First Day!

I actually had the presence of mind to make a small video clip of Braeden's conversation after the first day of school, but it is struggling to upload to Blogger. I'll try again tonight - if you can get past my annoying nasally voice, you'll probably get a kick out of it.

In the meantime, here's the lowdown:

Sometime before six, I heard Braeden up and moving about. I just couldn't drag myself out of bed yet (not after being up past midnight), so I waited until the alarm went off at 6:15. The instant he heard my door open, he popped out of his bedroom and announced, "Mommy, I was awake before you!" He was obviously very excited, because he is never that lively so early in the morning.

I was actually glad he was up so early. It gave me time to snuggle with him and talk about his big day without being rushed. Since I had taken off work for the morning, I was able to spend the time with him. We had a delightful breakfast of whole-grain Eggos with chocolate chips sprinkled on top and apple juice. Today I'm adding peanut butter and making sandwiches so he won't wind up so hungry at the end of the day (more on that later).

Sunday evening I rushed around, checking every list, making sure the "pack-pack" was loaded, filling the lunchbox to see if it would all fit, making sure the Thermos wouldn't leak the Spaghettios, ironing his shirt, etc. I let him pick out his shirt, and he chose his new black Transformers T-shirt. Somehow he looked so big with his Transformers shirt and backpack. (Okay, so he really was big - he towers over all the other kids in his class.)

The morning actually went very smoothly. I was able to take pictures, and Jeff even stumbled out of bed to enjoy the festivities with us. Before we left, we said a little prayer asking God to help Bebo behave and enjoy the day, and we also prayed for his teacher. I'm glad we did that.

We found total chaos when we pulled into the parking lot. Nervous moms, excited kids, crying babies, harried teachers - everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get nowhere. They "released" us to go to the classroom.

Braeden's teacher has decorated the room in an ocean theme. There are fishies and other critters everywhere. It's really quite cute. I was so proud of him yesterday. . . he walked into class and sat down in his seat. He was so quiet, yet attentive to what was going on. Jeff told him we were going to leave, and he said, "No, Daddy, you can't leave!" I thought we were going to have a crying fit, but he stayed calm. He looked nervous when we left, but he was just fine.

Then came the hard part... enduring the rest of the day. I thought it would never end, I was so anxious to see my boy and find out how his day went.

You should see the pickup arrangements. The kindergarten and first grade students are picked up in front of the school. There's a big circle, and kindergarten parents go to the inside and first grade moms are on the outside. They actually have traffic controllers who fill the circle as tightly as possible. Once it's filled, they stop the traffic, and moms get out to collect their tired-but-happy kids. When everyone's loaded and the remaining kids are safely out of the way, they empty out the circle and start all over again.

Jeff could see Bebo before I could. My "little" man was head-and-shoulders above the other kids, which made me laugh a bit. I went to retrieve him, and he was quite happy to see me. We got in the car, and Twenty Questions official began. (To be demonstrated in the aforementioned video, if I can ever get it uploaded.)

Here's the strange part. The first thing he said was "Can I eat my Spaghettios?"

Eh?

On closer investigation, the only thing he ate was the packet of Yo-Gos. He left the Cheez-its, granola bar, and Spaghettios. Then he said his teacher wouldn't let him eat the Spaghettios.... this made no sense whatsoever, and the only other thing I could find out was that he did eat a cheese sandwich and hash browns. Incidentally, this was not on the school menu, so I haven't the slightest idea where it came from! I have emailed the teacher to see if she knows what happened.

My suspicion is that he wanted to eat the Spaghettios at snacktime, and she told him to wait until lunch, and he interpreted that as meaning he shouldn't eat them at school at all.

Today I'm sending a Lunchable, with explicit instructions about what is a snack and what is lunch. :)

He obviously had a good time. We sat down to do school-fun (a.k.a. homework), and he was more focused than I've ever seen him. I used PSE to make a practice sheet for writing his name. It was really the first time he's done that, so I feel obliged to save it.

This is officially long enough. More on the Great Lunch Debacle later.