First Day of School!!!

As if there were not enough changes in life right now, today was the first day of school for Adrien! Yeah, he's been to day-care, but this is school --- way more structure, more rules, games that contain surreptitious educational value, and big kids! Adrien has been very excited about school for the past from months (maybe even 6 months...but he was not sufficiently reliable with the potty to start early --- yeah, our child is a urinary under-achiever...but he is exceptional at everything else...and even has a pee-pee-on-the-potty dance). Well, today he finally got to try it out!

The first day of school is a bit of a stressful - if exciting - event. Nobody slept super well the night before...Adrien had some nervous energy that kept him tossing and turning...and we woke up at 6:45am (thanks Adrien!). Adrien got the whole entourage coming for the first day - Mommy, Papa, Grandma-Pam, and Aliena (no room for the cats...but they probably would not have enjoyed it anyways). Of course, he proceeded to ignore us as soon as we got to school (see...he is advanced - already acting like a teenager). It started with a sprint across the parking lot to the school, a brief pause to hang up his bag, and then straight to the cars, tool chest (they're plastic, don't worry), etc... You can't tell, but in that bag there is the mandatory school equipment for kindergarten: a cup, a box of kleenex, a painting smock, a face towel, and a larger hand towel all labeled with is name on it. The excess of towels does make me wonder which day is water-fight day - and if parents are invited (that's one crowd I think I can compete with...). The first day - and probably the first few weeks or months - were a half day, so we picked up Adrien at noon. They gave me Adrien's notebook in which the teachers will write what they did that week and we can write what we did on the weekend to help the teachers with communication exercises (as in, helping the kids tell stories and talk...not for  helping the teachers to practice their own communication skills at an adult level). In true French style, the back of the notebook is designated for official administrative paperwork to be passed back and forth -- although I was a bit surprised that the Admin side of things didn't get its own (bigger) notebook.

I think the first day went pretty well - although they said that at one point Adrien was asking for Mommy and Papa. From what I can gather through Adrien's jumble of stories about the day, I think he wanted to play something other than the planned activity, and decided he would rather go home than do the same thing as the other kids. Its sort of the same technique as when he asks for a bon-bon (candy), I say no, then he moves on to see if Mom will have a different answer (usually not...whew!). In any case, Adrien did seem quite excited about school the rest of the day - which may have contributed to the nap-strike (as in "hell-no-I-won't-go") - and seems ready to go again tomorrow. From his stories, we learned that he got to paint, play with cars, sing songs, and that they had girls there (which he repeated quite a few times...making me think that must be a big draw for him).

Not too much other news really - Aliena is sticking to her routine of eat, sleep, poop, and she has added a new skill called 'cry'. It seems the problem might be that she gets bad gas (I think she gets that from her mom's side - but others might have a different theory...which is much less believable) and she has a hard time getting it out (see, told you she didn't take after me!). As a consequence, we have been obliged to do much more rocking, bouncing, and baby-burrito-ing (swaddling) to keep her calm than the first week. At times, she also hits information overload, and a quiet (i.e. not next to her brother) room with much less information to absorb seems to do the trick. WOW - all these things we had forgotten about in the three years since Adrien was a wee-sprout!

Adrien has been getting more used to having a sibling and seems (a little) less needing of added attention than last week. We got a nice visit from our friends Sylvie and Lucyle who now live far away, as well as the steady stream of neighbors stopping by to see then new Cescautoise (someone from Cescau; population: 67). Each has been very thoughtful and brought a little something for Adrien as well as for Aliena. Its great to have Grandma-Pam here to help out with the kid-juggle as we try to make sure that Aliena gets fed, cuddled, and rocked and Adrien gets to be fed, cuddled, and have a playmate to do puzzles or crash cars (toy ones...he can't drive real ones...yet). Grandma-Pam also seems to have an endless supply of little things to wrap so that Adrien is still getting small special presents on most days! Tonight he got monster pajamas that he showed off with a good monster roar. He even wanted to put them on himself - I helped with the top and he did the "down-theres" all on his own. Actually, Adrien has been working on his cool-kid look recently (knit hat and headphones) -- while adding his own twist (no pants....that's just how he rolls!).