My babies

My sweet darling little boy, the Prince, is old enough to start kindergarten in the fall. Having a summer birthday, however, gives him the option to wait a year... Hubby thinks he'd be fine in kindergarten (so does the Prince!) but mean mom over here would rather not push him. I'd rather let him wait one more year, give him a little more time to become socially and emotionally ready (intellectually, he is ready). His Pre-K preschool teachers say that either way would be fine for him; and supported my decision to take the lesser-known route: Optional/Developmental Kindergarten. I've heard it called both (around here, the one public school that offers it calls it optional; the private schools call it developmental). We applied in October for open enrollment and he will be attending the Optional Kindergarten program next year. It is a half-day program, to prepare the children for kindergarten the following year. It isn't as academically pushy as the kindergartens are these days, and I feel very good about this decision.

The school where he'll be going has 2 days of screening in the spring, where the kids go and spend one morning and one afternoon at the kindergarten. They are photographed and observed, then the teachers sit down and discuss the children and their development. At the end of this process, the teachers make recommendations as to which students would be best served with a year of optional kindergarten. Today the prince is at the afternoon session of this screening, tomorrow morning he'll go to the morning session. I don't know if they'll call us and recommend the optional year or not, because I specifically told them that I want him to participate in it.

It was harder than I expected, taking my little man to the kindergarten today. He slept fitfully last night, until I figured out that he was nervous about going to the new school today. We talked about it- he cried- and I think we got him calmed down. He slept much better the rest of the night, and seemed excited about going today. Poor guy was really nervous about the new situation, I was sad/amazed/proud that I was sending him to kindergarten... I can't believe that he's already so big!




In other news, miss princess is quite the sneaky thing. I had cough drops on my nightstand- she loves coughdrops!- she was in our room a few nights ago, trying to avoid sleep. She slid down off my bed, grabbed a coughdrop, and ran. "That stinker!" I thought, and went into my bathroom to find her... it'd sounded like she ran into the bathroom. Anyway, I went in there- nothing. I peeked into my closet (which is entered through the bathroom), still nothing. I search the whole upstairs- where the heck is that girl!?!

Back to the closet, turn on the light and open the door fully.... she's sitting around the corner, behind the door, hiding and eating the coughdrop! I'd never known her to hide before, and she did a very good job with it- the little sneak! LOL