Yes - the day has finally arrived - Marc has started school! We decided to start sending him to school early because of his character. He's a very Type A person - forever on the go, inquisitive, hates to rest...as you can imagine, its very tiring to keep him constantly entertained. He won't sit down for long and he ends up running riot at home, touching things he's not meant to and destroying furniture (we've had to buy a new couch, have to blog about that later). Plus our flat is really quite tiny and I would go crazy at home all day, so we do understand how he feels.
So I took leave on Monday to accompany him to school and stayed with him all day except for 1 hour when I had lunch. Well, he cried for just about the entire hour. Initially he was thrilled - as you can see from the pictures, school is like one big playground and he started exploring right away. But when he realised he was going to be left at school, he wasn't happy at all. The teachers suggested we take him home early and ease him into school by slowly increasing the hours each day. On Tuesday The Husband brought Marc to school. This time he had wisened up and realised that Daddy was going to leave. So we decided that Daddy would stay with him for one more day, just so that the entire place becomes more familiar and easier to accept.
Then Wednesday aka D-day arrived. After speaking with the teachers, they agreed that The Husband should make an exit after settling Marc suitably well into school. Being a typical mother who hates to see her kids cry, I packed some of Marc's favourite biscuits and toys so that the teachers could placate him and he would be more accepting of something familiar. When The Husband left, Marc started crying and The Husband hid and watched to see if he would stop. Well, the biscuits definitely helped and the teachers managed to distract him with a tour of the premises. Returning several hours later, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that Marc had eaten some lunch and even took a nap - for just under an hour! If you know Marc, this is nothing short of a miracle. He HATES to sleep! Even in his familiar bed, making him sleep during the day is a struggle. The teacher even showed us a formation that Marc created with some toys, lining them all up in a long row. They found it quite amusing and we had never seen him do this before. So we were quite encouraged.
Thursday was a tough day. Marc cried when left at school and went on a hunger strike. Apart from biscuits, he ate nothing else from breakfast till 3pm. Needless to say he came home and was ravenous - he ate some pasta AND proceeded to have his usual portion of porridge for dinner (mind you, his portion is more than my sister in law's entire dinner portion). When I gave him his bath his tummy was HUGE! We had a good talk (not that he can really speak yet) and I told him that he needs to eat at school and assured him that Daddy would pick him up from school and Mummy would see him in the evening when she came home from work.
We dropped him off on Friday and waited with bated breath to find out how he would do...amazingly when The Husband came to pick him up, he found Marc asleep - and he had slept for a totaly of 2.5 hours! He even ate porridge at school!
Besides his favourite foods and toys, I've been speaking to Marc everyday and telling him that school is a fun place and he'll make lots of friends there. Not sure if that has quite set in yet, but we're hoping this will broaden his scope of the world. Its very easy for him to think that the whole world revolves around him at home - after all he's the first grandchild on both sides and he has everyone at his beck and call. We also want him to learn to socialise, learn that you have to obey rules in the outside world and some independence. We have friends' kids who cried for 6 months to a year while adjusting to school, so we are keeping our fingers crossed and hope that Marc will love to go to school soon!
