school

This Is Just The Beginning…

Posted on July 21, 2011 Written by Tonya

In less than two weeks Lucas will be attending preschool. It’s crazy, I know! How did he get to be such a big boy? I feel like we just brought him home from the hospital, swaddled him and were protecting his head, but like it or not, here we are getting ready for his first day of school.

I am really excited for all the new things Lucas is going experience and learn, expert direction he is going to receive, friends he’s going to make and fun he is going to have. I loved school and I hope he does to!

Child’s Full Name

Address

Parent’s Names

Signature

I just read, filled in the blanks and signed more than a dozen pieces of paper with my son’s new school’s insignia prominently placed at the top of each page.

Physician’s Name

Known Allergies

Diet Pattern

Signature

While easy to answer these questions about my son, his habits and his health, each one made me a little sadder than the last. He’s only two.

In Case of an Emergency Contact

Nap Schedule

Parent’s Evaluation of Child’s Personality

Signature

So many signatures.

I feel like it’s time, I agreed it was time, but now that we are just days away, I’m second guessing myself. Are we doing the right thing by sending Lucas to preschool?

Field Trip Permission Slip

Children’s Disaster/Earthquake Kit

Permission to Photograph

Parent Handbook

For so long, it’s been me and Lucas, Monday through Saturday, 8 – 10 hours a day. Day in and day out.

Just us.

I know I’m only giving him up nine hours a week, but it feels like so much more than that. This feels like it’s just the beginning of him being pulled away from me…

…and I’m going to miss him.

Hot Stuff

Posted on April 13, 2011 Written by Tonya

I thought I was hot stuff the minute I earned my first pay check.

I spent half a summer telemarketing and I hated every second of it, but the pay check at the end of each week was awesome. It made me believe that I didn’t need anyone or anything to make it in the world. School schmool. As long as I could make money, I would be alright. At 17, that’s what I thought it was all about.

The problem was I actually enjoyed school and I believed what my parents were telling me: I could make a lot more money if I had an education. Win-win!

I thought I was hot stuff the moment I graduated from high school.

I thought the friends I had then, I’d be friends with forever. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life and was completely full of myself. In reality, I didn’t have a clue in my head who I was or what my place in the world would be.

Luckily there was college… the epitome of hot suff!

I partied my ass off, attended class most days (as long as they didn’t interfere with my soaps), changed my major four times, held a part time job and thought I was learning everything I’d ever need to know about the world around me.

Now that I had a degree under my belt, I quickly found out I was more lost than ever.

No longer having school to fall back on, it was time to get a real job… a career.

I accepted the first $22,000/year job offered to me and felt very much like an adult. I was making decisions left and right about my life; how to spend my time, money and energy, I was paying rent and choosing where to shop, vacation and whether to call it a night or have another drink, knowing full well that I’d be hung over in the morning as I sat in a mandatory meeting.

But by golly, finally I was an adult!

Or so I thought.

I gained years, perspective and experience, but it wasn’t until almost 12 years later, when I had my son that I truly felt like a grown up.

It wasn’t until I was responsible for another person’s health, safety, well being and comfort, that I felt grown up.

It wasn’t until I loved to my heart’s fullest capacity that I grew up.

I can go from zero to irate in less than 38 seconds so while I may still be working on my maturity level, I am definitely a grown up now and my son thinks I’m hot stuff!

This post was written for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, Prompt 1.) The moment I realized I was a grown up, inspired by…(drum roll, please) yours truly! Thanks, Kat. 🙂

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School Days

Posted on March 29, 2011 Written by Tonya

From 1976-1979, my parents taught on an Indian reservation in Sells, Arizona. My mother taught kindergarten and my father, high school U.S. history.

For reasons I’m unclear of, I attended a Catholic school in a different district for kindergarten and first grade, almost nine miles away in Topawa. My family isn’t Catholic.

The scent of Play-Doh and Coppertone, riding my Big Wheel up and down the sidewalk in front of our house, skinned knees, playing house, watching the Donnie and Marie Show, too much sugar cereal and wishing I was older all remind me of my childhood, but it’s six very distinctive events that stand out when I think back to being four and five years old and my first school days:

1. I got to ride the school bus all by myself for what I now know was only 20 minutes, but back then felt like 90. How grown up I felt. It was frightening too, especially the time that I missed my stop and a policeman escorted the bus to pull over so that I get off after multiple radio calls were made regarding my whereabouts. I knew full well that the light haired, light eyed little girl they were talking about was me.

2. I stapled my finger to see what it would feel like and I quickly learned that it hurt like hell as I stood there bleeding my ruby red blood all over Miss Mills’ desk with big crocodile tears streaming down my face. I’ve never done that again!

3. Catholic nuns can be both vicious and the most endearing women on the planet.

4. Case and point: Once Sister Trecel made me eat a banana at lunch even though I told her that it would make me sick. When I threw up all over her and her starch black and white habit, she sent me home with a note of apology to my parents pinned to my shirt.

5. Naps… need I say more? Actually, it is not the naps that I recall so much as the uncomfortable green army cots and the giant pools of drool that I remember most of all. Not mine, mind you. I also remember laying there for what seemed like forever listening to my class mates snore. I still can’t nap.

6. When Miss Mills asked us to draw a picture of our family, I drew my mother, father, myself and my baby sister. Miss Mills called my mother that evening to congratulate her on our family’s new addition. My sister, Leah wouldn’t be born for another eight years. Gulp! Thinking back on this family portrait always reminds me how much I longed for a sibling.

Two big years of my young life as defined by six small events that stand out very clearly in my adult head.

This post is for The Red Dress Club’s writing assignment, RemembeRED. This week’s prompt was to remember kindergarten.

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I Don’t Do Math

Posted on July 29, 2010 Written by Tonya

I know it embarrasses my husband when I pull out my tip calculator, but I suck at math!

In high school I excelled in English, history, art, music, PE and foreign language classes, but I was terrible at math and science.

In all honesty, if it weren’t for the homework and all the extra credit problems and reports I completed, I don’t think I would have even earned a diploma. I am not proud of this, I am just stating facts. I am proud to be very right brained.

Sitting in my seventh grade Algebra class, I would get dizzy staring at all the numbers on the chalkboard and when it came to formulas and word problems… forget it!

Tutors didn’t help. The summer courses I took didn’t help and neither did the knock down drag out fights I would have with my parents. They couldn’t understand why I was getting A’s and B’s in the courses I actually enjoyed and practically failing the ones I didn’t. It seemed pretty logical to me, but they were educators and thought my grades should be more “consistent”. I consistently argued that I’d never need math in my life.

By the time I got to college, I took the minimum required math courses that I needed in order to graduate and that was that. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t go for a marketing degree because I couldn’t handle all the math prerequisites and instead opted for a Bachelor of Arts in communications with an emphasis in public relations. I can still put together a marketing budget and successfully stick to it.

I like to think that I have a logical mind that is very black and white because I appreciate that in mathematics, there can only be one solution to a problem. I mean 2 + 2 can’t equal 5, right? But numbers have always boggled my mind. I just don’t have a head for them and I never have. I know just enough to get by and for everything else, there’s a calculator.

I understand the value of math and why it is important to learn basic formulas, fractions and percentages, but I’m already starting to worry about helping Lucas with his math homework. Beyond middle school, we are definitely going to have problems (no pun intended). Thank goodness his dad is a very proud left brainer and will assist in this arena.

Numbers or not, the best is yet to be.

This Is Just The Beginning…

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