Counting down to preschool

I have felt a resurgence in crafting and kid projects in the last few weeks.  Not only have I done a few projects to get Zaxxon ready for preschool, and just some fun stuff to do in general, but I've found myself making plans for Kal'El once Zaxxon is out of the house for a few hours every morning.  I've already done some prep work for the first few crafts I'll do with Kal'El alone, and I'm looking forward to it.  Zaxxon was right around Kal'El's age when I started crafting with him, and Kal'El always wants to join in when Zaxxon initiates a project, so he's definitely ready.  I'm excited!

But first, we have to follow along with Zaxxon for a bit longer.

Zaxxon is off to pre-K this year, which will be five mornings a week.  He only barely misses the cutoff to start kindergarten (by three weeks) but I think the extra year of preschool will work wonders for his social skills.

Just like last summer, I helped prepare Zaxxon for the start of preschool by making a visual calendar.

We drew a school bus, which Zaxxon decorated and cut out.

Then we made a paper chain, with one link for every day remaining before the start of preschool.  This time around, Zaxxon didn't need any help with the scissors.

He did ask for help with the stapler, and I think he was losing interest by that point.

But we had to finish the chain, because only once it was done could we tear off a link for the first day!

He is now tearing off a link every morning, so he can watch the chain get shorter and know when preschool is coming!

Soon to be tot school with my little tot!

Prepping for Preschool

So if you read this earlier September post, you know that our preschool situation blew up in our faces.  Long story short, the place we selected ultimately was not able to handle Zaxxon's food allergy needs because the program itself was not licensed or certified--even though they'd promised me months earlier that the could handle everything.  We'd thought that they would be able to get things sorted out, but they're not going to be able to do that until they get licensed, which could take months or a year.  Hubby and I were extremely pissed off about all this, but we pulled together, looked at other programs, and thanks to the flux of children that usually occurs at the beginning of the school year, we were able to find Zaxxon another position and he started this week.  (The new school IS properly licensed and certified, by the way.  Not making that mistake twice.)

The diaper really hit the fan regarding preschool back on September 10th, which was the day before Zaxxon was supposed to start school.  If you're at all familiar with this age group, you know that you can't just spring a big change on a little kid and expect them to be okay with it.  Zaxxon knew he was about to start preschool--I wasn't going to just drop him off on the first day, say "you're going to stay here for the morning, I'll see you in a few hours," and then leave.  That would be absurd.  Kids need help with transitions.  To that end, we did this craft to help him count down to the big event.

The countdown chain we made to prepare for our trip to Disney worked really well, so Zaxxon and I made another one for school.  The idea is we were making a visual calendar.  Zaxxon would tear off a link of the chain every day, and he could see the chain getting shorter, telling him how much time was left before school started.

Zaxxon is getting exceptionally talented at crafts.  He did a LOT of this one by himself.  He cut about two-thirds of the links by himself before he got tired of using the scissors

He even used my scissors for some of them--and did it so fast that he made me nervous, but he performed fine

He decorated a school bus to hang at the top of the chain.  He won't be riding a bus this year, but it's still a major symbol.

Lastly, we glued the chain together.  Zaxxon did not want to use a glue stick this time, but he tends to go overboard on white glue and I don't like letting him use it.  I found a good compromise online--I put white glue in a shot glass and gave him some q-tips.  He dipped the q-tips in the glue and used that to apply--and it kept the mess much more contained.  We'll definitely be using this tactic again!  He probably made about half of the chain by himself before he wanted me to take over.

I forgot to take a picture of this until the chain was nearly gone (we started almost a month before school was supposed to start.)

After all this, I was very unhappy about the prospect of telling my child that, after all his prep, he wasn't going to school after all.  Hubby and I eventually ended up babysitting the preschool for a week.  We took turns sitting in the hall outside the preschool room with Zaxxon's medication handy just in case so Zaxxon could go to school.  It wasn't a long-term solution, and as such only lasted that week before we learned that they wouldn't be able to get it together, but at least Zaxxon wasn't deprived of his carefully-planned first day.

The following week he simply didn't attend (and he was sick for half the week anyway) and by week three we had found our new program, so things worked out in the end.  He took to the transition to the new place better than I had expected.  We simply told him the old place didn't have a safe place to keep his allergy medicine, so we had to find a school that did have a safe place.  He wanted to see that safe place (and we showed him where they keep it) and he hasn't been at all concerned about the change otherwise.

Zaxxon's been doing really great at the new place, and we're happy with where we ended up.  It's one more day per week than we'd planned on (three instead of two) but he likes going there.  They have lots of TOYS for him to play with.  In fact, it's less structured than the other place--he's allowed to do whichever activity he wants and comes and goes as he pleases for a good portion of the day, whereas the other place told him "you need to be at this activity center now."  While he often needs direction, he'll probably flourish better when he gets to call more of the shots.  He acted up a bit more at home this week, but that's to be expected with a big transition.
Through all of this, I didn't even really get the chance to feel nostalgic about my baby starting school--I've been too preoccupied and distracted.  Hubby felt it a bit though.  On the first day at Zaxxon's old school, Hubby kept saying "He's not old enough for this, is he?"  And this is a big transition.  He's moving away from us.  But he's having a lot of fun doing it!

From his real first day of school

Chaos

Chaos.  That would be an accurate descriptor for my life right now.  Zaxxon started preschool this week, only things aren't going as planned.  Just over a month ago, I found out that the program we had chosen wasn't licensed, and also wasn't certified to administer emergency medication--which is a big deal since Zaxxon has food allergies.  I'd been told months previously (February, to be specific) that they could easily accommodate food allergies, that they'd done it before, that the director had food allergies herself, etc, etc.  It never occurred to me to ask whether they were actually certified to do it--and therefore legally allowed to (we've got some dumb laws in this country--oops, you're dying but I'm not legally allowed to help you because you might sue me and say I was assaulting you, even though I saved your life.  Sorry.)

This all came to light because the director of the preschool program took another job, so somebody else got shunted into the position temporarily.  The new guy realized things weren't being done according to state law, and was trying to align everything.

Okay, fine (after I calmed down from my mommy-sized tantrum.)  So could they get certified?  I got the impression that he'd been hoping I would just go away and stop making an abstract issue come to life in front of him.  But since I didn't, he agreed, after talking to his boss, that they'd get certified for emergency medication.  They assured me that they'd have it covered by the first day of school.

Good.  I took them at their word, and proceeded to help Zaxxon get prepared, on all levels, to start going somewhere else a few days per week.

Fast forward to this Monday, September 10th, the day before preschool was supposed to start (yes, for some reason our program started really late.)  I get a phone call from the interim director saying that the teachers had taken the medication class and passed it, but that there was a nurse inspection element of getting their program certified which they hadn't been able to get done because their entire program wasn't licensed, and the state wasn't going to do that for an unlicensed program--so they couldn't accept my child at preschool the next day.

Excuse me, what?

Cue mommy-sized tantrum that completely dwarfs the previous one. Probably dwarfs anything I've done before.  I am not a confrontational person.  I tend to withdraw into a shell when debates and arguments are going on, but I told this guy exactly how upset it made me to have him call THE DAY BEFORE school starts, after all other programs are already underway, and tell me that I can't bring my kid in.  Was he saying Zaxxon couldn't come at all, or that they'd get it taken care of eventually?  He hoped they'd get it taken care of, but he was having difficulty getting ahold of the right people with the state to find out exactly where they stand and how they can proceed.  When would he know something?  He said he'd call me the next day, but that Zaxxon couldn't start.

The colossal inappropriateness of that timing still galls me.

Hours later, after tears, talks, commiseration, and much emotional turmoil (and all without even telling Zaxxon that school was cancelled yet) Hubby had an idea:  would they let Zaxxon come to class if one of us stayed on the premises?  I got ahold of the director the next morning, with less than an hour to go, and he agreed that staying was a good solution for the time being.

So Zaxxon still got to go to his first day, and his first week.  In fact, he never knew why Mama was so upset.  Nor did he know that I (and the second time, Hubby) stayed at his school, because I didn't want him to think that there was anything to be scared of at school.

But now things are in perpetual limbo.  The director is obviously frustrated with trying to get this sorted out--he's not getting calls back from key people and is warning us that things probably won't happen at the speed anybody wants.  And speed is my biggest concern right now, now that they're cooperating.  This is not a long-term solution--we don't want to spend three hours a day, twice a week, puttering around outside Zaxxon's classroom, overhearing the preschool activities while writing or doing other projects.  Not for any real length of time.

I like the teacher, I like what I've overheard of the program, but the way it's being run is not helping us.  I've begun a little preliminary looking at other programs in the area--all of which have started, but which sometimes end up with vacancies during the normal flux at the beginning of the year.  One program, which comes highly recommended from several friends, has a lot of quirks about its own scheduling--although their licensing and certification is 100% in order.  I'm reminded of the phrase "beggars can't be choosers," but this will also be a big part of our year, and I want it to fit with our life.

I never thought I'd have to be the parent to fight for my child's rights and safety at school.  I thought that was done already, and that I'd covered my bases months ago by selecting a preschool that had the right policies in place.  Silly me.  Naive me, really.  I didn't know specifically what I should be asking for.  I guess as parents, we walk the path we have to walk when it's necessary.

In addition to all of this, regular life goes on, and if I want to participate in the GUTGAA pitch contest, I've got less than 12 hours to polish my pitch.  And by polish, I mean write the dang thing.  It's halfway written in my head, but for some reason I've been dragging my heels on this pitch for years.  That's part of why I joined GUTGAA, to force myself to pick up those feet.  And now I'll have to deprive myself of sleep to do it.  Ah, life.  (You'll notice I'm blogging instead of pitching.)  Wish me luck.

See?  Would you want to disappoint this child on his first day of school?  He'd been counting down to it for a month!

Zoom!

We asked our family to pitch in and get Zaxxon an early birthday gift this summer, because we wanted him to have a bike and have the chance to ride it during the right season.  The family came through in spades, and so we got Zaxxon this wicked awesome Balance Bike!

It's a Mini Glider by Glide Bikes.  The principle of these bikes is that pedaling isn't hard to learn, yet that's all a kid really masters with traditional training wheels.  Take them off and the child still doesn't know how to balance.  Balance bikes have no pedals (and no training wheels.)  The child moves it along with his/her feet, learning how to balance as they go.  As they gain confidence, they pick up speed and will take their feet off the ground and glide, just like on a normal bike.  Supposedly, they'll transition to a normal bike with little effort once they have the balancing down.  These things are supposed to be all the rage in Europe, and are just emerging here in the U.S.

Well, I can't speak to the long-term effects yet, but Zaxxon has taken to this thing like a fish to water.  We've had it for less than two weeks and he's already zooming around, gliding, pretending he's going to run into things (and not always actually stopping in time,) and going so fast that we have to either jog to keep up or tell him to stop and wait.  I'm probably going to get a cheap bike trailer soon so we can pack Kal'El along and go for family bike rides.

These things come in metal or wood.  We thought metal would take a lot more abuse than wood, so went with that.  This particular model had two things we also liked, and was the only metal brand that had both.  1) It's got a hand brake, so he has a means of stopping other than his feet.  Traditional kids bikes brake by pushing backwards on the pedals, and since this thing has no pedals... 2) It's got foot pegs, so once he regularly takes his feet off the ground, he's got somewhere to rest them--and they're in roughly the same place as pedals will be, training him to put his feet in the right place.

We all love this bike.  If I were reviewing it, I'd give it five stars.  It's wonderful.  We have gone for walks/rides nearly every evening since this thing came into our lives (it's too hot in Colorado to take it out in the middle of the day right now.)

Zaxxon loves his bike.  It ROCKS!

Three ER trips in 3.5 Years. Oh, and March Stat Check

On Friday night, Zaxxon dropped his cat piano on his bare foot in the kitchen, which popped the toenail off his big toe.  Man, did the poor kid cry!  Of course, after calming him slightly and examining the injury, we knew we needed a doctor to look at it.  So off we went to the ER.

They removed the last piece of nail that was hanging on, did and x-ray to see if he had a fracture (he didn't,) dressed it, and sent us on our way.  The worst part was the lydocaine they administered to numb his toe before removing the rest of the nail.  Have you ever had that stuff?  I have, when I sliced my foot open when I was maybe 14.  I felt like somebody was taking a razor blade and cutting my wound deeper.  Zaxxon took that about as well as any three-year-old:  by shrieking at the top of his lungs.  Poor guy.  He's already feeling a good deal better, though he's limping around.  He's discovered that he can skip sideways, though, which means he can move at nearly the same speed with which he usually runs around the house.

This makes the third trip to the ER that Zaxxon has taken.  He aspirated a piece of carrot just over two months ago, and that earned him not only a trip to the ER but also an overnight stay, though thankfully no surgery--he managed to cough it up on his own, and only stayed for observation.  His first trip was when he was only twelve days old.  It was election day--his due date--and I awoke in a panic realizing that it had been nearly seven hours since he'd eaten, and why hadn't he woken up?  I woke him and started nursing him, and then he had a seizure.  Or at least, it sure looked like a seizure.  The best suggestion (made by the nurse I talked to before arriving) was that it could have been a seizure induced by low blood sugar because of how long it had been since he'd eaten.  But blood sugar levels had reached normal by the time they tested him.  Since they were unable to find any reason for him having a seizure at the ER, they made all sorts of suggestions as to what it could have been.  The doctor even had the audacity to suggest it might have been hiccups.  I mean c'mon, I know what hiccups look like!  This was jerking and eyes rolling up into his head.  The doctor was more concerned with his failure to gain weight, which turned out to be a vicious cycle of not eating enough, and therefore not having enough energy to eat, which was why he slept so long without waking me for a feeding.  Nothing like that kind of situation to welcome one into motherhood!

With so many ER visits, we're starting to wonder if Zaxxon is going to be accident-prone.  Kal'El has managed to stay out so far (except as a passenger when his brother goes.)  This certainly makes for hair-raising evenings--and he always seems to need to go at dinnertime.  At least this year.  Having kids sure keeps you on your toes.

The culprit.  Look at that mischievous grin

Anyway, it's the first, and that means Stat Check day:

During the month of March, I wrote/edited on all 31 days
I edited my novel and began planning another
I made no submissions
I received 5 rejections
I have 12 (well, 4) stories currently in slush pile circulation
I made 8 blog posts
I took no days off

Analysis:
This was a somewhat ho-hum writing month, with the only landmark being that a new idea gripped me by the brain and didn't let me loose until I started writing it down--which also means that I've paused editing the novel.  But I'll probably write more about that in a different post.

Submission wise, I feel like I'm falling flat.  I had five stories come back to me in six days (not to mention three that I never got resubbed from the end of February), and because there are a lot of things I've been trying to get done recently, I haven't been able to muster the energy to get them resubbed.  I'm hoping to get caught up on that again soon, sometime in April, but it's always disheartening when they pounce on me all at once like that.  Life should get a bit easier come mid-April, so hopefully I can get my head back above water.

Happy April Fool's Day everybody (and no, Zaxxon's ER trip wasn't a fool.  Wish it was.)

This is how Zaxxon sees the world

As I was getting ready to make play dough the other day, Zaxxon started playing with the camera.  I was amused by many of his shots, and thought I'd share.

(I think I was wearing this same shirt the last time I let him take pictures)

(I like the way he captured the sky and trees on this one)

Kind of puts life in a different perspective, doesn't it?

Kid Crafts - Letter G and miscellaneous

"Five Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate..."  This is the only Halloween craft we did this year, due to long periods of inactivity again.  We did this on the fly, on Halloween itself.  Thankfully, it was easy to cut the shapes out and let him have at it.  We pasted them to a paper gate when they were all "carved."

Hubby painted a pumpkin to look like the superhero (villain?) Rorschach, and Zaxxon was fascinated by this, so I showed him how to make his own inkblot pictures.  He used eyedroppers to drop watered-down paint onto a paper...

...folded them over...

...and looked at the finished product.  He sees butterflies.

After Halloween, we briefly got back into the alphabet by introducing the letter "G."  He already knew this one because of Grammy, Grandpa, and Great Grandma, but now I've formally introduced it, along with a slew of other G words.

G is for Grapes.  I don't quite remember where I originally saw this craft.  It might have been Diapers to Diplomas.  At any rate, he painted a cut-up egg carton purple, and we made it into a bunch of grapes.

He cut out the stem himself, and insisted on using his zigzag scissors for it.

G is for gorilla.  I had it in my head that the letter G kind of looks like a squatting gorilla, so I tried to help Zaxxon recreate that.  I did several things wrong--I should have altered the shape of the G somewhat, and reversed the gorilla body parts before printing them.  Oh well, he still enjoyed it.



I've finally caught up on our backlog of crafts, therefore if we don't do any crafts this week, I won't have anything to report next weekend.  (Perhaps that will encourage me--although Christmas activities are already encouraging me.)  I'm linking up at tot school again.

Happy Third Birthday Zaxxon!

Zaxxon has been three for a month now--I think it is high time I post some pictures to celebrate.

This year's theme was Toy Story.  I didn't do anything as involved as last year's favors and cakes.  The cupcakes still match the theme--they're the Toy Story aliens--but I didn't have to cut them to shape this time.

After a bit of free play, the kids played a couple of Toy Story games.  Pin the sheriff badge on Woody

And a Mr. Potato Head felt board.  I put this one together myself, based on the idea that kids LOVE the felt boards at library story time, so I was pretty sure they'd be eager to participate.  I was excited that the kids are old enough to play a few party games this year.

We served up lunch and then CAKE!

He's a neater eater than last year, but still made a bit of a mess

The party favors were shaped like Buzz Lightyear's spaceship.  These boxes were tinier than we'd expected from the picture, but they at least fit everything.

So we now have a three-year-old in the house.  It's been a fun age so far, however I do think he's more stubborn than he was at two.  His tantrums are worse, but he's also growing so much as a person and learning to communicate so much better.  His imagination continues to expand as well.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON!!!

Kiddie Crafts - Shapes and Other Odds and Ends

Time for more of the crafts Zaxxon and I have done!  These took place in September and October.

Hubby had a big birthday in September, so I had Zaxxon help me prepare.  Making wrapping paper by stamping shapes in paint.

Lacing a "Happy Birthday Dada" banner

We then took a pretty long break, and got back into the swing of things with a project "D is for drum."

Zaxxon is really good with colors, counting, and many letters, but I discovered that he was a bit shaky on shapes.  Therefore, we did a few shape projects.  First, sorting shapes

Creating a scene out of shapes

Cutting shapes out (also good scissors practice--he's getting really good at doing it by himself)

Tracing shapes.  I've only just begun seeing whether he can imitate things like this.

Making play dough with a friend.  We did both black and orange for Halloween, which turned out to be not so great of an idea.  The black pigment was so strong, it quickly overwhelmed the orange while the children were playing with them.  Oh well, I know better for next time.

Another longish break, and then Zaxxon's third birthday was approaching!  I tried to help him understand the seasons and the year by making this season wheel.

This was an impromptu project.  We checked this book out from the library, The Line Up Book by Marisabina Russo, in which a little boy named Sam makes a line of toys from his room to the kitchen.

We read it several times, and then decided to make our own line.

I might possibly catch up with our crafts after another post or two.  That would feel good!




I'm linking up at Tot School.  Check them out for craft and schooling ideas for young children!