Night time cuddles

Logan is at a turning point in his young life, he's not quite a baby and not quite a big kid yet. The toddler years are fun for lots of reasons, the new words and blossoming personality make everyday interesting. And challenging. With Logan, more challenging than interesting it seems. But lately his communication has been amazing and it's easy to see how he's been less and less frustrated. Not that he doesn't still have tantrums, but much less hitting and biting.

And in many ways, he's still my baby. Last week, Logan woke up in the middle of the night. When I entered his room, I didn't close the door, just got to him and picked him up from his crib. He stood and reached for me. When I patted his bottom, I realized he was very soggy and needed a fresh diaper. So I told him he needed a change and he laid down quietly as soon as I set him on the floor (he outgrew the changing table ages ago). Then I changed him and before I could pick him back up, he'd stood up and was hugging me. I was just about to stand up so we could sit in his chair and cuddle some when he realized something was wrong. He ran over, closed his room door and then came back, now ready for his cuddle. I only held him for a few minutes then he went back to sleep and I slowly slipped back to my own bed. 

As I tried to fall back to sleep, I laughed to myself. He's old enough to know he wants his door closed, but young enough to still need a cuddle to fall back to sleep. 

The first week

The first few full days of school have come and gone and James has been adjusting pretty well. He did have an accident on the way to school on his first day, but other than that, things have been relatively uneventful. He loves his teacher and has been enjoying playing new games and meeting new people.

We had Back to School night on Tuesday, where we learned more about the curriculum for the year and on Wednesday we learned first hand about the behavioral chart. 

The behavioral chart is a tool for discipline where the kids each have a clothes pin clipped to the chart. If you're good, you stay on blue. You can go down to green or yellow (yellow usually results in a consequence) or you can be super exceptional and move up to orange which results in a sticker and small prize. The colors make no sense to me, because they aren't in rainbow ROY G BIV order, but I'm going to get over it. Adam asked James how he did on the chart on Wednesday, who told us he was on yellow. He was warned twice for not calming down after recess. This makes total sense to me, since calming down has never been James' strong suit.  We didn't get too upset with James, mainly tried to listen as he explained himself. I suppose the funniest part of all of this was that James made sure he told us that the other kid "taught him how to be bad". I'm pretty sure he needed no help, but we talked about our expectation for his behavior and today he had no problems. 

We are slowly getting into the routine, James gets lunch and a snack, which eases a lot of my worry about him being hungry. Our daycare provider's daughter has been walking him across the street to the bus on days when the older kids aren't there in the morning. Logan seems to be thoroughly enjoying being a "big kid" at daycare without his brother, but they have been much more affectionate with each other when they are together. 

Overall, it's been exhausting, especially with soccer practice mixed in, but this is an exciting time for all of us. Even if I still can't believe I have a 5 year old!