grad*u*a*tion

Tuesday the big finally arrived--GRADUATION.  We've been prepping for weeks:  cupcakes with little hats, streamers, balloons, cards, gifts, sitting arrangements.  And Tuesday was the day.  Joy School Graduation.

Not really.  I mean, Tuesday was Joy School Graduation but we prepped by going to Wal-Mart to get Alice a life vest so she could swim during the pool party after the graduation.  The graduation itself lasted about 5 minutes, if that.  Although there was one speaker--she talked about making friends and being social, which is apparently what preschool is really all about.  You should talk to my friend Scarlet, she'll make you feel so much better about your kid not being a super genius and reading at age three, but super bad if your kid can't share.

So Rex is done with preschool now.  He starts kindergarten in just over two months and he can't be more excited.  And to tell you the truth, I'm pretty excited too.  I love back to school shopping--all the paper, and pencil and coordinating your pencils to your backpack.  My sister Hannah understands me.  I would be more sad about Rex growing up except that he's so excited and I have to say that watching him grow up has been a lot of fun.

See how formal our graduation was?

Rex was so excited about getting in the pool that he wouldn't stand still for a picture.

When we first moved to Charlotte, my visiting teacher was Jenny Fife and on her first visit to me, she told me how to loved to watch her kids play.  I thought that was weird, why wouldn't she just go play with her kids instead of watch them?  Rex was 2 and very (even more so than he is now) demanding of my attention--watching him play was not an option.  But now, I do just love to watch him play.  He's really into Legos and will build and rebuild airplanes and cars and boats for hours and hours.  I can't think of anything but a series of cliques about the overflowing, gushing love I have for this little creature that I created that is turning into his own person, who thinks and creates and problem solves and whose not-too-nimble fingers fumble with the tiny pieces and don't quite have the strength to completely connect two bricks, but he's still there imagining and exploring what ifs and occasionally getting out a book and following the instructions to build a cherry picker.  And it's exciting and I see that I've accomplished something:  not only have I kept him alive for five years, but he's growing and developing.  But I don't get to watch for long though.  He's discovered that he can do two things at once: so while he plays with Legos, I read Harry Potter to him.  We finished the second book today and while he only understands about 70% of what's going on, I love that we have that picture perfect, quite family time with Greg, Rex and Alice playing Legos, and me reading Harry Potter out loud while feeding Henry.

Rex took my phone one day and took some pictures of some of his planes--these are from April.  His designs are a bit more complex these days.

But five has been a hard year for me.  I'm staring to hear a lot of "I hate you Moms" and "You're mean" or "Mom is the worst mom ever."  And I'm not sure what to do about it--he's looking for an emotional response from me.  I refuse to give him that, but do I just ignore him and let him express himself or do I tell him that hurts my feelings and that that sort of talk is not nice or polite?  As you can probably guess, Rex is spending increasingly more time in time out--by choice, kind of.  He gets one minute of time out for every year old he is then if he's ready to talk about why he's in time out in complete sentences then he can come out.  He's not usually ready after five minutes.  Rex has been testing his limits a lot lately--doing just one too many pokes, or bullying Alice or refusing to do chores.  And throwing a lot more tantrums when he gets negative consequences for his actions--whine about not getting tucked in first, then you don't get tucked in at all.  So while I enjoy him and love watching him play and grow, preschool graduation and the coming start of kindergarten is also not the sentimental emotional day it might have been if he didn't throw so many tantrums.