First Week Back at School, and Our Weekend

It has been one week now since the end of winter break.

All in all, we are satisfied with Kai’s transition back to school. His scores on the daily point sheets could have been higher on a couple of days, and he expressed some anger at various teachers and classmates when we talked about school at dinnertime.

But, he stayed safe. A week with no torn clothing or attempts to bite teachers; I guess I would put that one in the win column.

He had some extra motivation to stay safe. Early in the week, we got a belated holiday gift from an aunt: another prized “credit card” for the Lego store. We told him that if he stayed safe, Mom would take him shopping on Friday afternoon and he could pick out something with his new card.

From the looks of his point sheet that day, he barely made it. He was marked off more than once for not showing respect, among several other things. But he must have calmed down enough each time after being given a warning that he recovered enough to be marked as staying safe.

He picked out a set from the new Chima collection, which looks to be Lego’s latest big thing. (Those folks at Lego are marketing geniuses, much to the dismay of parents everywhere). And when he got home, he worked on it right away and had it mostly completed by the time I got home from work.

When he was showing me his new set, he told me that he was going to get another new one tomorrow. I was puzzled. How do you know that?

He explained that he had spoken on the phone with his grandmother who would be visiting over the weekend. She was at the Lego store as they spoke. Hmm, what was she doing there?

And the next day, when his grandparents arrived, they brought over new Legos which he loved and started on right away.

For lunch, we all went to Fuddrucker’s, Kai’s favorite hamburger restaurant. He loves the condiments bar where he can take all the pickles and onions that he can eat.

These days, he is usually pretty good at waiting for his food to arrive. Well, for a few minutes anyway. But on this day, he seemed restless. The restaurant gives each group a buzzer to alert you when your order is ready. Kai sat at the table for only a minute before he wanted to go up to the counter to check on the progress. He was a bit impatient, but still managed to wait nicely.

And when our order was up, we went and got a plateful of pickles and he was a happy kid.

The rest of our weekend was spent building Legos, doing extra math work, and playing a periodic table quiz – in other words, an ordinary weekend.

Now we begin a new week. Can Kai stay safe two weeks in a row? Can he finally attain a safe month? Ah, but now I’m getting ahead of myself. One day at a time, I tell him.

Let’s see how today goes.