The Young and the Restless

The Baby Bus!

Don't laugh. My brothers are always making cracks about the short bus, but those jokes are no longer allowed since my little Jayden is now a proud rider of the short bus, or "baby bus" as he calls it. With his speech delay he qualified for the priority preschool at an elementary school. He has been soooo excited to go to school and I have to admit that I am really enjoying having some quality "me" time three days a week. It's lonely and liberating at the same time. I do miss my kids, but I feel like I can be a better mom since I have time to rejuvinate. It's been nice to have the time to volunteer in Kylie's school I'm now an official "assistant TO the regional librarian" (for all you "Office" fans out there). Okay, so maybe it's not that fancy, but it has been fun helping out in the library one day a week. I'm also going to teach preschool 2 days a week with my friend who does it out of her home. It's kind of nice experiencing a different life outside of motherhood.

Jayden did so great on his first day of preschool. He was dead set on having a Thomas back pack and once that was taken care of he was good to go. I don't know if it's just a boy/girl thing or a second child thing, or maybe it was just because Jayden was so excited to go, but it wasn't hard at all to drop him off for the first day of preschool (unfortunately for him, he couldn't start riding the bus until the second week). He gave me a hug and kiss, put his back pack in his cubby, marched over to the train table and told me goodbye. He had no issues having me leave him, maybe because for weeks before he left he kept telling me that no one was allowed to go to preschool with him or ride the bus, only Gi-Gi, because he's a big boy. I'm so glad he's loving it. Today he fell asleep on his bus ride home, it was sweet. The teacher's assistant rides on the bus with him and told me that he was having a hard time carrying his back pack around because it was so heavy. I didn't know what she was talking about until I looked in there and he had stuffed every train he owns inside his back pack.

So with both my kids in school there is a lot that I am learning. First of all, school has changed so much since I was in elementary school such as....

-they no longer have just fire drills, but they have required lock down drills. It makes sense considering that I am always hearing about schools going into lock down (like another school down the street here last week), but have yet to hear of a school burning down in the middle of the day. I just wonder what they tell the kids so that they don't tramatize them during these drills. According to Kylie, they "all hide in the corner of the room with the lights off (but they have a smiley face flashlight so that they're not scared) with paper over the window so that nobody can see in. The principal then walks around and makes sure that everyone is safe, but she hides too if she has to."

-Each classroom now has its own version of a corporate room mom. When I signed up to be a room mom, I had visions of baking cupcakes for holiday parties. What I didn't envision was hours of room parent coallition meetings, reading through stacks of room parent handbooks, planning and carrying out professional quality fund raising events, and things of that nature. It should be fun, though...I hope.

-Safety issues. It is so scary having kids in the school system these days, where so many things can happen that are beyond my control. Last week they sent a letter home with Jayden (he is at a different elementary school than Kylie) saying that there was a man living near the school who was exposing himself to children through his window while they were walking home from school. It made me sick that somebody like that lives so close to a school! I decided to have another safety talk with Kylie after reading that letter (I think Jayden is too young to understand), we talked about alot of different issues and I even touched a little on the drugs topic (Mandy, I borrowed some of your ideas for this one!). After telling her that sometimes kids might try to give her something to eat that's not good for her body she chimed in, "oh, like coffee." We also talked about what to do if she saw a stranger on campus and she said, "oh, like if I saw some strangers playing sword fights at school". If only that was all I had to worry about. I just miss those days (oh so long ago) when kids could actually walk to and from school and even home for lunch, the doors to the school didn't have to remain locked when school was in session and the playgrounds didn't have to be completely fenced in. I'm glad that they take those precautions but it's just sad (and scary) that it's come to that point.

-There are so many meetings, papers and people asking for your money! I thought I would have so much extra time with the kids in school, but it seems like my time is getting quickly filled with meetings and such! They bring so many papers home and I never know what to save and what to get rid of. I think I need to invest in a massive filing cabinet. Every day we get flyers asking for more money for one thing or another. They've also been having these fundraiser nights at different restraunts where a portion of the money goes back to the school. Those are fine, it's just funny how they drill it into the kids that they need to go. Kylie was practically in tears because we couldn't make it to the one last night. I wasn't sure why she was so upset until I found out that she was under the impression that they would give money to her for going, not the school.

So school has been an eye opening experience for all of us, but both kids seem to really be enjoying it. Despite a rough start, Kylie is now having a blast and has made some cute friends. One of her friends was over playing the other day when I overheard Kylie telling her that she was Chinese. The girl asked her what "Chinese" was and Kylie told her that it meant that you had dark brown hair. After pausing for a moment, the little blonde-haired girl responded "when I get out of the bathtub and my hair is wet then it looks dark, so I guess I'm Chinese when I take a bath". Gotta love kids!

PS-that smile he has in the top middle picture is the one that I was referring to in the last post. It's my absolute favorite and I can't get enough of it!