The Small Family     

And so it begins--we have a preschooler in the house! No longer can I refer to my boy as a “toddler,” as he is now officially a “preschooler!”

We had an interesting first week. Overall, I think he likes it. He has asked several times to go back. But it’s an adjustment for him, for sure. We’ve had no tearful goodbyes or anything like that. He’s perfectly happy for Mama to drop him off and leave. But his reactions when I picked him up were not quite what I expected. Somehow, I expected him to come running out after school, all smiles. Not quite. On Tuesday, he was pretty grumpy, and then he refused to eat lunch. I told Chris, “I bet he got dairy at snack time,” and Chris said, “No, I’m sure that’s not it.” Ha--trust a mama to know these things! A couple of hours later, I got a call from Ms. Dorothy, the head teacher--she was very upset and apologetic about the fact that they didn’t realize Theo had a dairy allergy, and they’d let him eat half a cup of yogurt for snack. OOOPS!

No harm done, really. We’re supposed to test his dairy allergy every few months to see whether it’s gone anyway, so I just considered this a test. And I was actually somewhat glad it happened, because Ms. Dorothy was so appalled that I’m quite sure it won’t happen again. :-) Theo felt rather icky that day and got a bit of a rash on his legs that I suspect was from the dairy, but he was fine by the next day. Truth is, if he had a severe allergy, I would’ve told them a billion times about it before dropping him off. Because his allergy isn’t one that requires an Epi-pen or anything, I just wrote it on his enrollment sheet and left it at that. Ms. Dorothy mentioned that it took him FOREVER to eat his half a yogurt, so she wondered if he started feeling icky right away. Anyway, I was somewhat glad that his bad mood was due to allergies, not due to a dislike of preschool.

Thursday seemed to go well, though when I picked him up, he refused to talk to me for five or ten minutes. It was like having a sullen teenager in the car! I kept saying, “What was your favorite thing at preschool today?” and “What did you do for work time today?” (Montessori calls their independent learning activities “work” to distinguish from free play.) All I got from the backseat was stony silence. I felt like I was talking to a teenager! Usually when Theo is upset, he throws a fit, so I’m not used to getting the silent treatment. And actually, when I tried to get him in the car, he sat down in the driveway of the school and wouldn’t move. So I’m not sure whether he was irritated with me for picking him up while he was having fun or for leaving him there in the first place. My best guess is that he has mixed feelings about it: There’s kids to play with and oh-so-many fun things to do, but there’s also structure, which he has always rebelled against. It’s not a highly structured environment, but there is some structure to it, and he’s still learning the ropes. So my gut feeling is that he likes what’s available to him there, but he’s not really too fond of having to do it in a structured way! I hear most kids take about a month to adjust to preschool, so it’ll be interesting to see how the next few weeks go.

Anyway, by the time we got home, Mr. Sullen and Moody was talking to me again, and I learned that he had a snack, that Ms. Dorothy played guitar, that he did a number-matching job, that he did some form of art (not sure what yet--I haven’t seen the product), and that he really likes someone named Zoe (who I later learned is an aide).

I got an email from Ms. Dorothy later, and she said, “My guess is that Theo is a very musical fellow, hence his numerical knowledge. He simply cannot get enough of my guitar playing! I need to expand my repertoire.” She also told me, “He sure loves his numbers!” Indeed. After only two days of preschool, she has him pegged: Music and numbers are pretty much his life! Letters are a close second. I didn’t realize that music ability and math ability were related, but Chris tells me he’s read that, too. Very interesting. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I suspect Theo has some real musical ability hidden in there--he’s surprisingly perceptive about melody and musical concepts for a kid from two people with seemingly no musical talent. And certainly he’s a numbers fanatic.

Anyway, even if Mr. Theo has mixed emotions about this new endeavor, I am loving it! I get a lot of work done during my three hours Tuesday and Thursday morning, and I think it’s a nice break for both him and me. I’m really looking forward to seeing how he matures into this preschool environment--I feel very positive about it!

In other Theo news, Miss Deborah went back to the backfloat with him, since he wasn’t really digging the idea of swimming, and he did great. Two lessons, and he’s already doing very well. In fact, I don’t have to bring him back unless I feel we need to--Deborah said he’s doing well enough that we can just work with him in the pool at the gym, and he should be fine.

That said, it turns out her son has written a book and needs it edited before he e-publishes it. I agreed to do it in exchange for swim lessons! So I’m not sure whether we’ll continue this year or whether I’ll defer my “payment” until next year, but either way, it’ll save us a bundle on swim lessons--and I’ll get to add another fiction book edited to my resume. A win-win!

We had a relatively quiet but fun weekend. Saturday morning Theo had Little Gym, so we spent an entertaining hour there. This time it was three little boys and one little girl. Predictably, the one little girl followed directions most of the time, whereas the three little boys were wild men, running around the gym and acting like nuts! We all laughed when Teacher Emmy came out after about 20 minutes of trying to corral the boys and said very sweetly, “Teacher Brandy, will you come play with us?” Translate: The boys are hooligans--help me!! The neat thing about it was that the boys seemed to get into mischief together, rather than independently, about half the time. This may seem like a small thing, but when you spend three years watching your kid play next to other kids, but not with them, it’s really cool to watch them start interacting! (And yes, it’s totally normal for them to not play together until a certain age. It’s just really fun when they do start to play together!)

After Little Gym, my Mom came over and babysat Theo for a couple of hours, so Chris and I could go to lunch. We had BBQ--not something we eat often, but it’s always yummy when we do! Then Theo and Chris took lovely long naps while I vegetated on the couch with the dogs--very restful. When the boys finally woke up, we went to the gym for a swim in the pool. I swear, that gym membership is the best money we spend all month--we get so much enjoyment out of it!

Sunday morning was actually not blistering hot, so we went to Fairytale Town--a park for kids in Sacramento. There are some animals, a playground, and lots of things for kids to climb on and explore. Best of all, it’s an old park (been around since before the 1960s, I think), so it’s wonderfully shady and cool. Theo had a good time playing, and we enjoyed not melting in the sun! Afterward, we went to Opa! Opa!, a little Greek restaurant we love in Sacramento. Falafel for Chris, Greek pita pizza for me, and lots of nibbles for Theo. Theo and I paid a return visit to the gym/pool in the afternoon while Chris did the yard work--our yard looks much better now!

Latest parenting challenge? Theo has developed a bit of a phobia about bees and flies, so we’re often sequestered in the house, even though the weather has cooled down to a somewhat bearable 95 degrees. I don’t know where this came from--he was stung as a baby, but he was 18 months old, so I don’t think he could possibly remember it. And even if he did, I think he would’ve been afraid all along--not have a sudden onset of it. Anyway, reasoning with him is not working on this one--we’ve talked about bees and flies being harmless and how they'll leave him alone as long as he leaves them alone until we’re blue in the face, and he just freaks out. One day I dealt with an hour-long tantrum because there was a fly in the house that I couldn’t get rid of. Well, I shouldn’t say “tantrum,” really--he’s legitimately scared of them for whatever reason, so it wasn’t like he was throwing a fit out of temper. He was just really frightened. Nevertheless, an hour of screaming and crying. I thought I’d lose my mind…

New approach is to ignore the problem and hope it goes away before our trip back east in a month. This approach seemed to work reasonably well at Fairytale Town--the bee trauma only lasted about five minutes, rather than hour. Whew! We generally spend a lot of time outdoors on vacation, and it’s going to be a real bummer if one of us has to stay in the house with Theo at all times because he’s still got this bee/fly phobia going. Hopefully the ignore tactic will work.

My Mom assures me that this is exactly how I reacted to things as a child, so I guess I have myself to blame for this one! Isn’t there some way I can blame Chris instead?! ;-)