First Day of School
Both of my kids are officially school aged now! I don’t know how that happened, but here it is, fall again. The summer is over, and suddenly I find myself with a bunch of free time. Right now I’m adjusting by keeping myself super busy and not allowing myself much time to stop and think.
The oldest one calls himself Thing One, from the Cat in the Hat. He dressed up as his favorite Dr. Seuss character and the name just stuck. The little one also has a literary nickname. It’s Red Chief, after the O. Henry short story, The Ransom of Red Chief. He’s got the hair and the attitude. My parents called me that as a kid, too, so it’s actually an inherited title. “Son of Red Chief” was a paper company, though, wasn’t it? So we’ll go with the aliases, so as to protect the guilty til they are of an age to out themselves on the internets.
Thing One is a second grader now. School is old hat to him. He slid out of one routine of television, reading, computer games, and bike riding and into walks to school and a new class with remarkable ease. He’s itching to play either flag football or soccer this fall, but hasn’t made the final decision yet. I’m glad, because he’s a bit of a couch potato lately, and while we’ve been getting to talk a lot about some good books, I’ve been a bit lax about cattle prodding him to run and jump. He’s also looking forward to Cub Scouts again, and all that goes along with that. So he’s just great.
Red Chief has been very apprehensive about school. It started well before he was 5. Thing One was clamouring to get on the school bus as soon as he knew what one was. Red Chief has been the opposite. He tried to convince me that he didn’t need to turn 5 years old, because he didn’t want to go to school. I pulled out the Rainbow Cake and convinced him to go on and age another year. While he was scared, he’d also been very protective of me, wanting to make sure his Momma didn’t cry any more for any reason. He’s been saying he wants to take care of me, which is just proof he’s my kid. Even the very first day, he was trying to make a deal.
“Momma, if I hide under your covers, they won’t find me! They’ll just look under mine. Then I can stay home with you!”
It was a tempting offer, but I took him to school. He was nervous, but then he saw a cute girl with curly hair that was sad, too. He pointed her out to me, and I asked did he want to talk to her. He nodded, and said he could make her smile. The little charmer went over and got a small smile out of her, and eased his own fear by taking care of someone else. After that he was fine. When I picked him up, I asked how school was. “Momma, I was just kidding when I said I was scared. There was a gingerbread man and we had a mystery and we found the clues and guess where he was? In the LUNCHROOOOOM! And I got to eat a gingerbread man and I didn’t eat him like the fox did but I ate his head first! Omnomnom!”
K. loves his soccer. I highly recommend it – and the added bonus is that K. usually behaves better in school during soccer season since he gets more energy out outside of school hours.
Red Chief sounds like a little charmer! Glad he had a successful first day. And I hope you did, too!
I can’t imagine the wreck I’ll be when my younger one starts school. You’d think it would be easier after having one go through it, but somehow, I think it will be worse in a lot of ways. I just hope my girl is as adaptable as Red Chief!
Cool, glad after get over the hump he was happy he went.
I’m leaning towards soccer myself, but I’m having a hard time getting in touch with the relevant people. So it may end up being flag football after all.
Red Chief is still having some pangs of remorse. He enjoys every day, but every morning he wheedles to stay with me anyway. I’m hoping by the end of next week it’ll be routine and he’ll be resigned to the fact that he gets to go have fun every day, without his Momma.