Well planted at school... :)

Well, after 2 days at school B seems quite happily installed in his new class (with his "old" teachers :). He even had a close encounter with a new student in his class who is having some difficulty adjusting to her new school (& was, reportedly, rude to the teacher) & survived unscathed, if scandalised ("She talked back to Jen, Mom!"). They were supposed to be interviewing each other about their summer vacations & I guess it went fine while he interviewed her, but after quizzing B about his summer activities she decided they were boring & declared that B must have been abducted by aliens & had his memory wiped...! I was extremely impressed by B's low-key response to this, as he has recurring bad thoughts about aliens & finds the whole concept of messing with minds & memories so disturbing that it sets him ticcing, usually. I guess the teacher overheard this episode & immediately took the new student out for a "little talk". B said that he was able to finish the interview activity with one of the consultant teachers, who had visited Thailand (!), so he ended-up having a nice time hearing about Thailand. After school B legoed madly (after snack & successfully negotiating with me to put off homework until dinner time :). I let him go for it for a couple of hours & then offered to watch some tv with him, which he readily agreed to. He's been into nature shows lately & I reminded him that we have 5 vcr tapes of "Kratts' Creatures" that I made when he was very little (some of them date from the year before he was born), & which he has not watched in at least 3 or 4 years. So we are now working our way through tape #1, revisiting them like old friends. B does seem to be taking a lot more in now, though, & has been regaling us with tidbits of animal info at various moments. He has certainly been applying this knowledge to Chibi's backstory & has been filling our morning trips to school with all sorts of interesting information on runrat genetics & habitat (resulting in a couple of missed turns :) He had a Chibi emergency yesterday & almost didn't take her today. I guess one of her eyes was loose & he lost it. He was pretty upset about her being "blind" in one eye for a while, & the first thing he did when he got home was find a new one. I convinced him that Chibi wasn't hurt by losing her eye & that it wasn't his fault that the lego part was loose, then suggested that we put a spare eye in a ziplok bag & keep it in his backpack for future emergencies. He really does seem to need a touchstone of sorts at school & his emotional connexion with Chibs (& her pocket-sizedness) makes her a good candidate. He went to bed just fine, but didn't seem excessively tired, either. I have been trying lately to stop reading before he is asleep & letting him fall asleep without intervention... sometimes he wants me to sit with him for a few minutes, but he's been able to fall asleep on his own for the past few nights- a nice change :)

School went off without a hitch again today. He asked to change the location of his desk because he was being triggered by a classmate (& friend, actually) who was directly across from him, & the switch was made without any fuss. When I asked him what the best part of the day was, it was a tie between playground time & the new director of the school (our friend Paula, mom to his now college-student, kid-sitter Ck) bringing his class chocolate truffles at the end of the day (!). I guess she'd sat-in for a discussion of a survey they'd taken (yesterday's homework) that asked questions like "are you a rock or a feather?" & "are you chocolate or vanilla?". It was a pretty neat exercise, & Paula just happened to have been given a gift of truffles that she thought would be a nice punctuation to the discussion :). After school & snack B legoed again, but was having a lot of frustration with a model that wouldn't do what he pictured it in his mind doing, & there was a lot of swearing from upstairs, so I went up & suggested we watch "Kratts' Creatures" again & he agreed. I was interesteded to read recently, in my "The Dharma of Star Wars" book (by Buddhist monk Matthew Bortolin), that this tactic of "switching gears" when you're stuck is also a Buddhist practice, that Bortolin calls "changing the peg". I picked this book up again recently, partly inspired by the book meme & partly because I think I must be ready for more coaching in my spiritual practise. What I've been reading about lately (the Buddhist concept of nutriments) has been particularly relevant to where I'm at in life (are there any co-incidences?) & it was really neat to see this technique that we've have been teaching B, to help him cope with frustration, in the book. Today was Friday, our regular night for grammie to come to dinner, & the first night that Paula has joined us as well. I decided to extend the invite to her when Ck left for college, since I can only imagine what it must be like to come home & nobody but the dog's there- after more than 18 years of having your kid around. If I ever do go through this, I don't expect it to be pretty. She & Ck have been spending holidays with us for the past couple of years, so it seemed natural to expand the family on a regular basis. We have such a blast with Paula... tonight she told us about going to see "Snakes on a Plane" with Ck before he left for college. She said it was so bad it was good & told us about some of the scenes. B was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. He has been fascinated by poisonous snakes lately, & although he struggles with the scariness of it all, he was able to put it in perspective & not let it trigger him. He even went to bed without much fuss (he did complain of a headache, which he doesn't often do, so I gave him some tylenol & that seemed to help). I was able to leave him to fall asleep on his own again, after reading another chapter of "Dragondrums".

Tomorrow C & B plan to go sailing in the morning, before the motor boats hit the bay (& the predicted rain). We will have a Japanese lesson after lunch & then we are hosting the church choir picnic at dinner time. I feel very grateful to have B so happily & well planted in school, so soon!