The First Day of First Grade...

Sadly, summer drew to a close yesterday as we laid out our clothes and went to bed before 8pm. Today was the first day of school! James started 1st grade and he was so excited! He told me this morning he was nervous and I said, "Well, guess what?! So is EVERYONE ELSE in the whole school! Even your teacher!" And he perked right up and got happy!

 

This year versus last year! Look how much taller he is!!!!

After dropping him off, Will and I came home for our 2nd annual Woohoo Boohoo Brunch! We had 7 mamas in attendance this year - Amy, MaraDare, Annie, Bessy, Tiffany, Jeanine, and myself - and had a great time. It's a fun morning to help pass the time!

James had a GREAT day at school today. He said everything about it was his favorite thing! He had music today (he LOVES his music teacher), they played on the THIRD GRADE playground, they did kindergarten math, and on and on. He was happy when I picked him up. He has a few buddies from last year in his class - his best friend JM and another friend Ayden are his favorites. Ayden's daddy is our high school's basketball coach and I think James thinks that is SO cool. Overall, he had an awesome day and I am SO relieved. He has begged to go back to kindergarten all summer long. He starts his gifted class on Thursday and will go for 50 minutes 5 days a week, so THAT will be a huge change this year. Last year he just went a few times in the spring.

If you don't follow along on Instagram, you won't know that James fell last week at a pool and his goggles cut his eye. He wound up with three stitches and a little shiner. It looks SO much better than it did (I'll probably share the other photos here just for our memory books). Today was the day to have his stitches removed! I made an appointment with our pediatrician neighbor so as soon as school was out, James, Eddie, and I headed to his office.  He was really, really generous and cancelled our appointment and just took them out as a favor to us. (There is a joke about Eddie taking one of our children to the doctor's office and refusing Motrin because he didn't want to be charged $100 for a teaspoon of medicine. He has laughed at Eddie about that so he told us today he wouldn't charge us for suture removal, but the Motrin would be extra! {Motrin, Tylenol, popsicles, and Gatorade are free at the peds office. If they weren't, we'd be broke.}) Ten minutes later, Dr. Mark had all three stitches out and James got scissors and tweezers as a souvenir! Nothing like taking sharp objects home from the pediatrician's office. HAHAHAHA! #jobsecurity James has been SO nervous about having them removed and said he just wanted to keep them in. I tried and tried to reassure him that it would be NOTHING like putting them in, but this was one of those times where he just had to find out for himself. I think he was pleasantly surprised. One was simple to get out, the other two were a little harder. He's got a HUGE scar, but we feel certain it will fade a ton in the coming weeks. I told James we'd put some Mederma on it and he told me he wanted to keep it!

We are praying for a GREAT year for James. He is going to do great things!