Saturday, February 21, 2015

Progress report

It has not been smooth sailing these last couple of weeks with Kien being at school. For starters, no sooner are we getting into the routines and Kien gets sick and I've got to dash to get him half way through my work day. Thank goodness for having the Drs clinic across the road - we were able to get in and see someone that day, and it was confirmed he had a tummy bug. First thing the Dr asked was, "did he just start school?". Apparently its pretty common. So Jef drew the short straw with this round and stayed home for a couple of days to look after him. The weekend came and went with lots of messy loo visits, and then this week started. Kien has only finally come right probably since yesterday.

School drop offs have been hit and miss, to be honest. Tears, clinginess, the works. It's not school - he had bouts of this for drop offs at daycare too, and he adored all the teachers and loved that place. It's been rough on me (as I do the drop offs and Jef does the pickups), but this is life, and my/our job as (a) parent(s) is to ensure we teach him that its ok to cry, be upset and not want to do something, but we have to do it anyway. When he tells me he doesn't want to go to school and wants to stay home with me, I tell him I don't want to go to work and would rather stay home with him too, but the fact is that I have to go to work to earn money so we can live in our home and have food on the table and buy clothes and shoes, have toys, the TV and internet, go on holidays and everything else that we are able to have and do. I think it is sinking in, allbeit slowly.

Another challenging aspect of Kien going to school is that I have to pack his lunch every single day. We can order lunch, but we would still have to pack snacks. When he was at daycare I only had to do this every Friday, but now, every single day. Every single day. I always try to pack him a snack box that will supplement/accompany something hot in his flask, such as baked beans, pasta with mince, rice with grilled chicken, cocktail sausages - or whatever I can rummage up from the fridge that he will eat. Here's what I try to do for his snack box every day. To all the parents out there who have done this or are doing this, I salute you. To think that I've got how many more years of this?







Homework reading every night is also something to get used to. Predictable, repetitive picture books that he gets sent home with so we can work through it with him. I've been including this as part of his bedtime stories routine.

Lastly but certainly not least, he was very proud to show me his self portrait that he painted at school.


Good one, Sweet Pea. Here's hoping for a better third week.


Sunday, February 15, 2015

Jumping and riding on hay bales

One week on and I'm processing the photos from the farm and they make me smile. What a fabulous weekend it was. It was such a treat to be able to have these experiences, and Kien is so very lucky to have an extended family that span several generations with connections to this farm. 100 years occupancy for the Cole family on this farm in Te Kopuru - Kien's great great granddad came from Nelson to settle here, and it has stayed in the family ever since. We've always enjoyed visiting here.

We arrived on Friday night and set up camp out the back in the garden. After a pot luck dinner/good old fashioned BBQ, most of us climbed onto the trailer towed by an extremely powerful tractor for a tour of the farm.

















Flax darts at the beach

The following day we headed out to the beach.





We stopped for a bit of flax dart throwing.





Kien spent ages making his very own.



Then we went down to the beach.





On the way back up the track we were all a tad too heavy for the tractor to take a corner going up the sandy track, so we hopped off to lighten the load.





All aboard again, back to the farm we go.



Hangi

We were in for a treat! Karen had organised a feast for Saturday night in the form of a hangi. In the morning "The Hangi Master" Richard dug the pit as we were heading to the beach.



When we got back he lit the fire.





After 3 hours the food went down, and then 3 hours after that the big reveal.









Delicious!



Racing and jumping on hay bales

I love running on hay bales, and so does everyone else! The kids and I had races back and forth. It was so much fun.















Fabulous sunset on Saturday night.



An even better blood moon.



It was a truly amazing weekend, and now I'm sifting through all the footage I took to try and piece together something that resembles a documentary (or similar). SOOOO many gigabytes worth of data to be processed. It makes me smile listening to some of the stories :-)

Thursday, February 5, 2015

The first day

So it begins - today was the day. It is so weird to now have a school child. How fast that time has come, and how quickly he has matured in such a short few months. One day he was heading off to daycare for the last time as being a big fish in a small pond, and then the following day he was let loose into an ocean. It is an ocean of knowledge where he will learn and grow his personality, his friendships, his identity and how he fits into this world. I'm not dwelling on it too much otherwise I might cry at the prospect that my baby is now no longer a baby, and even though he stopped being a baby some years ago it still felt like he was not yet a big boy whilst he was attending the same daycare he's been at since he was 8 months old. But now...






Whilst we waited this morning for the powhiri to begin...







...and then it was time for him to go and start his new adventure.



I'm happy to report that he loved his first day at school! He's got a few friends that were from his daycare, so he was happy to meet up with them again. Hooray for firsts.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...