Life has brought some drastic changes to the Shepherd family these past few weeks. I personally am feeling a little overwhelmed by it all, but I’m one of those people who thrive on change so it works.
Benjamin is officially a kindergartener! He’s such a big boy now, I can hardly stand to look at him and think how small he used to be and how much he’s grown. More shocking than his size is how much his personality has blossomed. He’s quite the conversationalist and is developing a great sense of humor. He still very curious about his world and asks a lot of questions. We’ve found since he started kindergarten that he does so much better when he is in school. He flourishes in an environment where he can socialize, has structure and direction to focus. I think maybe that child got bored when he was at home all summer. We did our best to keep him occupied but alas, we are not perfect and we also must expect our children to occupy themselves sometimes too.
Ben really likes school. All of the papers he brings home have stars and/or good comments on them. We are very much looking forward to conferences with his teacher. He’s also coloring like a pro now, rarely going outside of the lines. While I had a few reservations about sending him to JPS, I’ve been pretty happy so far. He has two teachers, one in the morning where they focus on academics and another in the afternoon where the focus is more on art and music.
Possibly the most difficult part of his new routine is how early he needs to get up. His school has early start, which means they begin class at 7:28 am, which means the bus comes to get him at 6:49 am, meaning he needs to get up between 6-6:15 to be ready for the bus. That’s early for a little boy! We’ve settled on 7 pm for bedtime after trying 7:15 and 7:30 (it’s not easy to get two kids to bed that early when you get out of work at 5 pm!!). The goal is to have him wake up on his own, rather than us having to drag him out of bed, and 7 seems to do the trick. Our evenings are rather hectic what with eating and cleaning up dinner, taking baths, and getting things ready for the morning, but we’re managing. Tonight will be the first night managing the chaos on my own, as Aaron started his new job this week…
Yep Aaron got a new job! He is now working as a personal trainer at Planet Fitness here in Jackson! It’s been a long time coming, but I can’t begin to say how proud of him I am. How amazing that he just decided what he wanted to do and went ahead and just made it happen. Looking back to last year and how devastating it was when he lost his job at MPI, I think now it was probably the best thing that could have happened to us, personally, professionally, and financially.
So now here we are for the first time since both boys were born both working full-time (basically- Aaron is working about 32 hours per week). Neither of us has to work weekends though, which is wonderful. Weekends I imagine will be sacred family time for us now since weekdays are so full of mayhem. Silas began going to daycare yesterday for the first time, and he absolutely LOVES it. He talked about it all night and all this morning. This makes it much easier on me as I had some qualms about putting my baby in daycare.
So that’s what’s new around here!!
These Precious Things 