This was a fairly momentous week for Ethan as it pertains to his time at school. It definitely deviated from the norm in quite a few ways. Of course, that happens when one has a field day on Tuesday followed by their final day of K-Prep on Thursday. For the record, that’s a pretty weird thing for me to wrap my head around at this juncture. Seriously, he’ll start kindergarten in three months! Crazy, right?
One of my favorite things about being a stay-at-home dad
over the past couple of years is that it lends itself to me getting to be a
part of things like field day. For example, I’ve gotten to take the opportunity
to head to Fox Hill for Ellie’s field day the past two years. I even found
myself in a dunk tank last year. I think I successfully avoided that activity
this year though. Taking all of that into account, it was a foregone conclusion
though that I would help with Ethan’s field day.
As we normally would, Ellie and I dropped Ethan off at his
school a little before 8:00 am and then headed home to hang out together for an
hour. After I took Ellie to school at 9:00, instead of heading home, I headed
to Ethan’s school for field day. Over the course of the two hours, I would have
two jobs. The first hour, I was running kickball bowling; a fairly simple
concept consisting of kicking a ball towards a set of bowling pins. While I
thought it seemed simple, I underestimated just how exhausting that event could
be. I never considered how I would have to squat down hundreds of times to
replace pins over the course of the hour. While kids certainly had fun with the
event, I was fairly happy when it ended. That being said, I was more than a
little disappointed that Ethan never visited my station during that hour.
Next up for me was the ring toss. Honestly, it was a much
simpler event. That’s probably the case because I got smarter at this station
and would encourage kids to retrieve three rings after every turn before
handing them over to the next in line. Good idea, right? Once again though, I
never got the opportunity to see Ethan at my station.
Don’t feel too bad for me about missing Ethan. The ring toss
event actually wrapped up early which left me with the opportunity to wander
over to the obstacle course where Ethan’s purple-emblazoned class were taking
turns running it. Unfortunately for the folks running the station, Ethan
somehow missed that the concept of an obstacle course was to conquer said
obstacles with agility and swiftness. Instead, Ethan saw fit to blast through
the obstacles much as the proverbial bull in a China shop would.
Fast forward to today and Ethan’s final day of K-Prep. As
part of an end of year celebration, Ethan got to wear pajamas, eat cheese pizza
and popcorn, and watch the movie, Finding Dory. Pretty fun stuff. I was
honestly pretty proud of myself for remembering that today was the final day of
school so that I could take our traditional last day of school photo before dropping
him off.
It was honestly kind of a sad day though. For one thing, I
hate the idea of Ethan having to say goodbye to all of his friends and teachers
knowing that as a public-school student, he likely won’t see any of them moving
forward. For another, Ethan has spent most of the year bestowing the sweetest
hugs upon Ellie and me as we drop him off for class. Today though, he was so
excited that he didn’t even remember the hug. That’s ok though, it just serves
as a small reminder that I probably won’t get a hug once he starts kindergarten
in a few months.
That being said, I’m grateful for this season of life. It’s
been a blast watching him grow in so many ways during his time at Northland
Christian K-Prep. He’s become more confident in relating to others which is one
of the big things we wanted to see happen during the year. He’s also learned to
read more and more, write more effectively, and count really, really high. According to his teachers, he's also consistently displayed responsibility or at least that's what we learned at his award ceremony last Friday. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s ready for kindergarten in a few months.
As for me, I’m probably not ready for kindergarten to start yet. Hopefully I’ll get there though. Time will tell.
#DaddyWrite
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| First Day versus Last Day |
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