Ben starts school tomorrow...I admit it is a day I have been looking forward to for awhile...probably since my first taste of freedom two years ago when he had his first half day of preschool. As it has approached, I have been feeling mixed feelings. Mostly because we have been trying to sell our house and it still hasn't sold and we weren't planning on him starting school at our neighborhood school at all. I didn't sign Tessa up for preschool here so we had to settle for an undesirable afternoon class at the last minute. But, here we are. I took Ben shopping for supplies last week, which I always loved when I was a kid. It was pretty annoying, much to my disappointment. We went to Wal-Mart (yeah, I know, it was a mistake) on a weekday afternoon but the aisles were still in chaos and everything was really picked over. They were out of Elmer's glue, for the love...
For Kindergarten, the kids only need basics but they could pick a pencil box of their choice. The $.98 cent specials were gone so we ended up with the considerably more expensive one:
That thing better last for a few years.
We went to back to school night last night and met his teacher and saw his seat at the table and his coat hook in the hall. I felt really clueless and I'm nervous about the logistics. For example, lunch. In my opinion, the best part of school is that his lunch is someone else's problem. After a summer of putting peanut butter on bread, slicing endless strawberries and ripping off a yogurt lid for most lunches I think he needs to expand his horizons and he doesn't like deli meat so if I packed it he would end up eating the exact same things every day. Also, I just don't feel like it. There is a lot of hysteria and drama surrounding school snacks and lunches out there and it can be found on a local level on the city FB Mom's page where 3,000 women get crazy over everything related to parenting and life in general. After being a member of this group and also following national parenting pages I have learned that nothing sets off moms more than car seat decisions and what other people feed their kids. Those school lunches aren't HEALTHY ENOUGH!!! To that I say...my kid doesn't eat anything anyway so at least I don't have to watch it get thrown away. He will love the standard school fare of breaded chicken in various forms, hamburgers and pizza. And, as is standard in most schools, peanut and other nut products are not allowed but WHAT IF MY KID ONLY EATS THAT AND HE HAS SENSORY ISSUES??? Ladies, I don't know...life threatening allergies always win, OK?
Way back in my earliest school memories my family lived in Wyoming where I recall packing a lunch based on what was on the menu that day and then I went to a school overseas that only had hot lunch once a week. When we arrived at our long term school when I was in 2nd grade and my sister was in Kindergarten my mom derailed the cold lunch train. I would too after having to pack a lunch every day in the Middle East where safe meat was impossible to come by unless you had it delivered in a frozen cargo plane from Germany and you had to bake your own bread several times a week. It was fine because no one ever brought cold lunch...like ever. No one had food allergies in the whole school (I'm sure someone got hives from strawberries or fish here or there and a friend of mine developed an allergy to corn products when we were in high but it caused rashes and stomach pain and she had an antidote she could take before eating corn and of course there were a few diabetic students and teachers but nothing was life threatening just from exposure). I won't say everything was delicious and appetizing (search: Food Service chicken chunks in gravy) but we all just rolled with it and made a sandwich and ate the side dishes. I still kind of have a thing for food service green beans. They aren't exactly bright green but they are kind of good anyway...and I love a good scoop of California blend mixed vegetables.
At the public schools here there is one main dish and an alternative option which I suppose is like the peanut butter and jelly and loaves of bread (wheat and white!) that used to sit on the counter or the salad bar when I was growing up. One of these is the Power Pack, which sounds awesome. It is a little pack with the four food groups usually consisting of a stick of cheese, some kind of fruit sauce, yogurt, sunflower seeds and other various options. TOTAL JUNK, in the opinion of many. A JOKE! Lord, I'm in trouble. (Disclaimer: I have actually seen these comments in capital letters on FB when searching for lunch and snack ideas for school. I am not exaggerating, believe it or not.)
I am also kind of stressing about whether or not Ben should ride the bus. His morning ride would only be about ten minutes which is definitely less time than it would take to get us all loaded in the car, navigate the drop off line and get away from the congested residential block where the school is. But then I wonder, what if he is the only Kindergartner on his bus? He's so little...eeeeek... It seems most people drive their kids to school. Have you accidentally passed an elementary school at the beginning or end of the day? It is chaos, with cars lined up for blocks around the school. The lady I talked to at the bus company said she had five kids and wouldn't go near the drop off and pick up lines when they were in elementary school. I kind of liked picking Ben up at preschool because I liked getting to know the other parents and I made a lot of friends there but you just sit in your car at elementary school so I probably won't be missing much. I scheduled him to start riding next week. We shall see how it goes.
Back to the back to school night...after getting the paperwork taken care of and looking around a bit we were on the way out and I saw lots of kids were on the playground so I said the kids could play for awhile. Wow did they love it. They are definitely ready for a more challenging playground. The public park playgrounds, although they look all colorful and fun, are all pretty boring when your really look at them. They all have themes (our nearest one has a castle/dragon theme) but are generally the same under all the embellishments and are mostly steps and bridges with a few shorter climbing apparatuses and relatively slow slides. The see-saws and spinning merry go rounds and "tornado slides" that were so fun when I was growing up are long gone as are most things that actually have some height to them and require any sort of dexterity or strength to navigate. There definitely aren't kids going around proving their bravery and prowess by walking across the length of the monkey bars...not that anyone ever did that...I know it all has to do with insurance and fearing being sued but kids miss it. Every single time we are at the castle park kids are pushing the limits. The main stairs to the bridges is shaped like giant dragon and kids are always climbing up and standing on its head which is the highest point of the playground. Of course they are. They want to do the most dangerous thing.
Well, school playgrounds, while still relatively safe, are much higher and they have a lot more diverse equipment. Ben and Tessa immediately started going all "American Ninja Warrior" and I saw a nice older girl rescue Tessa from a precarious position a few times.
She was OK with this spider web thing though. She'll learn soon enough not to climb up high like that in a dress!
Milo was going crazy which drove me crazy. I looked at my phone for one second (I know, I know, I should have been in the moment!) and he used that second to climb a ten foot ladder to the biggest tube slide on the playground. An actual ladder, with widely spaced rungs going straight up. By the time I got to him he was already at the top and he shot right down the slide and went right back for more. Aye carumba. Kid, if you have a pacifier in your mouth you're probably too young for it!
Well, enough of this. I shouldn't be spending my last afternoon with Ben at home sitting at the computer. He wants to go outside and play with a Frisbee. Yay...my favorite. Then I will have to load up his backpack for tomorrow. I took it out of his closet and discovered it still full of papers from his last day of preschool. It also was full of sand from the playground there. Three months can really fly by!
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