I’ve Been Thinking…

Whenever I say to my  husband, "I’ve been thinking" he says, "oh no."  However  I have been thinking.  Thinking about my ups and downs about Leo and the gifted program or no gifted program and how he deals with friends.  Thinking about Mrs. Chicken’s post about the frustrations of dealing with toddlers. Thinking about how I’m dealing with my children and my hopes and wishes for them.  Then Ernie came across a little book of pictures from Leo in preschool.  His teacher Anna puts these together at the end of the school year for each parent.  She had Leo two years and these pictures are from the first  year so Leo must have just turned four.  You can tell she had to search long and hard for pictures with Leo because half of the pictures are of the rest of the class with no Leo and here are the few that have  Leo in them….

Here is Leo standing to the side of the group learning about fire safety because he always refused to sit down, much less sit with the group.

Here is Leo standing with the happy group of children while he looks foul and refuses to look at the camera:

Here is Leo with his class.  Notice they are all wearing little hats they made.  Notice Leo is standing in the back, not looking at the camera and didn’t make a hat.  Now remember that these are the BEST pictures of the year that Anna had of him.

Then I remembered one of Ernie’s favorite memories.  It was that same year in preschool and he went in to pick up Leo.  When he got to his classroom he saw that the art project that day had been to make snowmen out of styrofoam balls.  In the midst of the line up of styrofoam snowman after styrofoam snowman he saw a snowcreature made out of some Lego type of construction toy.  He asked what that was and the other parent that had been in the classroom said, "Oh, that Leo’s snowman."  Ernie says at that moment he knew Leo was going to be fine.  He’s not always going to take the easiest of paths but he’s going to be fine. 

It was good for me to see those pictures and compare them with the Leo of today—who still takes his own paths but is also a happy little guy.

He’s going to be fine.  I’m going to be fine and Mrs. Chicken and Poo are going to be fine.  It just gets hard to remember sometimes when you’re in the thick of it.