Where Are You Christmas?

Today while Lucas was in school I decided to pack away all the Christmas decorations. Usually, I wait until after January 6th but I wanted to feel like I got something accomplished today. Every year we add one of two new ornaments to our tree. This year we added Lucas' first school picture in a "2009" frame as well as a Peter Pan.

When Lucas got home from school he asked me, "Mommy where did Christmas go? I wanted to keep it around longer!"

Dear Lucas (4 years and 3 Months),

Now that you are in school, time seems to have sped up even faster. I didn't think that was even possible! You've been in school for two months now and we really have our whole routine down. I drop you off at school every morning and then a few days a week I pick you up and then when I am taking care of your Great Gram your Dad picks you up. Every day you come home with some new fact or song that you learned at school. Your excitement about learning new things is so great and I'm so thankful that we were able to send you to school this year.

At the beginning of the month we went out of town and picked you up from school early. When I walked in the classroom you didn't see me so I just watched you playing during your free play time for a couple of minutes. It was really neat for me anytime I get to observe you in your school environment. You just seem so grown up and independent there. As soon as you saw me you got excited and said "Hi Mom!" and ran over to me and gave me a big hug. You do the exact same thing every time I pick you up from school and it makes me feel on top of the world.

One day a few weeks ago you came home talking about how you had a "girlfriend" at school. When I got to go on your field trip to the Pumpkin Patch this weekend I got to meet her. The two of you were pretty much inseparable. You guys had to stand in line together and sit by each other at lunch and on the hay ride. I noticed her calling you "Lukey" a few times and that cracked me up!

It was so cool getting to go on your first real field trip. (A few weeks ago you guys walked down the street to the Fire Station, so if you want to be technical that was your first field trip... but I'm not counting it because you didn't ride on and bus, and because I wasn't there.) You were so excited to get to ride on the bus and it was so neat to see you interacting with all your classmates and to get called "Lucas' Mom" all day long. Now when I pick you up from school all your friends say, "Bye Lucas! Bye Lucas' Mom!" It is pretty awesome.

Your teachers are AMAZING. You can tell they really love their job and they especially love their students and you guys really love them back. This week your school had an after school dance for all the grades. You and a few of your classmates had a ball shaking your little booties and dancing with your teacher. I volunteered to help at the dance and it was only an hour long and I was exhausted! I don't know how your teachers do it. I am pretty that teachers must be undercover Super Heroes.

You've been begging to get a pumpkin to "starve" and make into a Jack-o-lantern. I've been meaning to get a pumpkin for a while but thought we had plenty of time. Then this week, I realized that Halloween is less than a week away so we stopped and got one.

On the way home from picking out the perfect pumpkin you talking a good game about how you were going to scoop out the pumpkin. Then you were going to give him circle eyes, a triangle nose, and a crescent mouth. When it got to the part of cleaning out the pumpkin guts you totally chickened out. You were having NONE of that! So I had to scoop out the pumpkin insides while you supervised. We were going to wash and cook the pumpkin seeds until our cat jumped up on the table and started chowing down. Turns out Babies the Cat LOVES fresh pumpkin, seeds and all!

Your pumpkin turned out just like you wanted him too look. Before we started carving you took a crayon and planned out exactly how you wanted him to look. Now every night before you go to bed you have to go outside and turn on your little light in the pumpkin before you go to bed.

This week we also went to your annual playgroup Halloween party. We've gone every year since 2006 when you were just one year old. Back then you were just barely learning how to stand up on your own. Since you are in school all day during the week we really don't get to see your playgroup pals that much anymore. It was so nice to catch up with them and reminisce about how young you all were when we had our first Halloween party. Halloween is going to be SO MUCH FUN this year.

Little boo, I love you to the moon and back,

Lucas' Mommy

Peter Pan & the Lego Sword

His Halloween Costume is coming together!

Dear Lucas (4 Years and 2 Months and 2 days),

This last month has been one crazy busy month full of change and lots of adjustments. The first big thing is that you started school. Since you are in school during the day, I've been staying with your Great-Gram more. At least two days a week your Dad picks you up from school and even gets dinner started long before I ever get home. Some times I don't get home until it is almost your bedtime. The first night that I walked in late you looked up at me and said, "Who are you? Oh, are you my Mom?" I didn't know 4 year olds could be sarcastic, yeah pretty much proves you are my kid right there.

You liked the first two or three days of school and then you were OVER it! You decided that you were DONE with school and never wanted to go back. You would beg and plead and fake sick to try and get to stay home. One day we were in the car headed to school and you tried to bargain with me, "If you take me home now, I'll clean my room." When you would realize that we were STILL headed to school you would start digging your heels into the seat in front of you and use your hands to cover your car seat buckles. A few times I even had to get teachers to help me pry you out of the car. Some days it would be one teacher and one day it took FOUR! I think one of the hardest things I've ever had to do was drive away from the school while you were being carried away kicking and screaming, "I WANT TO GO WITH MY MOMMY!" Thankfully, those days seem far behind us!

You still try to talk me into keeping you home from school EVERY SINGLE day. You give up when you see that I am NOT turning the car around that you ARE GOING TO SCHOOL. On the way to school a few days ago you were playing with your Magna doodle and drew little scribble lines and said "Mom, I wrote you a note. I'm going to read it now. It says 'Dear Mom, Please don't take me to school. Turn the car around and go home. Pretty Pretty Please. Love Lucas." Kid, you crack me up. You don't know how tempted I am to just keep you home one day and just do all kinds of fun stuff together. I am even pretty sure that I know that I would enjoy it even more than you would. However, I know that if I do it one day it will just make it harder for you to go back to school the next day. So for right now we just have to make the most of our afternoons and our weekends and count down the days until school breaks.

The thing I look forward to the most is picking you up from school. I love watching you march in line from across the yard and I always know when you spot me. Your eyes light up and you usually wave and squeal "MOMMY!" as soon as you see me. Seriously, this is the BEST feeling in the world. On the ride home I try to get you to spill the beans on what you did at school or even what you chose for lunch. For some reason you HATE answering these questions. We have to wait for you to tell us in your own way. You will start singing some new song we've never heard you sing before or talk about a friend at school (the first few weeks you talked about a boy named Kevin but now all you want to talk about is a cute little blond girl.) I guess my questions are rubbing off on you because at dinner tonight you turned to your Dad and said, "So Daddy, what did YOU do today?"

I miss getting to do all the fun stuff we used to do together before you started school, especially our playgroup. We still try to fit special family stuff in, like going to the park together or planting pumpkin seeds. I also miss laying in bed with you in the morning and cuddling with you while you watched cartoons while we talked about what we should do that day. We've replaced our morning snuggle time with an evening one. This cartoon that you love called Phineas & Ferb, comes on at 6pm every night, so the two of us cuddle up in mine and Daddy's bed and watch it together. Our time together is even more precious now. It doesn't even seem like I had a whole four years with you at home. As cliche as it sounds it seriously feels like you were a baby yesterday and then I blinked and you are in school.

After the cartoons and snuggle time then come the bedtime stories. You have quite the ever growing collection of books. Tonight we had to clear out another shelf so that we could make more room. Lately, I've been buying you books about kids that wear glasses, since the other big change this month has been you've started to wear glasses yourself. I'm hoping the books will encourage you to wear your glasses more since you don't know anyone your age that wears them and sometimes you don't want to wear them. I do know they are helping you because I've noticed when you aren't wearing them you bump into stuff and trip over stuff, which you never used to do. I think you've gotten used to actually SEEING things.

Lately, the book you request the most is Peter Pan. It also happens to be the movie you request the most and what you pretend to be the most. So much so that one night I walked into your room to find your bed sheets sliced to pieces. When I asked you about it you produced a large knife you had swiped from the kitchen and explained that you were being Peter Pan like in the movie when he slices up the Pirate ship sails. It made perfect sense to you. We've since replaced the REAL knife with a plastic pretend one, which you even fell asleep still holding one night.

A few weeks ago we added another member to our family. You and your father decided that we NEEDED a hamster. You both promised to take care of the hamster and that I would not have to take care of the cute furry thing at all. So with the addition of Tinkerbell (noticing a theme here?) we now are a family of 5. So far you guys are taking excellent care of Tink.

Sweet Pea, I love you to the moon and back,

Mommy

I married Dr.Doolittle and I'm raising his son. For some reason unknown to me, my sweet husband decided that what Lucas needed to help him feel better about school was a hamster. He told Lucas that if he would go to school next week without any trouble that we would get him a hamster. Curt also promised that he and Lucas would do all the work with cleaning the cage and feeding the hamster.

We asked Lucas what he wanted to name the hamster and his first choice was Jadie (our dog's name.) His second choice was Lucas and he finally settled on Tinker Bell (since he is currently OBSESSED with Peter Pan.) Holding Tink for the first time he said "Awww you are so cute even with your creepy red eyes."

This morning when Lucas woke up he told us "I don't want to go to school next week, but PLEASE don't take my Hamster back."

Dear Lucas (4 Years 1 month and 3 days),

I catch myself staring at you just about everyday and thinking "how is it possible that he is so grown up?" Everyday you seem bigger than you were the day before. You always wake up happy ready to face the day. You always want to know where we are going and what we are doing. You always want to be on the move and HATE days where we stay home.

We had your fourth birthday party on August 1st and you got to celebrate turning 4 with your family and friends. The party was a race car theme that you decided on yourself. You've already started planning your 5Th birthday and anytime anyone mentions someone else's birthday you have to remind us that you will be 5 on your next birthday and that you think you want a Batman birthday. I am constantly reminding you to stop being in such a rush to grow up already, you JUST TURNED 4!!!

You are one lucky duck and got to go to Disney World this summer not once, but twice! Our last trip in the middle of August was totally unplanned. We went so that I could take care of your Great-Gram while Grandma was in continuing education nursing classes. One of the days we were there we all headed back to the Magic Kingdom. You were SO excited to be there. One of the things you loved seeing was a big show in front of the castle because you got to see Peter Pan fight Captain Hook. You are still talking about it. You LOVE Peter Pan right now and beg to watch the Disney movie ALL THE TIME. We often read Peter Pan at bedtime and you want to be Peter Pan for Halloween. It's a little funny to me that the kid who can't wait to get older is obsessed with the Boy that never grows up.

You spent a good deal of the summer playing with your friends David and Gabe. They were usually over at our house at least once a week while their parents were at work. Back in May when they first started to come over you guys used to fight ALL THE TIME but as the summer marched on the fights were few and far between. You spent lots of hours with them in the sandbox and sitting on the front porch eating popsicles talking about hot wheels and super heroes. At the beginning of the summer you guys planted zinnia seeds and you all loved watching them grow and helping water them. Last week was our last time watching the boys on a consistent basis since you and David will be starting school on September 1st.

On Friday night your school had an Open House and you were so excited to go and see your school and meet your teacher. There are 2 Pre-K classes at your school and they had everyone meet together and then the assistant teachers took all the kids to their class while the teachers talked to us parents. You excitedly lined up and followed the other kids out of the room. I couldn't help feeling just a little bit like I had just turned my baby over to a perfect stranger and I started to cry as soon as you were out of my sight. I know that you are going to love school (you've been BEGGING to go for so long) and that it will be good for you but I am going to miss having you as my sidekick during the day. I ended up buying a charm with your name on it and making a necklace for myself so that I can feel like you are with me when you are school. I am also planning on wearing big sunglasses when I drop you off for your first day, so that hopefully you can't tell that I am crying.

After the teachers were done going over the basics with us (reminding us that everyone is expected to wear red or white khaki shirts and khaki or black pants and have a clear or mesh backpack) all the parents headed over to the Pre-K classes. You didn't see us coming in the door and you ran out another way. Turns out you had to go to the bathroom and didn't know where it was or who to ask so you went back to the room where you had left us to ask for help, only we were no longer there. By the time we found you, you were so upset because you were lost and had an accident in your pants since you didn't know what to do. You were so upset. Your Dad took you to the car to get cleaned up and when you came back you were still crying. Daddy tried to distract you by showing you the alphabet that ran across the wall. It worked for a second but when it was time to meet your teacher you hid under the table. I hate that your Open House went like that but I hope that since "all the bad stuff" already happened that your first day will be smooth.

We just found out that you need glasses. Turns out that you are extremely nearsighted and can only see things close up. This explains why you always stand right in front of the TV no matter how many times we ask you to move. I feel like I should apologize for all those times I pointed at something across the room and told you to please pick it up and you said you couldn't see what I was talking about and I would get frustrated. I thought you weren't looking, and it turns out you really couldn't see from across the room. You are very excited about wearing glasses like Grandpa and Daddy and you I let you pick out your frames all by yourself. They might not be here for a couple of weeks so you have to start school without them. I can't wait for you to be able to REALLY see. Last night you looked up at the sky and said "Mommy, the sky is so beautiful." All I could think to myself was just wait until you get your glasses.

Little Boo,I love you to the moon and back,

Mommy