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In a couple of weeks Maya will be going on her very first field trip. Her little preschool class is taking a trip to the pumpkin patch. They get to ride on a bus and everything!
At her school the teacher to child ratio is great. There are 9 kids in her class and 3 teachers. Two of the classes are pairing up for the trip so there will be 18 kids and 6 teachers plus one of the assistant principals is tagging along and the OT that works with one of the kids in Maya’s class. So, given that so many adults will be there they didn’t ask for parent volunteers to be extra eyes. Parents are, however, invited to tag along if they want.
I want to, I would love to be part of this little experience. But. Ya, there’s a but. But, I’m worried that my being there will mean that Maya’s experience isn’t as a great as it could be. You see, Maya is very shy. When we had our parent/teacher conference a few weeks ago it was one of the topics we discussed. I wasn’t surprised that her teacher had noticed it, since we witness it every time we are out with friends, or Maya encounters strangers and even acquaintances while we are out and about. She is super shy around other people and it takes time for her to warm up and talk to people. Her teacher has mentioned that she is starting to see her come out of her shell, she is starting to communicate with her friends and the teachers more and more. So, I’m worried that my being there with her on the field trip will limit her, that she will use me as a shield and won’t be as open, as talkative, as adventurous.
As much as I want to go, to be part of this little adventure with her, I’m leaning towards sitting this one out. I haven’t made a firm decision yet, but I want her to have the best first field trip experience possible and if that means I have to sit this one out than that is what I will do.
Any of you other mommas of shy kiddos had a similar experience? Any advice for me?
Maya has always been a relatively healthy child. In her first year of life she only had one cold and that was when she was about 7 weeks old and she got it while we were visiting family over Christmas. Throughout her almost 4 years of life she has had mostly just colds. Last year she did have a mild case of croup, but no medication was needed and it was gone in a day or two. No flu, no ear infections, no antibiotics. It has been smooth sailing in that department so far.
I knew that she would like be sick more often this year now that she has started school. We all know that germs love to travel around the school yard and make their rounds to all the kid’s homes. Well, here we are, just over a month into the school year and we’v already had our first battle with the school cooties.
A couple of weeks ago Maya had her flu vaccine. At the advice of her doctor I opted for the nasal mist versus the shot. Her doctor warned me that she would likely have an extra stuffy, runny nose for a couple of days (I say extra because Maya has allergies and pretty much always has a stuffy, runny nose). So, when her nose was stuffy all last weekend I didn’t think anything of it. When it didn’t go away and a cough arrived I figured she was coming down with a cold. No biggie, we’ve dealt with colds before.
Then Thursday night rolled around, well actually more like the wee hours of Friday morning. Maya woke up crying and when I went into her room I found her running a fever and complaining that her ear hurt. A trip to the doctor later that morning confirmed what I already knew, she had her first ear infection. A prescription for a round of antibiotics and we were on our way home to suffer through the weekend with an extremely crabby Maya.
She has made it almost 4 years with not a single ear infection, not a single round of antibiotics and nothing more than a cold under her belt. One month into her first year of school and now she has had her first ear infection and she is part way through her first round of antibiotics. This school year could get interesting. My fingers are crossed that we get a reprieve from the school cooties for a bit.
Maya has started calling me “Mom”. Just mom, not mama or mommy, just mom. I don’t think I’m ready to be just “mom”. But, if there is one thing I’ve learned in my almost 4 years as a parent it’s that it isn’t about what I’m ready for, it’s all about what she is ready for.
When did she become a full blown kid?
I remember those early days of talking when I couldn’t wait for Maya to say “mama”, and then for her to say it and know she was referring to me. It was music to my ears. Then she made the transition to using “mommy” and I loved it, it made me feel so special to have this sweet little girl calling me “mommy”.
This transition to “mom” feels different. It feels like a reminder that she isn’t a baby or a toddler anymore, she is a kid. The other morning she came in the bathroom while I was having a shower and said “Hey, Mom, where’s Dad?” It was like a completely different child had walked into the bathroom. I was so used to having her say “Mommy, where is dada?” that I was taken aback for a moment. Who dropped this 13 year old off at my house and what did they do with my not quite 4 year old!
I think it is going to take a little getting used to, this new title of mine. In the meantime I’ll relish in those moments when “mommy” or “mama” still slip back into her vocabulary because I’m not ready to me just “mom” quite yet.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to say that Maya loves school. Given her propensity to shyness and her antics last winter when I tried to send her into her gymnastics class alone, I was really worried that it would take her some time, perhaps even a lot of time, to adjust to going to school. Deep down I knew she would love it once she got adjusted, but I didn’t know what to expect from her at first.
We are in week number 3 of the school year and Maya is just in love with going to school. When she gets up in the morning she always asks if she “gets to go to school this day?” 
Other than a few tears, that according to her teacher only lasted a couple of minutes, on her first day of school drop off has been a breeze. Thursday when I dropped her off she barely said goodbye before running into her class room. It is going better than I even could have hoped. I never imagined that on her 3rd day of school she’d already be at the running into class with barely a look back stage, I love it.
She is getting so much out of it too. Every Tuesday and Thursday when I pick her up from school at lunchtime she is full of stories about all the things she did in class that day. She sings the songs they have been learning in class all day long. She talks about her new little friends and all the things they played with. She adores her teachers. She is so proud of her little art projects at the end of the day. Not to mention that she is constantly playing school at home now too, either with Lorne and I or her dolls as her “students”.
The smiles on her face when I drop her off and the bigger smiles on her face when I pick her up just melt my heart.
I can already feel the shadows growing in my memory. The moments and memories that I brought back from one of the most amazing experiences in my life are less crisp. As each day passes they are slowly, but surely, beginning to fade.
Moments and memories like this one.
And this one.
And this one.
I’m lucky, because as time does what it always does and the memories from our time in Australia begin to fade, I’ll have the posts I wrote about our adventures and the hundreds of pictures I took, to look back and regain some of the vividness of my memories. These moments and the many others we had will never be gone completely, I’ll always be able to look at a picture or read a post and bring them back.
I want Maya to remember her trip too. She may not remember much, she may only remember a single moment or a feeling. But I want her to have something to hold onto in her mind. The things she got to experience are things that some people dream their whole lives about but never get to do. I want her to have something to spark her own tiny memories, so I’ve decided to make a book for her. I’m working on getting all the posts I wrote about our adventures, along with some of the pictures, bound into a book for her. I hope that as she gets older and she only has some distant memory of being in a land far, far away when she was very young, that she’ll be able to look at the book, read the stories, see the pictures and for just a moment remember how incredible the spring of her 4th year of life truly was.