Today was Bryce's first day of preschool. The day started out just fine. When we arrived his friend Hunter was there and he was happy to have his picture taken with him, but the morning quickly took a turn for the worst. He wanted to play in the back play area, but his class was in the bike yard. When I told him he needed to go to the other playground he threw a fit and I had to drag him out. He then yelled at me and was very disagreeable. Once I calmed him down I asked if he was upset, scared about being at school, sad, etc. He told me he was sad about Pawka and started crying. Poor little guy. I took the opportunity to let his new teachers know what was going on in his life. After he stopped crying he joined the rest of the kids and I left. When I picked him up the teachers said he was great. I was very relieved.
I am very impressed with Bryce's knowledge of his letters and sounds. He has been watching a Leap Frog movie called the Letter Factory a couple of times a week since he received it for his second birthday. For his third birthday he was given a magnetic whiteboard with all the letters and numbers 1 -10. Each night before bed he likes to choose a few letters and tells me their names, sounds and what words they make. So far he knows about 15 with a great deal of consistency. This little game is partly a stall tactic so that he doesn't have to go to bed right away, but if it is encouraging him to learn his letters and sounds then I'm all for it. Recently I realized that I had never explained why it would be good to know letters and sounds. I told Bryce that in order to read he needed to learn these things. Since then, he has been more interested. He is also getting better at being able to count actual objects, not just say his numbers 1 - 10. He has known all of his colors for about a year and is working on his shapes. He knows circle, round, square and triangle.
This past week Bryce's behavior has been very up and down. One minute he is an angel and the next he is yelling and telling me he is "never not going to do ..." and "I'm going to take it/you and throw it/you in the garbage." After much debate and discussion, we decided that time outs, taking away toys, offering positive reinforcement when he is being good, and a smiley face chart were not working. We decided that he would get his first spanking. I couldn't do it, so Nathan took him to his room and gave his one. I sat in the bathroom crying. We made sure he knew that we loved him, but that he was getting a spanking so that he would know that he needed to respect us and follow our rules and directions and that he couldn't talk to us rudely or hit. I hope in the future knowing that the ultimate discipline is a spanking will help to curb his bad behavior. Nathan felt so bad after that he had tears in his eyes.
He is still not napping regularly and is taking forever to fall asleep at night. Maybe now with being in school he will be so tired that he'll nap and go right to sleep at night.
Tonight, like every night we asked God to help us not be so sad about loosing Pawka. After prayers we started talking about being sad about Pawka and that when we are sad it isn't okay to act naughty, that there are better ways to deal with it. Bryce is definitely still trying to process everything. He said he was sad because he had some questions for Pawka and that Pawka was going to miss out on Disneyland. He asked how far heaven was and said he wanted to go there to see Pawka. We explained to him that you couldn't just drive or fly to heaven. That you had to wait until you were very old and died and then God just takes you there in a snap, and that once you go you can't come back. We also told him that if he went to heaven we'd miss him because we'd still be on earth. He did like hearing that one day, when he is very old, he would see Pawka again in heaven. His response to this was that there would be two Pawkas in heaven and that if Daddy was there too that there would be three. He was definitely showing his sensitive side and it brought me to tears.
