Boy Two Goes to School

Boy Two attended his first day of ‘summer’ school on Monday.

Two years ago when Boy One did the same thing there was tears and hiding under the tables and refusing to participate/talk to anyone, much less his parents when we came to pick him up after two hours were over. You’d think we had sent him to school to punish him!

What a different story with this child! Boy Two has been talking about school for, oh, two years now. He has paid close attention to everything that Boy One has done and literally knows EVERYTHING about being in kindergarten – and likes to share this knowledge.

He carefully picked out his ‘school clothes’ to wear and readily sacrificed sandals for much more conservative socks and tennis shoes (because that is what school kids wear). He ran ahead of us all the way to school and only hesitated when we got inside and all the teachers and helpers exclaimed how excited they were that Boy Two was old enough for school! And getting so tall! And they were so excited to have him!

Boy One (in terrific big brother fashion) guided him down the hall with a hand on his shoulder til we got to class. From there, he performed as if he had been doing this all his life: finding his name on the board as well as what seat what assigned to him, writing his name on his paper and filling the worksheet with perfect ‘2’s, raising his hand for teacher, etc. We tried to keep Boy One out of the limelight since this was not technically a day for him to shine, so we left early and came back two hours later to pick up Boy Two.

Here’s his summation of the day:
“We had little teddy bear snacks! Yellow ones and brown ones. But I had RED ones! And we read a book. And, Mommy, I got to be the HOT DOG! Yeah! See my sticker? No, Ms. Johnson say I need to keep it on my shirt. And we line up and Sam get to be first and we walk quiet like little mice to the toilet and I don’t have to use the toilet so I sit out here like this and we go out to the playground. But it not the fire truck playground. No. It the pirate playground. And I go down the slide! And the kids get their hands all in paint and it go squish like that and on the backpacks! But Sam not do the paint. No. Its gross. And we sang the POPCORN song! And I go like this and then I POP like this! And then we wait for you but you not coming! Yeah. And, I, …..*sigh* never mind, let’s just go.”

There you have it! A first day of school.