I don't know, who aren't my friends and who I may not even like. Which I guess happened last year for preschool but it was a smaller class and only 3 days a week. And he did famously and I was fine and we adjusted. And I know it will (most likely) be a wonderful year. It's just that at the beginning of things I always look at the big picture of it and freak out about how we are going to get through it. It takes me a bit of time to step back and look at it one day at a time. (Or a week and a half since that's how much of the transportation planning we've done thus far!) I worry about how he's going to deal with being immersed in spanish, if he's going to sing the inappropriate songs that he's learned from Morgan (or some choice words from me), how he's going to make new friends (which I really shouldn't worry about) or use the bathroom on his own (if a #2 should occur!). I worry about him being teased or picked on or getting hurt. And I see all of these things at one time and feel so overwhelmed and anxious and wonder if maybe I should just keep him home where he will be safe and loved and protected. I know our job is to raise him to be a grown-up but it just happens so fast. I'm not sure where the last 5 years have gone. Even though it's, for the most part, well documented in photographs and scrapbooks. I feel like we aren't cherishing his childhood days enough. That we need to cram more into each one of them. More meaningful adventures. More games and pretend and legos and always more cuddles. But at the same time the minutia of each day still needs tending to. The laundry and the dishes and work and cleaning up toys. And more and more he's becoming a part of that. So the cherishing is becoming less about putting him at the center of attention and more about including him in what we do everyday. It's hard to raise an only child. And I know I have friends who laugh at that and think it's cake because we only have one child to deal with and discipline and feed and care for. And I suppose there is some truth to that. But there is always the danger of that one child becoming self-centered and selfish. Which is something we don't want at all. And that hardest part of having an only is the overwhelming feelings I have at times when we are doing something for the first and the last time at the same time. Like the first day of kindergarten. I don't get a do-over with a second or third child. I get one chance. And I am often conscious of trying to make those moments perfect. Recording all my thoughts and feelings and observations and taking enough pictures of every little detail. I suppose in some way raising an only child is perfect for me. I only have one to obsess over.
So now that O is finally asleep and I have everything (almost) ready I can try to go to sleep so we are both ready for both of these special days!

But not without leaving you with two of my favorite pictures from our recent SD and MT vacation trip. 

For surviving a summer of daycare Owen got to choose a new toy. He selected a Captain America Mask and Shield. Which he wore on a hike in Custer State Park in SD.

Reviewing his pictures in MT. I love how he's just reclining on that big rock.