Long time, no post...

Ok, I know, it’s been forever since I’ve posted. I keep thinking about and putting it off. But I’m at work today and my mind is wandering, so I decided to catch up on some of the blogs that I used to read; that inspired me to post something. Well, the biggest thing that has happened since my last post is that Brayden started Kindergarten. Remember this post?? Well after a lot of thought, we did decide to keep him in a Pre-K program for one more year. The pediatrician recommended waiting simply because he was a boy and so close to the cut-off, my co-workers said to wait, and my fellow bloggers said to wait…so we waited. We didn’t base our decision solely on everyone’s opinion, but they were definetly a factor. We did however choose to put him into a new preschool, one that was more academically challenging. A few days into the new program, he began to have some major behavioral problems. This was new to us; we had never once been told he was behaving badly at the old school. In hindsight, that’s probably because they let them run around like banshees all day anyway. So we would address it with him and things would get better for a day or so and then he’d have a rough couple of days again. At first, I thought it was because it was a new school and a lot more structure than he was used to. Well, 3 weeks into it, his new teacher called me and asked if my husband and I could come meet with her. So we went the next day expecting to hear that she was expelling him or something. But, it actually turned about to be a great meeting. Her first question was “who told you to keep him from going to kindergarten this year”. We explained how we had come to that decision and she basically told use (in the nicest way possible) that in her opinion (as a teacher for the past 20 years) that we had made the wrong decision. She said that he was so smart and well beyond where he needed to be to start Kindergarten. She said that she felt like the bad behavior stemmed from being bored. She said he would finish his “work” within 5 minutes of sitting at the table. Therefore he was left to twiddle his thumbs while everyone else finished. Well I’m sure you can imagine how long a 5 year old boy can sit still and keep to himself. She said that he would try but that after 15 minutes or so he was going nuts just sitting there. She said that she was willing to let him stay and that she would try to give him more advanced work, but that he was way beyond the other children and would probably struggle all year and maybe even regress. That was on a Wednesday. We thought about it for a while, but I think my husband and I both immediately knew what we needed to do. So I registered him the next day and he started Kindergarten on that Friday. He only missed 3 weeks, and his new teacher said that he would have no problem catching up. Well we are on week 3 and he LOVES it. His behavior has been great (well except for one little mishap on his third day that almost involved the police – more on that later). He is excelling and has already learned so much in this short amount of time. I got an email from his teacher today and it said, among other things, “I really enjoy having him in class, he’s very entertaining! He’s also very quick to learn what I am teaching and he enjoys learning as well.” I’m so proud if him. He’s becoming such a big boy and continues to amaze me everyday.

Stayed tuned – I know I have a lot more stories and Braydenism’s from the last few months that need to be posted before my memory reaches capacity. I’ve just got to do some brainstorming first and dig them all up.