497

i feel like i just won the BIGGEST popularity contest...

i have lots of "fans" following me around...

chanting my name

reaching for me

wanting me

WOW!!

i'm so popular!

when i leave they follow me

they cry.


it breaks my heart.

but i know they will be fine.

as i sit here typing this...
where they can't see me and think i have left...

the crying is done.

the tears have stopped.

ahhh... to be popular.

Seeing GREEN!!

I think I've posted about this before on here, when Trevor is in pre-k they have a behavioral chart for all the kids. It has all their names on it and a pocket under each name with three cards in it... a red one, a yellow one, and a green one. They try to encourage good behavior and keeping the cards all on GREEN. So green means that you had a fantastic day... you made all good choices and were a model student. Yellow means that you made some not-so-great choices with your behavior, so you had little bit of a rough day but not too bad. And when on yellow you can make it back to green by having good behavior and making better choices. And then there is red. Red cards are for when you are having a really tough day, and you can't seem to make many good choices. :(

Last year Trevor went to pre-k also, and it was with the same pre-school, he went for a few hours every day, well we didn't always send him, just because he was little, it would have been too much, but he did great there. He loved it and made things and learned things and was GREAT with the other kids and made good choices all the time. :) In his class last year they had happy or sad faces. Happy if you were having a GREAT and happy day and sad face if you weren't have the best day and if you were feeling a little sad or making other people in the class sad with your behavior. Trevor only had a sad face a few times. He did really great. Things were going well, so I never thought this year there would be a big difference in his behavior at pre-school. He started off doing great. He started off being the one of the few that didn't cry and have a fit and knew what to expect with the play stations and how they worked and all that... he was an old pro. Most of the other children in his class hadn't ever been in a pre-school environment.

But, then one day it started to go down hill with the green cards and every day almost he was having red. I would talk to him about it, his dad would talk to him about it... sometimes he would loose other things at home for his behavior in school. I think mostly we were so concerned about it was because we knew he could behave much better than he was and that he had done so well last year, we weren't sure what was going on this year. Then we decided we were just beating ourselves and mostly we were being way too tough on Trevor about it. Yes behaving in school and good behavior in general is very important, but how many times should an almost 4 year old be getting in trouble for the same thing? We were beating a dead horse. It was too much. He didn't make good choices in school, and so he was put on a red card. What more needed to be done?? Nothing. We were taking it too far. And honestly what he was doing in school wasn't anything horrible or really anything that any other almost four year old wouldn't be doing also. As a matter of fact what he was "getting in trouble" for was doing what the other kids were doing. He was running around, and they were all chasing one another and they were making noises when they were supposed to be quiet and they were fooling around and "horsing around" with each other. They were being kids. It wasn't bad. They were just learning which behavior was acceptable and which was not. I was over reacting and over doing it with the behavior "issue" at school. There wasn't one. We gave up caring. If he had a green day, GREAT. If he had a yellow day well that was okay too. And, if he had a red day, we would sometimes ask him what had happened and that would pretty much be the extent of it. Oh well he had a red day, life was still going on and he was still the same perfect little guy to us, he just had an off day. We took it all with a grain of salt. We didn't over analyze it, we didn't over parent it and we didn't talk more about it after it was said.

But, low and behold Trevor figured it all out... he figured out that he can have a great day and still have fun and be praised left and right for his good choices. He has been having green days forever now. Am I proud of him. You bet your bottom dollar I am. But, the truth of the matter is that I'm proud of Trevor no matter what color day he has at school. I'm always going to be proud of him. He is a smart boy, he is funny, caring, loving, sharing, entertaining, joyful, energetic, outgoing, shy, intelligent, giving, handsome, hugging, kissing, story telling, playful and a good son, brother, grandson, nephew, friend and student. He is an EXCELLENT little boy! I love him so much! :) And I did feel this way when he was on red in school all the time too. I will ALWAYS feel this way about him. He is my boy!

So today he is off to school again, he only stayed home on Wednesday this week so it was an almost full week of school. He seems to liking school okay. He still asks me if he can stay home. Like this morning he asked me if he could please stay home with me and the girls. I told him he should go b/c today was Friday, the last day of school for the week. He then said okay and was willing to go. I hope he likes kindergarten next year. This year it was hard for me to try to make him go every day of the week. I wanted him to be home with me as much as he wanted to stay home, maybe even more. But next year, although I'll still want him around, we won't have that choice. He will be off to school, full time. Or we will have to answer to others about his where abouts and I'm almost sure that the school will not care that we just are used to being together every day and really miss each other. We'll have to work on getting adjusted to it. Thank goodness we have the entire summer to work up to go kindergarten. I have a lot of plans for our family this summer. :)

So anyway... that is the update on Trevor. He was going to school today to earn the BIG huge sticker he saw on the sticker sheet while he is teacher was giving out good behavior stickers. :) I'm sure he will be excellent today just like he has been. :)

Last night we went to Chuck E. Cheese with the kids because last time we were there it was too crowded, well it got too crowded minutes after we were there so we ate and left. We had left over tokens, so it didn't cost us anything which was kind of nice. We all had a great time. I have some pictures to post a little later in the day of our trip there. It was fun. We also went out to eat and then we ran into Sam's Club. I'm not sure about anyone else, but when I'm in there I could just shop for days. I want everything. But, then again I'm also the one who likes to have/needs to have 8 boxes of pasta and 4 huge jars of sauce and stock of EVERYTHING possible. :) It's my comfort. Not sure why. We have never run out of food and not gone shopping again. As a matter of fact, we have never had bare cabinets or even a bare shelf. lol Oh well, maybe it part OCD or something. But after Sam's Club we took our sleepy little behinds home and the kids too. :) lol

I'll try to post some pictures later during nap time from Chuck E. Cheese. I think I got some good ones. I didn't even go through them to see what I got. The pictures are of my kids so no doubt they are cute!! :)