Preschool Tears

Conner had his first day at Mother-day-out today at our church. He is going to go once a week this fall. After our fail last spring I was a little nervous, but he has been happy during church the last couple months in the same room, so I had my hopes that all would go well. We even went out and bought a backpack just like Lexi's, so he would be excited about going to school like her. We got there this morning, and he proudly hung up his backpack on his hook, walked through the gate, waved bye-bye, and went outside to play. Job accomplished...

...well, not exactly. I went to hand in forms and pay the first check. I then walked out to the car feeling excited about a couple hours to myself. I rounded the corner of the church to pull out of the parking lot, and I caught sight of Conner crying at the gate on the playground. He then proceeds to point at my van as soon as he spies me, and runs along the gate as I drove by until he got to the end of the gate and then just held on and shook it. The entire time crying his eyes out. Of course, this left me sobbing as I left the parking lot with that image in my head. I felt like the worst mom for ditching my kid, even though I know this transition is good for him in the long run.

When I picked him up, he was still crying a little bit. They said he didn't cry the whole time, but did on and off. He did sit in circle for story time, ate his snack (apparently several snacks, which didn't surprise me), and even did his art project with no tears. So, I guess okay for a first day, but we'll hope the several weeks to come see improvement and no tears (from both of us!).

Back to School

Lexi had her first day back at preschool today. She is in the pre-kindergarten classroom that has two teachers...her teacher Mrs. Natalie from last year and Mrs. Laura, both of whom are great. Brian took off the first hour of work to see her off, and the praises and excitement from all the staff and therapists was awesome. They couldn't believe the progress she had made over the summer. Neither can we, and we hope it just continues now that she's back at school. She will get four sessions of speech therapy there and two with our private speech path, and we're hoping the six sessions a week of speech therapy will hopefully do the trick to keep progress going!