Today, Hayley brought home some homework. Which is really not as bad as it sounds, it’s not like she was sitting at the kitchen table, sweating over algebra for three hours. It’s just so funny though, to think of myself as having a kid old enough to bring home some homework.

It’s actually fun stuff. Homework in Kindergarten includes reading the library books that she brings home on library day (we’ve read her current one, Patchwork Cat several times, and it’s quite cute), and today’s homework doesn’t even need to be returned until next Monday. She was sent home with a sheet showing how to write your letters and she has to write out her full name on the lined sheet that comes with it. Hayley’s been writing her name for over a year now, but she only ever really learned the capital letters, not small letters. Also, the school tries to get them to learn to write the letters in a certain way, which is something new for Hayley since she usually writes her letters from the bottom up rather than top down.

Still, she caught on pretty well and practiced all the letters a couple of times, then wrote her name once. We’ll keep at it for the rest of the week and then send it back.

I can’t believe I sat at the table with one of my daughters doing homework, it almost seems impossible. It seems like only a few years ago that I was sitting at MY Mom’s kitchen table, doing my own homework. At this level it’s fun. When she hits high school algebra and chemistry, I hope she doesn’t need my help!

Things are improving every day on the school front. Thank you for all your suggestions and thoughts. It’s amazing the things that help!

These days, Hayley is doing better. She doesn’t like to go to school when it’s the morning. She offers up excuses such as her stomach hurts (which I actually believe, my stomach hurts if I’m nervous too, exams that I was unprepared for were a blast with that) or that she has a broken toenail and thus can not go to school. This morning she tried to convince me that she had been awake all night long, which was a good effort but totally false. Other times she tries to bargain with things like, “I’ll stay home today but I promise I’ll go tomorrow” which is followed by, “fine, I’ll go today but on Friday I want to stay home to watch [insert TV show of your choice here].”

Naturally, I smile and tell her that I’m sorry about her toe/she can watch that show another time/nice try, and then explain that she is indeed going to school, and could you please finish your cereal?

On the way out the door, you’d think she was heading off to war, what with the glum face and all. She’s been really sad when she goes into the school, but today was a particularly good day in that she only sounded morose instead of distressed when she said goodbye. (It’s especially funny when she mumbles her sad goodbye and Breanna, Miss Oblivious, smiles broadly and waves while shouting a cheerful, “Bye! Bye ‘Aylay!”)

And yet, despite her reluctance each day, she is full of smiles when she comes out at the end of the day. She skips and hops and waves and then my ears could just about fall off from all the excitement she shouts at me about her day. Every day she has something new that she learned, whether it’s a song, a game, or a random fact. Every day she has at least one new name of someone that she played with. She’s happy when the day is over – not because it’s *finally* over, but happy because she’s had a good time.

It’s almost hard not to laugh at her in the morning (though, of course I don’t mock her, I’m trying to encourage her) as she tries to stall, and it’s funnier still to ask her in the evening if she’s excited about going to school in the morning and she sighs, “I guess.”

All I care about is that she’s gotten past the hump of adjusting to school as a whole and now she just needs to get past the mornings. I don’t care if she never does a backflip of joy over having to go to school, as long as she keeps enjoying it when she’s there, I’ll consider it a success.

I must confess though, my favorite time of day is when she comes home and the three of us go to the park and I can watch two sisters running excitedly all over the place together, happy to play together after a day apart.

When Hayley was only a few weeks old I wondered if someone had switched my baby with Linda Blair. Every time I nursed her, she would spew back so much milk that I wondered if any of it was actually staying in her body. No matter how much I burped her, no matter how still I kept her after her milk, she would inevitably spit it back up. I did a lot of bleary-eyed laundry in those days because she would need to be changed so often, not to mention all the receiving blankets I went through and my own shirts that didn’t always escape the upchuck.

Perhaps it was a sign of being a slightly hysterical first-time mother, I not only took her to her scheduled check-ups, but I also took her to our family practice three separate times to make sure that all of this spitting up was actually normal and that she wasn’t existing solely on air alone. It was either take her to a doctor or call in a priest for an exorcism, it was a tough choice. The first two times we saw random doctors in the practice, and the last time it was our regular family doctor. All of them assured me that Hayley was fine, showed me how her weight was going up and that some babies just spit up more than others. This was even after Hayley displayed perfect timing by choosing to spit up dramatically right in front of the doctor. After that, I calmed down, and though I still hated how much seemed to come right back up, I trusted that she was fine.

At that time in my life, the spitting up issue was practically all-consuming for me. I worried about it almost constantly. I would worry while I was feeding her, I worried when it happened, I worried about whether it would be so bad the next time. In hindsight, it was such a small problem, and isn’t it funny how each stage with children brings new worries, ones that seem much bigger than the old ones?

Some day I’ll be dealing with a teenage Hayley and worrying about something huge and stressful to me, and I’ll look back on September 2007 the same way I look back on her first few weeks of spitting up – I’ll recognize that it was a Big Honkin’ Deal at the time, but realize it’s nothing much in comparison to the present.

Hayley’s first day at Kindergarten went remarkably well. Then she came down with a wicked cold that left her drained and exhausted and her second day sucked. She’s had a bit of trouble adjusting ever since. She doesn’t want to go to school and it requires gentle yet firm pushing to get her to go. It’s incredibly difficult to feel like we’re forcing her to do something, but it has to be done – she has to go to school. I don’t think it would be in her best interests to take her out and wait another year. Legally we can do that, especially since she started Kindergarten at age four. If she waited until next year, she’d still be only five for the first few weeks. I think it would be a big mistake though, because by the time next year rolls around, she’ll know pretty much everything they learn at that level. As it is, she knows at least half the things they cover in Kindergarten, but if she waits another year she’ll wind up bored, and I certainly don’t want to throw her directly into grade one. Besides, I think that it’s still a bit too early to make a snap decision and remove her from the school.

The humour in all of this is that if anyone asks her if she likes school, she says yes. She loves the toys, the songs, and she seems to enjoy it, but it’s taking some time to get used to actually going and getting through the day. She doesn’t want to go, but if you mention not going back at all, she gets upset. It’s a big internal struggle for her, I think. She misses us when she’s there, but I’m hoping time will help with that, as she gets to know some of the kids. I’m hoping she’ll get to know a couple of kids well enough that I could send a note to the teacher, asking her to pass on my contact info to those parents so we can arrange a playdate on weekends.

I know that some people will automatically say this is my fault because we didn’t put her in daycare or preschool. And you know, I spent a day feeling the same way, blaming myself, berating myself, and my goodness isn’t Parental Guilt ™ a lot of fun? But I’ve had more than one person tell me that their child has had the same trouble adjusting to Kindergarten even if they went to daycare or preschool for years. In fact, I even found out that a little boy in the other Kindergarten class cried for the first four days almost non stop and he’s been in some sort of childcare since the age of one. So it seems it’s got less to do with the whole at-home vs. daycare debate that never ends, and a lot more to do with the child’s personality and adaptability in general. For instance, I stayed at home with my mother for five years and went off to Kindergarten and never cried once about it. For Hayley it’s just her sensitivity and getting used to something new.

I gave her a locket that I had; there’s a picture of me with George on one side and I put a picture of Breanna on the other side. She wears it and when she misses us, she can open it up and look at it to feel better. She calls it her magic locket. If it can help her through her day, all the better.

I know it will take time and eventually she’ll start having fun at school and coming home with big smiles and no more tears in the mornings. She just has to breathe slowly and get through each day as it comes – and so do I. Eventually it will get better. Today wasn’t great, but it was better than yesterday and hopefully tomorrow will be better than today.

If you’ve dealt with difficulty adjusting to school and have some other tips like the locket that make the transition easier, please do feel free to share!

I have so much on my mind. It’s like I need to go out and get a bigger brain just so I can have room for all the crap that is filling my current brain up. Better yet, could someone invent a pensieve like the ones they have in Harry Potter? Then I could take some thoughts and put them away until I have time or energy to deal with them. That would be nice.

Eventually I’ll sort all of them out, but in the meantime I’d rather direct you to a review of the coolest books for kids ever. Seriously. I know that I review books and products, but I only do it if I can be honest about how I feel, so when I say these books are the BOMB I really mean that. Go check it out!

Now I’m going to go comb eBay for a gently used pensieve.

I don’t know if the scale is completely accurate but this site is awesome. It shows how insignificant our planet is (and us too, as its inhabitants) in the grand scheme of things.

If you’re deeply religious, this may be offensive, but I thought it was hilarious! A letter from Jesus.

It was such a whirlwind the past handful of days. With the long weekend (yay Labour Day), I was expecting nothing much to happen, but all of a sudden it was crammed full of activity. We ended up visiting friends for a spontaneous BBQ while the girls splashed in the pool, we went to a local park for Family Day which means eight billion people and a lot of activities, we went to another friend’s house for more swimming and pizza, we were meant to attend a wedding but something urgent came up that prevented it, and I had to get Hayley ready for another day of school. Whew. I’m tired just writing that.

Last night I got to re-experience the joys of a newborn because Breanna was unable to sleep and the longest stretch of slumber that I got was, no kidding, one hour and fifteen minutes long. She came down with a cold and was so congested that she tossed and turned and moaned all night long. Every time I would start to doze off, she would climb on top of me and wail, then fall asleep with her elbow jammed in my throat. That was fun. Toddlers with colds are a true joy, especially when they hate the bulb syringe.

I managed to get up on time this morning and woke Hayley up only to discover she had a sore throat. I asked her if it was really bad and if she wanted to stay home. She was distressed about her throat but equally distressed about staying home from school, so she got up. She wasn’t sniffling or sneezing, and after a glass of juice with breakfast she said her throat was better, so I got her dressed and took her down to the bus.

Today wasn’t so bad, I wasn’t mooning around the apartment missing Hayley every three seconds. That may be due to the fact that Breanna spent most of the day crying hysterically about her nose which she wiped regularly on my shoulder (note to self – toss Hogwarts shirt into washing machine tomorrow morning).

At 2:45 I headed downstairs to wait for Hayley’s bus. When it stopped in front of me, I eagerly awaited Hayley’s smiling face to come bounding off the bus. Instead, a sad little creature slumped off the bus and when she saw me, she burst into tears, telling me, “I, I, I, I, I have a, a, a, (sniff) COOOOOLD!”

It was heartbreaking. I mean, it’s just a cold, it’s not like she came home with a note from the teacher saying, “sorry, but your daughter caught Ebola in the cafeteria and Malaria in the school yard” or anything, but still. Seeing your little not-yet-five-year-old kid come off the bus crying? That’s just sad, no matter what the reason.

Both girls spent the rest of the day lying around the couch or the floor, moaning, sniffing, and occasionally crying. It was a total blast. I knew that Hayley wasn’t faking it at all when she admitted that she actually fell asleep during Quiet Time at school. This is a kid who gave up naps before she turned two, so that takes a special kind of exhausted.

Luckily, we’re still on the progressive entry schedule so she has tomorrow off again while the other half of the class attends their second day of Kindergarten. She goes back on Thursday and then it’s the whole class all together for the first time, so hopefully she’ll be better then. I’m going to keep her quiet tomorrow and see. She usually only takes a day or so to rebound from a cold and then it’s just an occasional outburst of rage over having to blow her nose. If she’s as miserable as she was this afternoon come Thursday morning, I’ll have to keep her home (and parents of all the other kids will thank me), but I know she’s hoping that she’ll feel okay by then because she doesn’t want to miss out on the first big day with all 20 kids together. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I got the kids down to bed, Hayley with some Tylenol Cold, Breanna with some straight up Tylenol, and a humidifier for Breanna since she can’t take a decongestant. Both have woken up in between then and now and have been re-settled. In between that I managed to clean the kitchen, pick up the living room, and catch up on most (but not all) of my work. I’m going to bed though, I’m exhausted and I know the girls aren’t the only ones with a cold. Bah.

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There are photos from Family Day right here.

Also, I got some free shoes to try out, and I reviewed them over here. You should go read it because it includes some details on how you can win one of 50 pairs of shoes per day.

Some great stuff about the constant lead recalls and how to avoid them.

Coolest bookshelf ever.

I am in love with this Bento box ideas site. LOVE.