First grade ho!

With quite a bit of trepdiation, we’re sending E to first grade next week. Surprisingly, making the decision didn’t take very much time at all. It’s so clearly the right thing to do. I’ll agonize endlessly over the whole thing until we know for sure that it will “take” and then I’ll probably keep agonizing over it anyway. (And in 20 years, E will be telling me that I ruined his life by not letting him go to kindergarten with all his friends. He is, after all, a middle child).

We took E in for evaluation this morning and the school administrator went through part of the testing with him before deciding that she didn’t need to finish it and that the best decision is to put him into first grade.

I worry about the socialization and his friends. He’s been in the same class with some of these kids for the past 3 years, and that’s a long time in his life. But the kindergarten is being split anyway and the classes are right across from first grade, and he already knows one of his teachers really well. We just have to hope that he is able to cope with first grade socially, and that his friends who are in kindergarten will still want to play with him.

I worry about what the other moms will say. I’ve known a lot of them for 3 years now, and I hate the idea of being perceived as the “pushy, obnoxious mom.” It’s hard to balance being an advocate for your child with the possibility of pushing too hard. I think we’ve been too accommodating in the past, and we’ve definitely found that the you have to stand up for yourself or your children to get them what they need.

I worry about what will happen when it’s time for second grade or third grade. “Skipping” a grade is only a stopgap measure for a kid like E. In a couple of years we’ll be facing what to do next. I won’t skip him again. He’ll already be a year to a year and a half younger than most of the kids in his class. This school does have a history of providing academic enrichment, and that gets easier to accomplish for them the older the kids get, so maybe by the time we get there, we’ll be able to tackle it that way. I don’t know.

And when I worry so much, I’ll just have to repeat my mantra. “These children demand so much of us as parents, but the rewards of being with them are equally great.” I guess that mantra is probably true for any parent, but sometimes the challenges are so enormous that I have to remind myself constantly that the rewards are enormous too.

All Physics All the Time

It seems like we’re making the transition back to “school brain” because yesterday afternoon, for no apparent reason, the boys suddenly decided to fix one of A’s toys. With a screwdriver. Apparently, they were interested in putting new batteries in the farm, but then they got going and took a fair bit of a it apart before they were discovered. They did put it back together again (without new batteries because we seem to be out), but I’m still wondering where they found the screwdriver. Not that they can’t find them, but was it out within baby reach? I’ll probably never know.

That started a discussion about electrical circuits and wiring and soon we were off to a discussion of what exactly it is that travels along fiber optic cables and somewhere we detoured into a discussion of magnetism. J told the boys that this was all electromagnetism, and B groaned. He hated that chapter of science last year. It was pretty dull in his book – I know, because that’s the chapter we reviewed during the incredible 3+ hours in the ER for a cut-up toe with all 3 kids saga last May. When we told him it was sort of more particle physics he perked right up and has been on an electromagnetism/particle physics kick every since.

E added to the mix this morning by getting into a discussion about whether the universe or a whole bunch of galaxies were bigger and then exactly what a solar system was. He then moved on to the composition of the solar system and which planets were what and then he wanted to know all the moons of Jupiter, which I couldn’t remember. I used my usual line, that we’d look it up, and he’ll probably have forgotten by the next time I could look it up with him.

Life is getting very academic around here, and it seems like the boys are excited to go back to school. I’m excited for them to go, because they like it, and also because the juggling act of 2 full time jobs plus 2 kids at home is a hard one.

No time like the present

There’s always something else I have to do before I can start writing a blog. Something else I have to accomplish or a reason not to get started.

Instead of waiting for all that, I’m just going to jump in. Why? Because I have now stepped in the spot where the Old Lady wet the floor and I cleaned it up for the third time in the last hour. Make that 5 times. It’s hard to remember to step over a spot in the floor when you’re carrying a 5 year old (who is perfectly capable of walking to his room) and putting his 17 month old sister back to bed for the third time in the last half hour. Some days are like this.

Actually, it’s been a really wonderful day, besides the spot on the floor and the trauma of picking splinters out of both of the boys. Hopefully they’ve learned to tell me when they get splinters instead of waiting a couple of days. Probably not.

We went to a local fair where we met a friend of B’s from school and spent the afternoon with them. There were animals to see and pet, rides to ride, junk food to eat, and some extra parents who are thrilled to carry E “on their heads” which we try to avoid these days, given that he’s 40 pounds and not quite 4 feet tall.

On tonight’s exciting schedule, we have trying to keep the kids in bed, which has become increasingly entertaining since A has decided that sleeping at night is for other people, and trying to finish spinning up some merino/silk in time for a friend’s birthday. Which is tomorrow, but I won’t see her until Tuesday night, so I might actually finish enough to give her some kind of present. Oh, and I have to fix a bear sweater since, for reasons that escape me, a whole bunch of ends have decided to detach themselves and start unraveling the sweater. And the bear doesn’t like the shirt he’s been wearing in the meantime, so I need to fix his sweater right now.

I hope he can wait until after dinner.