Getting ready for fall

It seems like I spent almost the entire week getting ready for the fall.

First, we all attended our first Sunday School class at church on Sunday. David and are joining a class for young families, while William technically isn't in a class, but he's going to the nursery.

Then, I signed William up for a weekly Kindermusik class and a Gymboree class. I know, I know, it's bad to overprogram children, but I wanted to find something he and I could do together that would also give a little structure to our weeks. In Twentynine Palms, he and I attended the breastfeeding group at the hospital and then, later, a Playtime with Baby class at the Y, which we referred to as "William's school." Here, we needed to find a new version of "school" to entertain him...and er, me, too. So we'll be doing Kindermusik on Tuesday afternoons and Gymboree on Wednesday mornings.

Originally, I had thought we'd go to library story hours a couple of mornings every week. Then I actually took William to story hour a few times. And then I began to reconsider. See, here's the deal with storytime: they, yes, read stories. And the children are supposed to sit and listen. That's a tall order for a toddler like mine. He pays attention sometimes, but oh, is that a cat on that book over there? Hey, look at the fan! Is he eating raisins? Can I have some too? Let's just say that William can be easily distracted by all the other interesting sights and sounds, so I end up doing a heavy amount of baby-wrangling. The downtown library's storyhour is a little more active--includes puppets and singing and dancing, so we'll probably still go to that one sometimes. But with Kindermusik and Gymboree, William is actually supposed to get up and down and dance and make some noise. I think that's a little better for him at this point in time. Plus, we read plenty of books at home.

Let's see. What else is on tap for fall? Oh, that's right. William will go to Mother's Day Out at a nearby church on Mondays. So David and I went to the open house yesterday to meet his teacher and check out the classroom. William immediately threw himself into the toys while we chatted with the teacher and looked at the handouts we received. It was hard to pry William away when it was time to go home. I think he'll do just fine there. And while he's in "school," I'll be in a study group at our church. I attended an orientation meeting for that the other night.

I do love fall. I love the start of all the new activities. I love the beginning of football season and the baseball pennant races. I love Halloween and all the stuff leading up to it. And I still love buying new school supplies, even though I haven't really needed them for years. There's just something special about a smooth new notebook or a brand new box of crayons with their even sharp tips, you know? But I admit that I bought William a new lunchbox. And I really feel like I should go out and buy a new Trapper Keeper or something. Do they even still make Trapper Keepers? Wow. One day, my son is going to give me a funny look and say, "Mom? What is a Trapper Keeper?" Heh. In the meantime, I guess I'll be content with the new lunchbox, the new activities and looking forward to cooler weather that, please God, will arrive soon.