First Day of School

Y was up immediately this morning at 6am when I awoke him for school.  He had no problems going to sleep last night, either (other than the standard - "Oh, just five more minutes, please!!").  I was the one up until 2am online reading the schools' dress code.  Way too restrictive, if you ask me.  Nothing to do with clothes, other than you need to cover your midriff at all times and you can't wear anything offensive.  However, boys hair may not touch their shirt collar and they may not wear anything in their hair at any time other than hair gel.  Ridiculous, if you ask me.  They don't restrict the girls from having short hair.  No blue or pink hair either, it has to be 'a natural hair color.'  I really don't care what color my kids' hair is. Also, no body piercing (still okay with me), but girls can have earrings - boys no.  Just from my quick reading they're very conservative and strict with the boys but nothing much mentioned about the girls.  Y's hair just barely passes the test, as long as he wears t-shirts and not dress shirts.  My theory is if a kid can express their personality with blue or purple hair, down to their waist and an earring or two, then maybe they won't need to rebel with any substances they shouldn't be ingesting or doing things they shouldn't be doing.  Pick your battles, and hair is not high on my list.

After getting up at that awfully early hour (yes, I could've already had a half hour or more of work under my belt if I wasn't on 'maternity' leave), Y showered, dressed and made himself some breakfast.  A bowl of cereal to be exact.  A little bass-akwards, though.  He filled the bowl with milk and then tried to put the cereal in.  So, a lesson in how to make a bowl of cereal at 6:30am.  That was about as much as I could handle at that point.  We decided to drive him to school for now.  He has to take one bus in the morning (that comes around 6am - school is 10 minutes away and begins at 7:25am) and another one home in the afternoon.  We just thought the two bus numbers would be a little too much adjustment right now.  Maybe next week we'll do the bus thingy.

We got him there and registered and everything.  We need to get his shot record translated asap even though the doctor started him on all the booster shots he needs at this age, anyways.  Most of the ESL kids were taking tests this morning, so they paired Y up with another boy named Eric who speaks only slightly more English than Y does, but he at least knows where to go for each class.  Every day Y will have math, keyboarding (typewriting for you old folks), two ESL classes, TX history, science and phys ed.  They wrote a note on his schedule that he needs to be escorted from class to class and that he has permission to carry his backpack around all day until he is assigned a locker.  After that, he will only be allowed to carry his backpack to and from school and he must store it in his locker during the school day, only carrying the required book to/from class.  

His work sheets are interesting.  They are in English/Spanish with the Spanish crossed out and handwritten Russian above it.  The teacher says they have an online service they use for translations, but that morning she wasn't sure that it did Russian.  I told her to try www.rustran.com since that's what we use in an emergency at home.

School was over too soon, if you ask me.  I had barely gotten back home and back into bed when it seemed I had to think about getting ready to pick Y up.  Boy did it feel good to get a three hour nap in while he was at school.  Of course, I accomplished nothing else today, other than a trip to Academy to pick up some gym clothes.  He needs extras for gym and for gymnastics each week.  I haven't even thought about soccer clothes yet.  Gotta go check on soccer registration right now.

Natalie

TX