First day of school

I have a lot to blog about (Christmas and all) but I wanted to write about Ilyah's first day at school today, Monday January 5th, 2009. 

Ilyah has been a 100% (not for the night yet) potty trained for over a month now and I've prepared him for school this whole time, talking about it, making him excited to go like a big boy with Taiamani. 

We all made sure that we went early enough to bed (instead of 11:30 or midnight for us parents) so that we aren't too dead tired in the morning. We made sure the alarm was on for 6:30am. The clothes were prepared the night before, as well as the snacks and backpacks for school. 

We woke up to a white a snowy morning; it was a big surprise. We had breakfast, got ready and scrapped the car. The kids, especially Taiamani, were excited to see so much snow, it's very unusual to have snow in Belgium. There was probably +/- 15cm of snow. We all hoped in the car and we were on our way to school (very slowly but surely, we don't have snow tires). 

At 8:30am, we first dropped off Taiamani in her class then it was Ilyah's turn. He was somewhat excited to go to school until he realized that he won't be in the same class with his sister. Juri and I gave him a tour of his class, showed him where the toilets were (very important), and played with him a bit. Then it was time to go for us and that's when the drama started. He cried a lot, he wanted to go home with us. We then went to get Taiamani to stay with him a little bit and he calmed down, and waved goodbye to us with his red , wet and sad little face. 

We agreed that for his first week, Ilyah would go 1/2 day to school, so I picked him up at noon as well as Taiamani because I didn't want to come back in the snow to pick her up at 3:30pm. I talked a little to the teacher and she said that he cried again when they brought back Taiamani to her class, then he was fine and ate his snack.

When we got home, I realized that he peed in his pants from this morning and peed again on the way home. It's been the first accident since I can't even remember. I think that he might have been to shy to go potty at school, who knows, I hope that he'll get better because I know he can, and also because I'll have to keep him home again until March or April. 

It's been a dificult 2 days for him because this past sunday, we experienced our new combined bilingual ward for the first time,  AND Taiamani started primary also. She's a Sunbeam now!!!!

Ilyah cried a lot when we had to separate them, when he realized that he'll be in nursery by himself now (for a FULL year!). Taiamani got really sad when she saw/heard her brother crying so much. We prepared her to go to Primary, but kept telling us that she didn't want to. She got a bit shy but I know that she'll do fine

We'll see how Ilyah will take school this week and nursery again this coming sunday.

I'm praying really hard that all will be well and that he'll toughen up a bit. Despite of being a drama queen, Taiamani has been very easy with school and potty training. It's interesting the difference between the two. Juri says that it a boy thing to cry like that at school because all the other crying kids in Ilyah's class were boys. All the girls were fine when their parents left. Juri's theory is that little boys are clingy but as the kids grow up and move on, girls tend to cling to the parents. It might be only true for our kids or us. What do you think?

I'LL POST PICS LATER ON