First day of school!!

So it's not really school school but it's ECFE (early childhood family education). Like I said my last post, it's a "class" for 12 to 24 month olds and it's basically time to get together with other kids and play.

So today was the big day. We got to class and the first half of class was mommy-child playtime with everyone in the big room. The teacher said to "follow his lead and let him lead you to what he's interested in". Okay....so I put name tags on us (which he promptly tore off and wouldn't wear) and set him down. He stares at the other kids and moms playing, looks up at me like, "are you serious?" He takes my hand and abruptly turns us around and leads us to the door. HAHAHAH. He was like, we're outta here, Mom! But once I brought him back in and we started playing with trucks, he was fine. We moved around, played with blocks, climbed on the climber set etc. The youngest child was 12 months and the oldest was 24 months. Ryder was one of the youngest of the 12 or so kids there, and most were 21-24 months. He wasn't really into playing with other kids (shocker), and he wasn't that thrilled when I was zooming cars back and forth with another little boy (also a shocker). But he did better than I thought he would. He wasn't the naughtiest either! There was one little bully that was pushing and kicking kids and even took a rain stick toy and cracked a kid in the back of the head with it (glad I wasn't his mom...she was a tad embarrassed to say the least!)

Anyways, the second half of the class was "mommy circle time" or some kind of crap like that, while the kids had a snack and played together on the other half of the room. I put Ryder at the table with all the other kids and gave him his sippy cup and his kix cereal and headed to circle time. I could see him across the room and I was trying so hard to listen to the other moms blab about themselves and their kids and not laugh at Ryder. He was looking around at all the other kids eating their snacks and drinking their sippy cups. He was trying to copy what they were doing...he looked so confused as to what he should be doing. After about five minutes he started looking up at the other teachers/adults that were with them and he was searching for me. Finally he spotted me across the room and he screeched, ran across the room and through the mom circle and dove into my lap. While the rest of the kids played together, Ryder sat with the moms (he was one of three kids who decided they were not going to leave Mommy's side). With about ten minutes left to go (after he had been lying practically in the middle of the circle staring at me all worn out and overly stimulated) he started to cry. He came over to me, laid his head on my shoulder and wept. So I decided it was time to leave a few minutes early because he had had enough :)

Like I said, overall I think he did WAY better than I thought he would do. I had two fears: the first was one that he was going to be the bully (which he wasn't) and the second fear was that he would cry the whole time and want to leave (which he didn't). So I'd say it was a successful first week of school!!

When we got home, I couldn't help but notice he was very happy to be back at home with just Ryder and Mommy together. He will have a rude awakening when this baby comes in March and interferes with that! haha.