And I'm a mess.
I vacillate between being soooo ready (i.e. "you call that a nap?") and worrying that my tiny, little boy is much too young to wander out into that great big world of ours. I actually had a fleeting moment today when I considered scraping the whole idea and home-schooling him.
I made the critical error of reading this story on Yahoo about a mother who still loves and hates her daughter's 1st grade teacher from twenty-one years ago. She loved the teacher because she taught the little girl to love learning and to be smart and independent; she hated her because the daughter learned that year to move away from her mother and think for herself. It was poignant, sweet, and heart-felt, and by the end of it, I was literally weeping on my couch. Matters are further compounded by our dear little Bear who comments on every person, creature, or stuffed animal he sees and says, "Aw, he's sad, Momma." When I ask why, he says, "He had to go to camp. He was skerred. He wanted his Mommy." Then he comes over and wraps his chubby little arms around my knees.
And then my heart breaks into a million little pieces.
So, needless to say, the whole camp thing didn't go so well. It was only six sessions (half-days, for goodness sake! Less than 24 hours of his entire life!) but every time we are on the same road as the school, Scotty starts screaming in the backseat.
This does not bode well for my confidence. T-minus eight days.
This morning, we headed to this awesome "teacher" store on the opposite side of town. I determined that I would make a terrible preschool teacher for any number of reasons. Most are listed below.
Oh phonics! Sweet! I love phonics. And we'll do a 'letter of the day' each day...love this chart...a calendar! NIce! Oh! A book on government! Didn't I see a kid on the Today Show who knew all of the presidents? Scotty could totally do that and then we could finally meet Matt Lauer. Let's see...we'll move on to prepositions and adverbs and oh, I could use this little graph to teach him how to graph a sentence. Ew, yuck, math stuff. Hmm. We'll skip over that for now. Science? Well, crap I guess I'll have to teach him about science too. Which means I'll have to figure some stuff out. Baking soda and vinegar? Is that science? Maybe I can outsource this one to my friend Krista...she's really smart in science. Hey look, puzzles! Of the United States! I totally need this!
And then I picked up a card that said what preschooler should be preparing for, and it said "Letter recognition, colors, creative play, and shape recognition."
No phonics?
So yeah, I came to my senses pretty quickly. I will not be forfeiting our deposit and homeschooling the Bear. I am headed to the Uniform Store tomorrow to pick out some burgandy Polos for the little guy, and we will continue on the course we set forth a year ago.
If only I could pull it together and stop crying.
::sigh::