First Day's ...

Iann started preschool today. Gulp, my 3 year old is growing up so fast. I have been really worried about this transition - he doesn't do new things well at all - and had prepared myself for all eventualities ... I thought!

Iann is really uncooperative about having his picture taken, mainly because it involves him being asked to stay still for more that 5 seconds, so here is the best of the photo's I took of him this morning:

 

His backpack - which he won't actually keep on his back - goes down to his knees, however anything smaller doesn't hold all the things he has to have with him: change of clothes, (cloth) diapers, wipers and wet-bag to hold dirty diapers, and his compression vest for when he gets a little out of control.

I put him in the Elmo t-shirt today because he really likes Elmo and I was hoping it would help him if things got tough at school. Well, lets just say that it made NO difference at all. He separated from me fine: I gave him his sippy cup and he walked away. I was the one who was tearing up at that point. An hour and a half later his aide called and said that he had been crying for the last hour, did I have any ideas to help him calm down? Long story short he cried on and off for about two and a half hours!!! Aparently he had calmed down by the time school was over, but started again when parents began arriving, so I heard him crying from outside :(

While I didn't think he'd be completely happy today, I really didn't think he would cry for so long. However, I know that he doesn't like change - he used to cry when I took him to speech therapy, and now he waves goodbye to me as he's running down the hallway! It will take time for him to be comfortable at school, but it's hard to know what to do. Do we shorten the time that's he there, and increase the number of days so it's a shorter time, more often? Do we leave it as is and wait for him to settle down? Then there is the part of me that wants to yank him out and keep him home.

Brynn had a 'first day' today as well: Jon started their science curriculum. This is the fourth week of our school, but the science that we picked is 28 wks, the rest of it is 34 weeks, so Jon had a few more weeks to get ready. He is planning to teach science twice a week, Astronomy to be exact, something that Jon is excited to be learning about too! Here are a couple quick pics I took through the door:

So, it was a day of firsts. A rough o for Iann, a good one for Brynn. And an emotional one for me!