Kindergartener

Raf had his first day of kindergarten this past Monday. The time has been moving so fast these past couple of years, so suddenly having a school aged child caught us a little off guard. But Raf has been ready, and hasn't shown too many nerves as the big day approached. In fact, as we ate breakfast before leaving for school on Monday, I read Raf 'The Kissing Hand', about Chester the Raccoon who's sad about leaving his mummy to head to school. In the midst of the book Raf declared, 'but mummy, I like school'!

We all headed to school to drop Raf off. I was frankly not expecting to feel quite so emotional. When we got there, it was soon apparent that we were going to have to just basically leave him at the door!  He was so eager to go in that we had to remind him to give us a kiss before he wandered off, his little backpack on, disappearing around the corner as we all desperately looked on. I did almost begin to weep.

Monday was chilly so the boys wore their dressing-gowns for the first time. Charlie's didn't survive breakfast...

A HUGE big boy pancake. He managed to eat it all!

Morning stories...

We asked him what he wanted to be when he's a grown-up, and out of nowhere he said 'pilot'! I think they're better paid than train drivers.

We made him endure a trillion photographs. Here is his 'grand opening day' shirt!

And here we go... no time for more photos, mum. I have to GO!

Charlie missed Raf so much. He ran up to his big brother and gave him an enormous hug.

And then another one.

Raf wasn't overly forthcoming about the day but over the course of the afternoon and evening (I had to drag both boys to an evening Dr. appointment, which was rather hellacious) I did gleam something about his day. He learned something about snails having bunny ears(!), he visited the music room, played with Cole and Nessa (his old friends from preschool) at recess as well as a new friend Gideon. He drew a lovely picture for Rich (in preparation for Rich's birthday), and, unfortunately had an accident with a chair leading to a bit of a bang behind the ear.

I confess that we stopped en route home from the doctor and I bought the boys a little pressie each.

Tuesday was another good day, though he was a bit lonely at recess until his friend Nessa came to play with him, and he also did gym class which involved a game called cat and mouse, and something else. Today he brought home a 'message' from school, which was a large piece of paper which read, 'Dear Kindergarteners, the STAR of the day is Rafael'... So sweet.

Tonight we celebrated the midweek point of kindergarten with a star cake! And here he is wearing his 'midweek spectacular shirt' (we had to think of another name as Raf first wondered if THIS was his grand opening day shirt...