Finnigan Begin Again

The kids are back at school. Declan and Ruby started yesterday, and Simon went today. Year 8, year 6 and year 4. Sheesh. They are massive, these kids and are getting massiver.  Ruby in particular is shooting up, all long legs and gnarly teeth that don't fit in her head. I'm hoping this will be a good year for her. Last year was a bit up and down. She is making good progress with her reading and spelling, but I still feel that academically she could have done with repeating a year. But she's year 4 now and I think that ship has sailed.  There is still a big dichotomy between her knowledge and ability. For example, last week she couldn't read a sign that said SHOPS, because it was written vertically down a wall. She just couldn't, for the life of her get those letters to make sense in that configuration. And then the next day she told Brett that his shirt wasn't blue, it was in fact, cyan. Which it was.

Declan is happy to be in year 6 I think and is looking forward to 'ruling the school' so to speak. Year 6 kids get to sit at a particular set of picnic tables at lunch, the rest of the school sit on the ground hahaha, so that makes him feel ultra important.  In the next few weeks I'll meet with the teacher and start putting a high school transition plan in place for him. He will audition soon for Wollongong High in clarinet, hopefully he gets a place in the music programme. If not he still goes there as a local student, like Simon.

Simon came home happy from his first day in Year 8. He's becoming very teenager-y. Yesterday he got his ear pierced, and he spends quite a bit of time on his hair. I think he was very surprised that we let him get his ear pierced, but as I said, it's his ear! I'm sure this year will bring even more moves towards independence, which I think is great. The moodiness though, I can do without.

I had all the old home movies put on DVD last week and I've been watching them. It's not the images of the kids as tiny babies that gets me, it's the footage of them as toddlers and pre-schoolers. Their little voices, their funny ways of talking. They were so beautiful and exhaustingly intense. And they loved me so much! I remember feeling smothered by that love at times, it was so physical, the way they lay across me when they slept, how they always wanted to be picked up. Ruby is still a bit like that, she's still fairly attached to me, but the boys are both off and away. I couldn't do those years again, I really couldn't, and I love my big, strong capable children, with their long limbs and massive feet. But if I could go back, just for a little while, I would like to have a warm, sleeping toddler in my arms again.