New Chapter

This is about four weeks late..but you know what they say about "better late than never".  :)

It seems like only yesterday sometimes, that I was sitting waiting to meet a small human, who decided that an EDD is just that!  I was officially 2 days overdue at this stage, a new concept for me, and not only was I bored silly I was over being pregnant.  Then he was here, that was a bit unexpected, him being a he, but we were over the moon.  Fast forward 5 years and he's starting school!

Some of you will know that we ummed and ahed over WHEN to start him at school, and all of the ideas we had seemed to have their merits.  In the end, the one that 'won' was the fact that the new entrant class was going to be so small and he seemed really eager to start school.

So on the morning of Wednesday, the 31st of October 2012, off we went to start a new 'adventure'.  It was lost on me, that it just so happened to be All Hallows Eve, as well. He practically ran the whole way there, and we followed; me with a mixture of hope, and sadness, and apprehension about how he'd get on.  I needn't have worried, he slotted right in.

Four weeks later and he's surprised even me with how far he has come.  He was never in to drawing, or writing, or painting, or cutting anything so was 'behind' in those areas.  Even just last week he was refusing to write anything if it wasn't over the top of what someone else had already written, then, seemingly out of the blue, he decided that maybe he could form letters on a separate line and now he wants to practice as often as he can.  He still struggles with some letters, but he comprehends now that words make up a story, and that's a neat thing.  He seems to never stop talking....and I thought he never shut up before!

So it turns out that starting him 'early', as in earlier than planned, has actually been the right thing to do.  I'm still trying to adjust to having both boys at school, particularly as they are on a split site.  I'm trying to develop relationships with parents of kids in Alex's class...but I've got some budding relationships with parents of kids in James's class too, which makes it tricky being on a split site, but oh well.

Next year of course, it will all change as Alex enters a Year 1 class and loses his teacher, and James is losing his teacher as well to a younger year group.  Would have liked for James to have some stability, but I suppose a potential plus is Alex's teacher is going back to teach the older kids so James might end up with her next year, which is nice as he had expressed an interest in having this teacher earlier in the year before we found out that she was taking a bit of a 'time out' to travel.

Here's a couple of photos from the first day: