Back to School

This is my first year sending 2 kids out to school in the morning. It's been an interesting adjustment. High lights from our first week include:
Lucille puking the night before her first day of school.
Getting a call from the nurse the second day of school. Lennon makes a face constantly where he closes just one eye and holds this wink for a minute or so. His teachers interpreted this to mean his eye hurt!
The fifth day Lucille came home sick with a headache and slept from 2:50 pm - 6:30 am. Of course she woke several times, too much in pain to do anything and just wanting to be snuggled back to sleep.
A good preview for the next several germy months....
Lucille seems to like kindergarten but from the notes they send home it seems like so much more work!! She likes learning though, so I'm hopeful it'll be a good year. She has 3 friends from her pre school class in her new class, one who sits right next to her, which she was thrilled about. Also one of her friends from dance class is in kindergarten with her.
She claimed not to like her teacher but I think she's just really missing her preschool teacher. Lennon now has the teacher she had last year and I don't know if that's good for her, because she can still see her occasionally through her brother and hear about her every day... Or if it's bad because she's jealous her brother gets to go off to the classroom and teacher she currently prefers every day. The last 2 days she's come home from school with a small prize for nice behavior and I think these prizes have made her feel more favorable about her teacher finally.
Tomorrow we are going to a birthday party for a girl in her class. I'm not sure Lucille even knows which girl it is who's having the party. But she wants to go and I figured it could only help her make friends to see some of them outside of school.
Overall, she's adjusting quicker than I expected, and I expected a quick adjustment since she's our social butterfly. This weekend we are working on learning to tie shoes. When everyone in the class knows how to tie shoes they get a pizza party.
Lennon is feeling very conflicted in his new role as student. He knows his teachers well because they were Lucille 's teachers. He loves them. He enjoys the activities they do: painting, coloring, playing outside, reading, etc. He says all the kids in his class are nice. But, he misses me very badly. And I think he's also overwhelmed by all the noise and the crowd.
He asked me why I signed him up for school and I told him I thought he'd have fun. He told me he doesn't have fun and asked me to "sign him out", which to a 4 year old is the natural opposite of signing up.
He also excitedly tells me about books they've read, songs they listened to, tells me things he wants to do at school the next day. Sunday he had me put green wax in his hair and when he found out the bath would wash it out and his teacher wouldn't see it he made me take a picture and send it to her.I
Thursday I let him skip. All Wednesday evening he just cried about wanting to stay home with me. Now he says he wants more days off sometimes. But not music days. Or art days. Or library days. Every day he has one of those specials so... Looks like he won't be getting any more days off.... I do hope I can get him to focus more on all the fun he is having and not the missing me. I think we're headed in the right direction. The moments when he is upset and fighting going are some of my toughest mom moment though. Particularly because it's pre scholars it's not required, so why force him?? If I genuinely believed he didn't like it, I wouldn't. But he does like it...
I'm very lucky to have gotten the opportunity to eat lunch with the kids twice. My mom stayed with Truman one day and Peter had a couple flex hours to use up at work so stayed with him the other time. Lennon wants me to eat lunch with him every day. I'm trying to make it a weekly event but with Truman, it's be impossible to do more.
I enjoyed going to lunch and getting to know some of their new friends. Their principal wants to get some sort of walking program started where parents volunteer to walk the track with kids at the end of lunch or something.... I don't really know many details. But he assured me Truman could come and would enjoy it, so that might be something I do at the school in the future.