Andrew is 5 years 6 months!

Our boy is 5 and a half!  Hard to believe.  This has been a good month.  I think we are finally into the school routine and used to life.  I have had a hard time transitioning to him in kindergarten (although it does make the time when he is at school much easier), but I’ve asked him.  And he always says “Mom, I don’t think about you at all at school.  I don’t miss you guys at all.”  So, I think it is good.  He doesn’t seem to think the day is long – the only issue is he doesn’t get enough craft/project/playing time.  Although, according to him he is all done playing.  We’ll see about that.  I love the afternoons where he just comes home and plays with Seth.  So nice.

School is good.  We love Mrs. Kay.  Andrew doesn’t tell us a ton about his day, but I think I’m figuring it out.  As far as I can tell … they are learning short letter sounds in reading, working on writing all their uppercase and lowercase letters in writing and working on writing stories and adding some words to their pictures and also on having a plan for their writing.  They are doing a unit about trees in science class (they study a tree outside their room during all the seasons, pretty cute).  They are getting together a personal history box to talk about history.  They are adding and subtracting in math (I think they call it take-away).   I have since volunteered twice in Andrew’s classroom and he LOVES it.  He gets so excited and counts the days down.  And then I get to sit with each of the kids at his table and talk to them about their stories during writer’s workshop.  I really enjoy it.

Andrew had two school fieldtrips – one to Pumpkinland and one to sing to the residents at a nearby Assisted Living Home.  He enjoyed both.  He especially liked riding a bus, I think. 

Andrew also had his first performance at school.  They had it the night before Halloween and all the kids wore their costumes.  They sang a lot of songs – about 10 or 15!  They were about all the different parts of the school day – there was even one about proper etiquette in the library!

Andrew’s school focuses a lot on values, community, and helping others.  I really love it.  He is very into the Meramec 5 – which are the 5 values all the kids are supposed to have (kindness, etc.).  He also is getting pride in his country and likes to say the pledge of Allegiance and enjoyed voting.  Andrew has a family group that he belongs to with kids from all different grades.  His family group leader is the principal and it seems like they work on projects together.  Andrew’s school is focusing on helping others this month.  One day this week, everyone brought in a sack lunch which were all taken over to a homeless shelter.  They also did trick or treating for Unicef and are volunteering for a homeless shelter and doing a soup dinner fundraiser later in the month.  I love it!

Andrew is still busy in his projects.  He is enjoying writing.  We are doing this thing for Thanksgiving where we hide a turkey every day and it says something for us to think about being grateful for.  He likes to write it each day.  He also is always writing lists of one thing or another.  Lately, he has been writing lists of ideas for his stories for Writer’s Workshop.  He loves to uses black pens/markers/crayons and tape.  He is upset that we ran out of tape and is always bugging me to get more.  He spend a good day or two turning a panda mask into a mask of a red panda by taping on tiny pieces of red construction paper.  He loves that mask.

Andrew still loves nature and animals.  He has absorbed so much information about them and is always impressing people with his knowledge – we went to a few nature center places this month and he can recognize all different kinds of animals (like he can tell a barn owl from other kinds of owls).  He enjoys hiking with us as a family.

Andrew was pretty grumpy for a few days and always complaining about how he wished that we hadn’t gotten married so that he wasn’t born.  I was getting worried for a bit that maybe he was depressed, but that seems to have passed, thankfully.

Andrew doesn’t believe in Santa anymore.  I have no idea why.  It has been coming up here and there for the last few months.  I think he is just getting too logical for him.

Andrew finished up soccer and seemed to enjoy it.  He even sometimes joins in on soccer pick up games after school.  I am glad because he isn’t a super athlete and just doesn’t seem to have the drive to compete athletically compared to the other boys his age.  He never full on runs, for example.  So, he seems like he is constantly “it” at school when they play tag.  But he doesn’t seem to mind, thank heavens.  He does seem small for his age, but I think part of it is because the other boys in his class that he likes are already 6 and have been for a while.  Andrew started swimming again –he is slow going in his lessons, but he is getting less afraid of the water.  It is a small class (just 2), and with 2 teachers, so I am hoping he gets closer to moving up a level.

He is enjoying cleaning up and likes to do chores to help around the house.  His favorite is washing windows and helping vacuum with a mini-vac in the kitchen.

Fun Things This Month

• Finished soccer.  He got his own ball, too.
• Started up swimming lessons again. 
• Play dates with Colin, Tate, and Leo at our house.  It mostly seems like he gets super silly and hyper and then they are just running around and jumping off the furniture.  I do not enjoy them at all, but he seems to have fun.
• Zoo with Seth and Logan while Katsu was out of town. We had a lot of fun checking out the Halloween decorations. They had a lot of fun in the reptile house this time, especially.
• Pumpkinland for a birthday party and his school field trip. Andrew stayed together really well with his buddies on the school trip, but wasn’t too keen with buddying up with Seth when we went for the party, but he did when I insisted. The boys had so much fun running through the mazes, going down the slides, and playing on the pirate ship – all made of hay bales. The hay ride was fun, too.
• Halloween
  • Trick of treating in CWE.
  • Trunk or treat at church.
  • Performance at school.
  • Parade at school on Halloween.
  • Class party on Halloween.
  • Trick or treating in neighborhood on Halloween.
• Election Day – Andrew got to vote in school.  He voted for Obama and liked to say it over and over.  He also voted for Claire McCaskill and (I think) Dave Spence.  He mostly say he just voted for whoever he thought.  But he wanted to make sure not to vote for Akin since I said he was crazy.  I told him he could vote for whoever he wanted to, but he was insistent about that one.  He was excited that we mostly voted for the same people.  We also had voting for dinner at home.  The boys and we voted.  We had (by popular vote) tortellini, pink lemonade, watched a movie, and edamame. 
• Hiking at Route 66 state park – We had a lot of fun.  The boys enjoyed the visitor center where we saw all kinds of route 66 memorabilia.  They even got to see real pictures of the real Mater.  They liked hiking, but Andrew was disappointed that we weren’t closer to the water so we could see a snake.
• Hiking at Elephant Rocks and Johnson’s Shut Ins – Andrew was bored driving over (it is a long drive, almost 2 hours), but boy was it worth it.  The rocks were so fun!  The boys couldn’t wait to climb all over them and were so excited to see names chiseled into the rocks.  They kept wanting to go off the trail and crawl all over the rocks and sometimes we obliged.  It was a lot of fun.  Andrew was a little more worn out at Johnson’s Shut Ins, but enjoyed the visitor center with Katsu and talked the lady’s ear off.  We walked down the boardwalk to the Shut In’s.  It was pretty and peaceful, though I think I would be nervous about the boys swimming there.  Thankfully, the water is much too cold for that this time of year.