Ah, He's Growing Up...

Yesterday was Connor's first day of kindergarten at Pacifica Community Charter School. I can't believe he is in kindergarten now. I couldn't sleep the night before- I was so excited for him and a little nervous too. His kindergarten is an all day program from 9:10 am- 3:10 pm Monday through Friday. John, Cayden and I spent the day with him, so he felt comfortable and supported. Around 1pm, he told me that he loved me, but I could leave and to let Papa know he could leave now too. He said he was ready to start real school now. Ah, my baby is growing up!

I asked him later that night what he liked about his new school and he said, "Well, just about everything!" John and I were so relieved; he was at Play Mountain Place for the last three years, so we weren't sure how he was going to feel attending a new school. We were happy for him that he likes Pacifica.

One of the things he really enjoyed doing was "Journaling Time". The kids get their own journals and they can draw or have someone write down things they want to put in it. He wanted to take his journal home and when we told him he had to keep it at school, he said when he got home, he wanted to make one so he could have one at home.

Connor's teacher Nicki used to be one of his Little Nursery teachers at Play Mountain and she is a really great, experience teacher. There was little chaos in her room for the first day and all the kids seemed to do well with the transition.

Connor did have a melt down at the end of the day when we were leaving school. I've read kids tend to do this when they are having trouble processing all their big feelings. He was mad when he told John to leave school that John was still hanging out in the recess area. John really had nowhere to go since he was watching Cayden while I did a Target run. He just kept calling John stupid and then Connor hit Cayden. I knew intuitively he was just processing all his feelings about starting a new school. John was starting to get pretty pissed off, so I just told him what I was observing. We told Connor it is not ok to hit Cayden and that he needed to get the feelings out of his body. Connor said, "But there are no pillows to hit or paper to tear up." (We do these things to help him get the angry or sad feelings out of his body.) John had a brilliant idea to let Connor get out of the car to climb some of the neighborhood trees. So, I pulled the car over and that is just what they did for the next 15 minutes. Connor was a new kid when he got back in the car- he was laughing and joking around.

It was a reminder for me that when I have my own big feelings that it is ok to let them out of my body too. In the past, I would just let my feelings get all bottled up, then the energy would back up and it would lead sometimes into panic attacks. After observing what happened with Connor, I think the next time I'm pissed off, I will either dance or go for a vigorous walk.

We also started a tradition with Connor last night. We told him going forward at the start of every school year, he could pick the restaurant of his choice for dinner. (We will do this with Cayden too when he starts school.) He was really excited and picked Subway. I asked him why Subway? He said because then he gets to pick what he wants to put on his sandwich. He has been wanting to go to Subway for a long time now, so he got a turkey cheese sandwich with bread which had cheese baked into it. He thought that was really cool!