First Day of Preschool

What an exciting day! As we skipped up to preschool Anthony announced, "I'm exciting" and boy was he! He had his new backpack with his name embroidered on it and was all ready for preschool. He's attending Children's Center and I'm very excited about it, too!

Parents were required to attend the first day so I got to watch the fun first hand. He painted with water colors, drew with markers on big art paper, played with play-dough, played dress-up, raced cars with his pal W and started cooking in the kitchen. And that was all in the first 30 minutes or so.

We then gathered together to walk across the yard for tricycle time. Anthony was a pro at the tricycles and quickly separated from me to go zooming around the track. (Some of his classmates were a little less sure of themselves.)

After tricycle time we went back to the room for hand-washing and snack which Anthony thoroughly enjoyed. We then had circle time, which he found to be a little difficult. He was great with the singing, but had a hard time sitting in his spot in the circle for story time. He ended up on a teacher's lap and that worked out just fine.

It was back to the yard for more outdoor playtime and then off to daycare for the rest of the day. He was pretty wiped out by then!

























You can't tell from the picture above, but he's clearly one of the youngest kids. His pal W is 8 days younger and they are the two youngest in the class. It showed--they looked younger and the others could all sit still. Honestly, I think sitting still is overrated. We're still going to work on it, though.

A GREAT Trip!

I really mean it, we had a great time in Colorado. Better still, we had a "better than expected time". Over the next week I'll post pictures, but here's my summary as a whole.

1. The airplane part of the trip was relatively painless thanks to the DVD player and the copy of Mary Poppins we borrowed from Claire and Robert. We had a whole collection of DVDs with us, but Anthony would ONLY watch Mary Poppins. He woke up from his nap on the airplane and 5 seconds later demanded his movie. This picture is the of Anthony and Joshua watching it together before breakfast.

For dealing with him in the airport I still wore Anthony on my back in the Ergo carrier. We experimented briefly with letting him walk with the help of the hand-holding-helper (aka leash). That was less successful. The leash keeps him from being able to run, but it doesn't temper his DESIRE to run, which means you've just got an angry kid trying to make a break for it. He likes riding in the Ergo and I like wearing him, so that worked well.

2. We stayed with Dave, Julie and Joshua. Besides the fact that they were great hosts (Thanks guys!), the house was child-proofed, filled with age-appropriate toys, had a backyard filled with more toys AND Joshua was there to play the whole time.

The best part really was watching the boys play together, they had so much fun! I'll post more about that later.

3. We only stayed 3 nights. Two would have been better. Anthony doesn't sleep as well on the road as he does at home. He also is fighting naps on principle. Each day he took a 30-40 minute car nap and that was it. Since it was a short trip he didn't get TOO overtired. The last day the lack of sleep started to show. He was difficult in the morning and downright awful when we got home.