School Days

As briefly mentioned earlier, Elliott started school last month. Long before we knew we were moving, we had planned to start him the week of September 12th, so as to give him a bit of time to settle in before Brad started school on the 22nd. Fortunately for us, the move ended up falling into place perfectly with both Elliott's and Brad's school schedules.

Once we settled on Elliott's school, I felt really good about him going. I felt the timing was right and that he was ready. I was also more excited than nervous about him starting school...until a few days before school started. I guess my apprehension really started when we went away on our little getaway trip to Nevada. It aided in my overall feeling of uncertainty that followed me around those few days and culminated in a few shed tears on Sunday the 11th.

It's really starting to hit me that my little baby is growing up. I look at him and I see a little boy. This part of watching Elliott grow had previously been fairly easy to deal with because I always knew we would have another baby. Now we aren't so sure. So I've been feeling little specks of loss within these wonderfully exciting milestones a lot more now.

But all in all, the transition has been a good one and fairly uneventful. Elliott did really great his first day of school and it was all I could do to get him to leave with me when I went to pick him up. I have been cautiously optimistic each day because I know there will be days that it will be harder for him to say goodbye. In fact, we had our first tears last week. Fortunately, I drop him off fairly early, so there's lots of one-on-one time with his teacher if he is feeling a little unsure of being 'left behind'.

The teachers always give me an update about how his day went and there's little charts and things around the classroom to log nap time successes and meals, etc. It's fun to think of Elliott having his own 'day' that is different from Brad's or mine. He is getting exposed to and eating a wide variety of different foods, learning new songs, making some great art and learning to be friends. I am even starting to overhear him singing songs I can actually recognize (vs. his usual generic singing). In fact, I quiet often hear his very interesting interpretation of the alphabet song last ;)

Story Time

And he seems to love his teachers and they seem to love him, too. He likes one teacher in particular :)  They always tell me little stories about what he said or did that day. I guess the first day he was looking for a toy shovel. The teachers were helping him find it and when he did, he exclaimed 'oh, thank heavens!' Ha!