from somewhere in my imagination

The Other Side to Starting School

This is Sebastian on his first day of school back at the start of the year.

Happy, excited and ready to take on the world.

Compared to when the girls started school it has been slightly better than a nightmare perhaps?  And, whilst I am fully aware that I shouldn’t be comparing my boy with my girls, the differences have been so marked but that I don’t think they are all gender related.

I have experienced a fair bit of Mummaguilt because I am not there every single morning and afternoon to drop him at his classroom.  That said he loves his three mornings and two afternoons at OSHC.  I also feel bad that he is the one our move seems to have affected the most.

I’ve tried writing about it several times but ended with a jumbled bunch of emotionally charged words on the page, not the way I want to portray him and his first year at school.  I want to celebrate the good stuff not get bogged down in the bad.

He ended his kindy year a happy, confident little guy.  School ready.

Then we moved and he spent eight weeks holed up with his sisters.  He missed his best mate and I don’t think he would have cared if he never saw another girl again. Ever.

Cue, the new school year.  The school the kids go to is entirely made up of composite classes which placed Sebastian in a Reception/Year One class, with only one other new boy and the majority of boys in the class at least a year older than him.  By all reports he is his cheerful self in class, all that blue eyed, grinning charisma has his teacher and every other girl in the somewhat wrapped around his finger.  I’ve seen it when I drop him off in the mornings, they flock to him and he is lovely to them.  He just doesn’t want to play with them, or marry one.  Ever.

The happy, smiling boy unfortunately had not been coming home that way each day after school.  He claimed that he hated school, would refuse to get dressed, yell and cry.  He didn’t play with anyone from his class at lunchtime, thankfully his older sisters have been awesome at looking after him and accommodating towards him in the school yard.

Tears, tantrums, aggression.  The whole kit and caboodle day in day out.  For the first few weeks he had trouble switching off and sleeping, I suspect it is still a problem for him but he is dealing with it better.  He’s tired of course, that happens to all new school kids, and he misses his Dad the days that he’s away onsite plus he still misses his mates desperately.

I contemplated asking for him to be moved to a different class with more boys his age but the answer was a resounding no when I put my feelers out.  I really do like his teacher and so does he.

Things are improving little by little.

Rather than switching and changing seats everyday Sebastian now sits next to the same boy every day.  He’s the same boy that started school at the beginning of the year with him.  They have forged a good friendship.  His friend is coming for a ‘playover’ after school today and both boys have been counting the sleeps and discussing how many more each morning all week.  It makes me smile.

Unlike the big girls the boy has not had an instant affinity for reading.  Reading his reader is not his favourite thing in the world so if he’s fighting it we don’t do it.  We choose books and read to him instead.  More and more he is picking out words and reading along with us.  His one to one correspondence has improved significantly and he is finally starting to get some consistent sight word knowledge.

AUSLAN is the school’s second language and interestingly it is something Sebastian has picked this up at an amazing rate.  He can probably sign as many words as he can read, if not more, and it is something he does with huge confidence.  I suspect that he is a highly kinaesthetic learner and have started doing more literacy activities with him at home that are nice and touchy feely.

He loves to write and draw.  That’s been a consistent love.  He was able to write his own name with nothing to copy by the end of last term and his letter knowledge and formation has really improved.  His imagination is wonderful.

He is excited by what he is learning in maths.  We enjoyed a game of Monopoly on Tuesday night where he demonstrated his counting and counting on skills with every roll of the dice.

He still declares he doesn't like school because it's hard, I tell him 'that's life buddy, you have to work hard for the good stuff'. 

He still misses his best mate.  He tells me every few days how much he misses him.

We are getting there one day at a time, I'm getting better at finding solutions to each afternoons' drama and being able to pre-empt his reactions to different situations.  With lots of love, cuddles, kindness, routine and support we will find our happy little guy buried in there amongst all the angst.

Tatum xx

So, The Boy Turned Five

And we had a ball, literally.

To be honest it is so hard to believe that it is 5 years since the little guy arrived on the scene.  Between drug free child birth and the fact I'd popped out a boy after 2 girls it is undoubtedly one of the proudest moments of my life.  Not that the fact he's a boy had anything to do with me ;)

We had a baseball birthday party at the baseball on Saturday night together with family, I mean what else do you do for a nearly 5 year old boy who is going to be a baseall player when he grows up...he's happy enough that if the Adelaide Bite don't want him, he'll play for the Yankees....O-kay ;)  Despite the unseasonal December cold the Bite turned on a win and we had a great night. 

One of the things that made it extra special was our adopted baseball family.  One of the things about having 4 fairly outgoing kids is that they like to make friends where ever they go and boy have they made friends at the baseball.  It's a good thing.  It adds to it all for us.  I like feeling like we are part of another kind of family.

There was a 'melting' baseball cake, the melting part was unintentional but time was of the essence and it was still warm on the inside as we underwent transport to Norwood Oval.  I must say that Steven did a stellar job for his first foray into royal icing and I suspect he is keen to explore that icing medium some more ;)

We took great delight in all signing his cake ball for him.  Hooray for gel writing icing.

After peanuts, dogs, cake and chippies we headed home to bed with one tired, happy boy.

Sunday dawned blue skies and beautiful, just like the day he was born.  We gave him his presents and I took him over to his Granny's house for a tea party with his cousins and J (who followed after she finally woke up). 

Later in the day we enjoyed hot chips for a late lunch in the park followed by a casual dinner outside and then cake with candles.

Sebastian carved the cake himself, that's probably the best word to describe the way he wielded the knife to cut it into eight (roughly) equal pieces faster than any of the adults at the table could possibly grab the knife off him.

It was a perfect way to celebrate our boy turning five. Over dinner last night, just him, J and I, I asked him what he was most looking forward to at school.  'Everything' he said.  That's my boy.  I cant wait to watch him blossom as a schoolboy...and perhaps somewhere along the way his sister will become less cheeky?

No, I don't think so either ;)

Hope that you have had a great weekend.  We had a garage sale (more about that later) and have been packing, sorting and all that good stuff.  Our truck gets loaded up on Thursday for our move to Adelaide.  Mixed emotions but it's the right time for us to make this move.

Have an awesome week...I have plenty to write about, hopefully I get some time to actually do it :)

Tatum xx

Testosterone Turns Five

A few months ago I wrote about Sebastian and the classic signs of the four year old testosterone surge he had been displaying and a bit about how we were coping with the types of behaviours that came with it.

In ten more sleeps our boy will be five.  We counted them last night at bedtime.

Over the past month or so it has been intriguing to watch the textbook decline in behaviours typically associated with the elevated levels of testosterone levels of four year old boys.  There has been a smooth slide from the wildly emotional little being that had us tearing our hair out with frustration a few months ago to a far more level headed, ready for school five year old little guy. 

Suddenly he has become more confident, more open to new things and far less likely to produce floods of tears at the drop of a hat.  His typical boy loves remain, and he still likes to wrestle and launch himself ninja style off the couch, he just doesn't do it quite as often and usually not as vigorously.

His attention span has improved, he and J have a massive love of colouring in right now and have been spending ages on and off each day laying on the floor with pencils spread around them colouring in.  It's really cool to watch, and funny to listen to when they start trash talking one another...'nah nah'.

He seems to have stretched, I am sure that he has grown 6 inches in the space of no time at all.

We have cooked together a lot over the past months, cooking is definitely a new love that is staying with him.  I found that cooking with him, whether we were baking treats or he was helping me prepare dinner, really helped to establish a sense of calm in him on days when he was especially wound up.  I think it's all part of the having success thing.  Seeing him light up when he learns and masters something new is just the most awesome feeling.

Tomorrow he has his first transition visit to school.  His two best mates from kindy went off to school at the beginning of this term.  He, obviously, won't be going to the same school as his mates because we are moving.  He has come to terms with that, and he has also really impressed me this term with his ability to make new friends.  His kindy teachers have told me how wonderful it has been seeing him take on a leadership role with some of the younger boys at kindy.  Proud Mumma.

Right now his biggest loves are Baseball, Star Wars, Totem Tennis and Scooter Riding.  He has a real fascination for the universe/planets/stars.  Burritos are still his favourite food.  He practices kick flips with his scooter all the time, he thinks he'll be awesome on the skate park...he just needs to muster up the courage to scoot down the ramp for the first time!

I am thankful for Steve Biddulph and his chapter on Testosterone in Raising Boys (and the whole book in general) and how it has helped us to navigate this time with our boy.  I'm thakful that the human body works in mysterious ways and that some things are actually predictable (with two pre adolescent girls in the house already there is a whole lot of unpredictable going on!).

Today I am linking up with Kate for Thankful Thursday, what are you thankful for today?

Tatum xx