new blog and new preschool

Hi everyone, I've just created this blog to keep family and friends informed about what the Rains are up to (since I've been so bad at calling/emailing/writing lately).

Today was C's first day of preschool! We had taken him to meet his teacher a few days earlier, he'd seen the classroom a few times before too so he'd be familiar with the toys and layout, but today was the first test. It was an orientation day, (so ran 9:20 - 10:50 instead of until 11:50 like on a regular day). Sarah and I walked him over, and I stayed with him in the classroom most of the time, going out for a few minutes at a time here and there to give him a chance to ease into being there without any parents. The assistant teacher paid special attention to him, especially during those periods, which helped. When I wasn't in the classroom, I watched through the 2-way mirror to see how he was doing. He was fine as long as there was something involving (like when the teacher read a story for example), and knowing that I'd "be back soon."

At one point while I was in the hall they lined the kids up and took them down the hall to the bathroom as a group to wash hands and such. I had been gone several minutes before they left, and they were down the hall for 10 min. or more. When the group came back he had obviously been crying at least briefly. Otherwise he seemed to do reasonably well, but that was with me in the room where he could see me the majority of the time.

The real test will come Monday, his next day of school (and first full day). We don't plan to stay at all on Mon. He'll be going Mon, Tue, Thurs for now, and still going to Sarah's mom (aka Nana)'s house on Wed. for the time being. The class is also held Wed.'s though, so we're going to try and switch Nana's day to Fridays and see how he does with that, but only if he gets through the first couple of weeks OK.

I think he's somewhat relieved that the first day is over, and maybe the axiety and anticipation of the unknown was worse than the actual event. But I wish the schedule wasn't such that he has to wait almost a week until he has school again, may lose any ground we gained today...

all for now,
-Dan