I agree you may want to hold your S back from starting K. Boys especially may need a little extra time to mature. Especially with our life style and different states having different cut offs. Our youngest turned 5 on the cut off date where he started K. Which meant he started K at age 4 (turned 5 a couple of months into K). He did fine up until 4th grade. He was really struggling with his grades. We moved half way during the school year and put him back to 3rd grade to finish. One reason was because we could see he was struggling, but the biggest reason was because all the the kids in the 4th grade at the new school were already 10 in Jaunary and S would not be turning 10 until the following fall.
We are SO glad we did this. He now makes high honor roll every term and has been chosen to represent his grade in Math field day for the past two years.
I am going to recommend some things that I have read and used.
Thanks NNP, I just ordered the Boundaries with Kids book and workbook. Hopefully they get here SOON! S had another morning clothing melt down. Luckily it's Saturday. After the timer had the opposite effect of calming him down and getting him to stop fighting with his clothing, I just put him back in his bed. He started to play with his sing along machine after a while and I decided to take it away and give him the choice of laying quietly until he falls back to sleep or getting himself dressed. He's got to learn how to get dressed in the morning without having a complete melt-down about his clothes. I don't know what else to do at this point.
On the H front...I actually had a night out with a couple older women who have become my mentors. I talked with them a lot about my situation and the choices I'm facing at work and whether or not to continue my M. I gave them the good, the bad and the ugly of the R. They didn't insist I either divorce H or commit to staying with him, but they were adamant about me not wasting these years of my life and thinking there wouldn't be another fish in the sea for me. They also agreed that I need to keep working on giving and recieving compliments. After dinner and a couple drinks I told them I was going to go home and write H an email acknowledging his good qualities that I had just described to these women.
Well this morning I got an email back from H saying, "What the hell is this all about? I do not have any good qualities nor do I desire to be judged by any. When are you going to figure this out? We don't agree on anything and never will. You obviously haven't told your group the truth about me..." I didn't really know how to react to that. My first reaction was that all too familiar sinking feeling, that he's not ever going to grow into a big enough human being to make this M work. His email did go on to say I should quit harping on myself because of my weight because I've always been attractive. And he said that because one of his good qualities that I wrote him about was that he had always been attracted to me for me and not what weight I happened to be at (I gained 100 pounds between getting married to him and having our son, then lost it over the following few years). I didn't think I was harping on myself, just being greatful that he wasn't like so many other men that would have had a hard time with the change in my body.
This is why (or one of the reasons) it's so hard for me to compliment him. My email to him was just a paragraph, highlighting what I thought were two of his best qualities. Now I'm afraid to go back and reread it because I'm embarassed I even wrote it to him in the first place. Maybe it was just too mushy and he thought it was insincere.
Screw him. I can't believe I spend this much energy on someone who got me into this situation anyway.
S4 is going to a 6 week, half-day summer school for kindergarteners starting next week.
I bet the summer school teacher will be able to give you helpful guidance about whether or not your son is ready for kindergarten. You shouldn't have to make that decision alone. (I'm sure the purpose of the summer school is to help get ready for the fall.)
Yes, I'm glad S4 is going to that summer school-kindergarten prep class. At first I wasn't going to sign him up because It runs while H is here and I know H would have liked us to leave town. But the daycare thought S4 could really use it, so I signed him up and told H. H was very accepting about the cramp it will put in his leave, and wanted to do what was best for S-as he should be. And today is S4's first day at summer school!
And on another good note...H apologized in an email this morning about snapping at me in his previous email. He said he was having a bad day and didn't know why he took it out on me. I take it as a big step forward that he admits that he was taking his stress out on me. He's never really acknowledged how he takes his moods out no me before.
So today is a good day. Now I've got to rush and get ready for work and squeeze in more housecleaning.
You hit the nail on the head with the mixed signals. So far she has not rejected any of my suggestions meals w/family, movies w/family and today drinks alone and a date set up for us alone, 5 that used to be a family together all day for the 4th. She's talked about visiting in NJ this summer also. Frankly I'm enjoying the alone time while the family time seems more like the old days which wern't very exciting. Not sure how far I want to take it, thinking about asking her to go on a trip to where we met in Spain, would have been our 25th anniv this year. One strange thing is that when we talk about certain subjects, like our early days, she keeps getting teary/watery eyed, what could that mean? Not expecting much considering we will still be very geographically separated for a while. And will be checking out the ladies in NJ, matchmackers already have a couple of prospects lined up.
So is H there now? How is that going? Good luck. RJ
Thanks for checking in. That boundaries book did come in, but I haven't gotten very far with it since H was here. But so far I think it's what I need. While H was around this past week, dealing with S4 was a million times easier, of course. But I need to work on how I handle him on my own. S4 is also enjoying the PreK summer school program very much. In fact, S4 told me he likes "the pretty girl in class." I asked him what her name was and he didn't know. So I suggested he ask and the next day he came back and told me her name. Then we saw her at the park yesterday and S4 spent over an hour running around the playground with her. She dragged him around by the arm a lot and he loved every bit of it. So cute.
I am still dealing with the school district over what school he will go to, assuming he goes to kindergarten, but I think things will turn out for the best.
H spent a week and a half here and I took him back to the airport this afternoon. But this time we'll see him again in another couple weeks, instead of a year from now. And he'll be much closer than before. So it wasn't such a stressful goodbye. But it was still a little depressing.
The visit went well. H was very sweet about my birthday. He actually got the date wrong and the look of frustration and disappointment on his face when he found out was the best birthday present ever-wait...that's twisted. I mean to say, it was obvious he had plans and had put significant thought into my birthday before he got here. I didn't care at all that he'd gotten the date wrong. It was so cute when he tried to secretly enlist S4 to sign a card and bring me a cupcake. I could here H trying to talk S4 into cooperating in the other room, but S4 just didn't have the attention span. It was funny and sweet.
When I got back from the airport this afternoon I just felt aimless and mildly depressed. And S4 kept asking me what he could do, i.e. he was bored and didn't know what to do. We both got used to having H around real fast. With H, there's someone to coordinate the daily details with. A four squared meal gets prepared, the kitchen gets cleaned up, plans are discussed for the next day. On my own, I'm lucky if we even eat an actual meal in the evening instead of snacking through it. I tend to long term goals, but if I'm out of my work routine, I wonder through the day half-hazardly.
H called as soon as his plane landed safely on the other side. We hadn't discussed a phone call, but I had a feeling he would as soon as he landed and it just showed that he got used to us pretty fast too. I told him we missed him already and he said that he missed us too and I could hear it in his voice.
I still don't know much about our long term living situation, whether or not H is being promoted and moving again soon. Like I said earlier, I didn't press him any more about whether or not he wanted us to live with him wherever he went. I figure he will come to a conclusion about that when he's around us more often, if he hasn't figured it out already. Even my mom mentioned that he certainly looks and acts like a man who wants to be with his family. But he has been unable/willing to verbally assure me that he wants us to live together for some reason.
We did discuss my work situation a little and H supports me in the changes I want to make. All in all, I feel pretty good about things at the moment. I'm not having that continuous orgasm that I still seem to believe is my proper due in this life. But, things are getting better.
