Big changes in the family

There have been some big changes in our family this fall. Besides me going back to school, as in working, J started preschool. Little Lights Playschool is a Waldorf-based, 10 kid, in-home preschool where J gets to make bread, be creative, play, read books, and practice being a little being. Olde gets two days with just Aram or at least a few hours for two days with just baby and happily reports how much easier it is with just one kid at his side.

check out the smile on his first day of preschool

As parents of a first child to go to preschool it has been hard for us to let go a bit. There are times when we doubt our decision to put him in preschool, like when he came home 3 days in a row and told us one of the girls had been hitting him or when the teacher told us that J needs to learn to play being a nice superhero (not a mean one) or not act like Hulk (which was scaring some of the kids). But just as Olde and I get ready to talk to the teacher about these types of incidents J reports that that same girl is his girlfriend, or he raises his hand at the dinner table to talk, or he tells us he has to go wash his hands before he eats, or that he now wants to wear his big boy underwear like the other kids at preschool, so we decide that really it was the right decision to allow him to have his own thing every week, were he learns to sort out the kid world among his peers and learns the flow of working in a group in a "school" setting. The bottom line is that us parents are the ones struggling with the idea that our son is growing up, not him.