Back to School

Aiden starts school again on the 10th. He'll be going five days a week this year. They're half days still but hopefully going a full five days will make it an easier transition next year into the full day kindergarten. Kindergarten. Ugh. I can't even believe that's coming next year. Wasn't he just born?

We completed our annual pilgrimage of  consumerism to the Lee Outlets to get him nice new school duds. Every summer he seems to grow by leaps and bounds so that he's practically bursting out of his clothes like he's been eating the cookies from Alice in Wonderland. What a shock it was to realize that he's out of toddler sizes and into regular boys clothes, even his shoes are boy's size now.

Gone are the days when I could lay out his clothes and he'd allow himself to be dressed each morning. Now he has an opinion on everything he wears, no he does not want to wear the blue one and no he will not wear anything with a collar or too many buttons or pictures that he doesn't like. I still try to lay out clothes for him but usually I find he's gone rummaging through his drawers to swap out items until he's created his own very colorful and unusual outfit. Socks will never, ever, ever be matched. That's rule number one.Needless to say this shopping trip involved a lot more back and forth on what he would agree to wear.

He came home with cool new shoes, lots of jeans, some bright red athletic pants he picked out and a couple of oxford shirts that we forced on him. Everyone was happy.

Then came the haircut. He hasn't had his haircut since about April and it was getting c-r-a-z-y. We're talking Paul McCartney circa '69. We always say we'll let him grow it out for awhile and before you know it the hair has taken on a life of it's own. Long hair on him is less Samson and much more Medusa. Remember this?:

 2009

 Long hair, don't care

Not quite there yet...

 Short 'n sweet

Anyway, he finally got a haircut and he's looking like my baby again. With new hair and new clothes he's all ready for Mrs. Castle's class next Monday. This year they'll work on a lot of pre-reading skills, early math concepts (they have a unit on graphs. Graphs! I didn't know what a graph was until third grade!) and lots of other things they need to know for Kindergarten. Ugh. There it is again. The K word. At least we have one more year!

 

My babies

 

 

Well...one baby anyway