Changes

Big changes have been occurring here in the DuFour house. The most noteable change is that Ethan is now attending preschool. For the past two years, when I am working, he has been going to a friends house. After a lot of thought and prayer, Chris and I felt that with me working and not able to stay home with him full time, the next best thing would be to put him in a structured learning environment. We were so excited.

He started last week and boy was it a week. The preschool does not allow pacifiers and Ethan was still using a pacifier to sleep with. I had been wanting to kick that habit, but I am sometimes hesitant to change things when I am working (I think it is a working mom things, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it). I am always so afraid that something will go wrong with the change and it will be hard to deal with when working, so I usually wait until a weekend or a break in work to make a change. I know that is bad, and everytime we have made a change he has proven to cope fantastic with it (it is me that does not do so great with change I guess). So a week ago, this past Sunday night, was Ethan's last encounter with a pacifier. We decided that if he had to nap at school without it than he would have to do it at home also (plus we did not want to have it confusing him). Ethan was off Monday morning, not knowing that while he was gone all the pacifiers would disappear from the house. He has done great! The first two nights were pretty rough, but now he is back to sleeping in his big boy bed like a champ and he only occasionally asks for his "baby" (a while back I tried to break the paci habit by telling him it was for babies, not big boys. That only resulted in him tell us he was a baby when asked if he was a big boy and then calling the paci a baby. Smart kid) and does not question when I say we don't have any here anymore.

The structure has been another big change for E and has, again, proven to a huge hit. Previously E's day varied from day to day. Naptime, lunchtime, snacktime, was different everyday. Now he has a set time for everything. We have even noticed that he is eating more at dinner (dinner has always been a huge struggle for us, with E sometimes eating only one bite).

It has only been a week, but already we have seen growth in Ethan. He is talking so much more and starting to make two to three word sentences to us. He has always been content to sit back and let others do stuff and speak for him. It has been so neat to see him open up more and be a bit more vocal and show us how much he knows.

The bummer about him starting school last week, was that I have this week off. I usually love our weeks off together, but we decided that since he has only been in school a week, it would probably confuse him to take him out this week and then go back again. He is afterall still getting used to all the changes. I love to watch him learning so much, but I will miss him this week. What will I do to fill my time while he is at school?