Maddox's School Days

Maddox has been in school for a little less than a month now. This was the best picture I could get of Maddox posing with his school bag and lunchbox on his first day of school. As usual he didn't want to stay to still that morning.

Going to school started out good, went from bad to worse, and now seems to be going well again (so hopefully it will stay that way). Maddox ran on in the first day and didn't seem to have trouble saying goodbye to his daddy. When I picked him up his teachers said he had a good day, but that he had cried some off and on, mostly when other kids cried though. All in all, a decent first day. After that, drop-off became pretty terrible for Blake for a while. I am thankful that Blake is willing to do this dirty job, because I just am not sure I could leave him. I would be too tempted to just put him back in the car and head back home, and that would probably not go over too well at work. Maddox began crying before he even got in the building because he knew that Blake was leaving him. Blake said it was pretty terrible because he could hear him yelling "Daddy" when he was leaving...brings tears to my eyes even now as I type, so I know that made Blake feel pretty terrible. Over the past couple of weeks though, Maddox has run inside his classroom on his own and began playing without much of a fuss, so we are pretty relieved that he is doing better in the mornings now.

Maddox loves all of the fun things he is doing at school and always gets good reports that say he has eaten well, slept well (blows my mind that from day 1 they have been able to get him to lay in the floor on a nap mat and go to sleep), and been a cheerful boy during the day. Some of the fun things that Maddox has been doing at school include playing with bubbles in the field, going on buggy rides, playing in the soft-play room and on the playground, shaking out his sillies (this is a song they sing where they shake around--he loves this), reading books and listening to bible stories, singing songs like "Wheels on the Bus", painting and coloring. Each morning they always have a craft time where they paint pictures or color things. Maddox has brought home quite the collection of beautiful artwork--we may have a budding artist on our hands, haha! It is so funny to look at some of his work. Some of it is very colorful and detailed and sometimes it is just a full sheet of paper with one little scribble on it. This past week Maddox has been learning about the letter A and the color red. Supposedly partway through the year, they are going to start learning some Spanish too, so we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping he will get a little more English learned before then so I can understand everything that he is trying to say, because this is one little boy with a lot on his mind!

Here is some of the beautiful artwork Maddox has created in his first few weeks at school!