School Has Started

School has started! And this year they start 20 minutes earlier then they did last year. This means that we all have to wake up earlier. Luckily for Middle Boy, he’s a pop out of bed, awake, morning early bird. Unluckily for Older Boy, Younger Boy and myself we’re sleep in until at least 9am, you’d best not wake me, where’s my coffee, I can’t believe I’m up this flipping early non-morning persons.

It’s been about a week and a half now and we’ve all managed to get a routine down. I drag my butt out of bed around 6:30am-6:50am. I wake the boys up around 7:10am. They make their beds, get dressed, come down and eat dinner. I’m meanwhile putting their lunches and snack together. The goal is to get out the door at 7:30am to get them to school around 7:40am. This way Older Boy can walk Younger Boy to his kindergarten class and still have time to make it to his class line and socialize a bit (wake up a bit more).

Considering I’ve cut out the coffee for now and I haven’t slept well through the night in months I’ve been majorly dragging butt. Thirty-six weeks pregnant is exhausting. Everyone keep telling me I have no clue what I’m in for because I’m going to be waking up even more during the night. But considering I’m waking up about 5-7 times during the night as it is I’m hoping that maybe I’m just getting in good practice for nightly feedings and diaper changes.

On a different note, Younger Boy is really, really excited to finally be at school. He’s in the morning class so I pick him up at 11:25am. Luckily, he was accepted into the after school program from 1:40pm to 6pm so he’s able to come back and socialize and play some more with kids his own age. It’s a blessing, in my opinion, but a pain in the butt trying to juggle between meetings at work.

His after school program teacher though was having trouble keeping him focused. Considering he’s a kindergartner (and an excited kindergartner at that) FH and I figured he’d have to work on learning to focus more. But she asked us the other day for tips.

She mentioned she had tried bribing him with “You can be in the front of the line” and some other mumbo jumbo. Basically we told her that in addition to being super excited he was probably testing her on what he could get away with on his scale of Jane-who-lets-him-do-what-he-wants-and-bribes-with-toys-and-goodies on the left and me-who-enforces-structure-holds-him-accountable-for-his-actions-and-challenges-him-to-find-things-to-do on the right.

He tried pulling the sad, blinking back tears that weren’t there yet trick in front of us when we called him over to have a chat. His teacher mentioned that the face scared her because she felt bad, so I demonstrated the resistance to it and got results. Perhaps I’ve just had more training in working with children and behavior between being an instant mom and working in the childhood development centers all those years.

The good news is that she reported to FH the other day that she found that if she gave him a task to focus on he was much better instead of going wild.

I’m hoping that with time Younger Boy will get used to being in a class environment. And that in a couple of weeks I’ll go into labor, because I’ve been really, really patient.