Well today its over, after 4 years of having these moments once a week our class graduated from mommy & me school. My hormones are on overdrive these days so I pretty much lost it the entire time the kids were graduating. As each mom stood up and said their speech about their child I cried in the background with them so when it came time for me to talk to Erik I was a total mess. And in typical Heather style I was unprepared and hadn't written anything down. I have video but think due to the embarrassing nature of me not being able to speak I will refrain from watching it for a long time.
So its sad to say good-bye. Erik has been in class with most of these kids since he was a baby and I can't believe he is old enough to no longer be in the program. How did I get to have an almost 5 year old? I love that he had this opportunity to grow with the same group of kids, to know so many of them in preschool independent of me and then get a chance to see him with them out of preschool. This was also a place for him to choose who were his friends independent of me. He choose the children who he preferred to play with, and it wasn't because I knew the mom and was friends with her. He has surprised me with some of his choices, but I love that he had this opportunity to develop social skills in such a safe environment.
Sadly none of the children will be heading to kindergarten in the same school as us. As a matter of fact so many kids are taking so many different path. Some are starting kindergarten like Erik, some are staying in our preschool and some are taking a bonus year and some are doing nothing. It really shows you how the individual needs of each child and parent are so very different.
So sadly I say good-bye to Erik and me time, but still have several more years to finish the program with Elliot. Its just so bittersweet when its your first and go through something the very first time.
Here are some pictures from today. All the children coming into the classroom for the graduation ceremony.
Talking about how much I love Erik and our special time together. (I had a friend take the pictures and put my camera on automatic setting. I was pretty disappointed with the results of what the camera choose. I'll have to remember that for the future and program it myself.)
Here is Erik with two of his special friends. Ben and Erik are in the same preschool class so they have bonded and become good friends through that. I love that I knew Ben's mom but we weren't very close and Erik and Ben just became good friends on their own. Its very special to see that happen naturally. In the background in the pink is another preschool friend Autry and Erik and Autry have a special "wrestling" relationship every time after class and have become good friends.
Last but not least I make a book for our class every year with pictures that the parents provide and honestly I bring in my camera a couple days and shoot a lot of the pictures myself so the parents can have good quality images of their children in the book. So here is a book all about our year. It was fun and I am really going to miss going to this program with Erik.
I can see how much Erik has grown just in the 2 1/2 years I've been following your blog and flickr. He looks like such a big boy now. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteOh ... and I agree about automatic mode. My camera tends to underexpose anything indoors, so I know that I need to overexpose it.
ReplyDeleteI can't even rely on aperture or shutter priority. Although that is one step up from Auto-mode I guess.
You know what surprised me is that it choose a low ISO and low shuttersped for indoors so there was motion blur. I could have done a better job of choosing the setting in my sleep. Definitely not relying on it at all anymore.
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