Wednesday, September 30, 2009

School Daze

It is September, and like every September of my life, I look forward to a transformation.

This is my favorite time of year. As a child, I was ingrained with the biorhythms of the school year. New teachers, new schools, new friends all brought new challenges and triumphs. The sweet, long evenings of summer drew to a close, and new responsibilities greeted me. Growing up! Independence! New beginnings! The opportunity to remake myself, every autumn. The possibilities and the cold morning air were breathtaking.

This fall is no exception. We have new projects ahead of us. One of them is a new baby, due in May. Little Jeep will have a sister! In the meantime the Daddy Life has to shoulder a bit more housework, childcare, and energy. This is a given. Mommy Dearest has been sacked out on the couch for the last few weeks, a victim of fall colds and baby nausea. This is very exciting, of course. But the here and now demands our attention on another front.

Jeep and his Daddy enrolled in a co-op preschool this September. Preschool? For 1-year-olds? Yep. This is our third week. And it's pretty great.

I will be careful here, not to write too much about these people, these new partners in parenting our Boy. After this blog becomes famous, I am sure that some of my comments will come back to get me in trouble. For the meantime, I will say only a few things.

We are in a small classroom with a teacher and a few other parents. Seven children participate each week, in our case on Tuesday and Thursday between the hours of 9am and 1pm. The school is focused on a "play" atmosphere with plenty of activities and time outside. We are very busy during those four hours, and I would say that this sets us apart from a "daycare" situation. On Tuesdays, I am on shift as the parent helper. On Thursdays I go play golf.

Let me just say this - Jeep loves it. He has always been drawn to other children, and I felt strongly that we should provide him the opportunity for socializing with his peers as soon as possible. He was born in August, so that makes him the youngest in his class. This does not seem to be a problem.

The biggest change for The Daddy Life comes on Tuesday afternoon. We return home from preschool, Jeep has a bottle, and goes straight to bed. The Daddy Life also goes straight to bed, and is generally worthless for the rest of the afternoon. It is fricking exhausting taking care of one-year-olds. How does Octomom do it? Heh heh heh. (That was a joke~!)

After the first Tuesday, I made dinner, Mommy Dearest put the Boy to bed, and I drank all the whiskey in the house. Fortunately there wasn't very much of it. :)

Transformation, here I come! I think we're through the worst of it. Jeep is happy, I am happy, and the new baby heartbeat is cruising along at about 172 beats per minute. I love September.






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