We moved! It was a crazy few days, but we moved to the Long Beach house. Uncle Alex had a long weekend because of Columbus Day, so Dad and I took that day off, too. On Saturday, a moving company came and moved the furniture, while we moved boxes. Then on Sunday, we moved more boxes in the morning and then spent the afternoon sorting through everything in the garage. Monday morning, we moved all of the things from the storage units here, and then everything was finally in the same place. Except the Madison furniture, but that will come later.
It was nice to feel like our stuff belonged to us again, but you kept getting frustrated because you wanted to find the toys and unpack them. And once you've unpacked them, you want us to stop and play with you. I understand the feeling. I started unpacking my books, and it was hard not to put them on the shelf and not sit and read them instead.
We did a lot of running back and forth to the Torrance house in October, partly to keep moving the last things to the new house, and partly because you were still going to school at Fern. We had thought we might wait until the end of the semester to transfer you to Los Cerritos, but Grandma and Grandpa got tired of driving around so much. So I emailed with Mrs. Hedley, who would be your new teacher, and you and I and Grandma went over to visit her one afternoon. You'll have a very different schedule; you'll be in the afternoon class instead of the morning class. You won't eat lunch at school any more. We also found out that LC students wear uniforms, so I had to do some quick online shopping for you. Mrs. Hedley seemed very nice, and not at all dismayed to have another wiggly, energetic boy added to her class. So now you're all enrolled at the new school.
I dropped you off at Fern on the Monday of your last week there, to let Mrs. Kawaguchi and the office know that we had moved. I thanked Mrs. Kawaguchi for the great start to your Kindergarten year. Your handwriting skills have improved very much, and you already knew the sight words that the new class has learned. So I said that you should be able to transfer well, and she was glad to hear that.
You have been working on those skills at home, too, although I think the real skill we're working on is, "sit in the chair and do your homework." You get frustrated when I won't let you embellish your letters and numbers, to make them into aliens or robots. You had some school work come home with notes on them like, "Corbin finds it difficult to focus on simple, familiar tasks." Which I interpret to mean, "Corbin finds it difficult to remain focused on things that are boring, too easy, and repetitive." This, my friend, is going to be something that you will probably struggle with your whole life. And I sympathize, I really do. That's a hard skill to learn and practice. But that is the skill which will gain you so much in life. It's hard to be bad at something new. It's hard to feel like you're doing boring work with no way of making it enjoyable. I keep telling you, as we sit glaring at each other across the dinner table: right now, you need to demonstrate competence before creativity. Show your teacher that you understand the lesson. Learn the rules first, because then you can break them meaningfully.
One night, you had to write a sentence using the sight word, "like." You wrote, "I do not like homework." I hear you, buddy. I hear you.
We did have some fun this month, since it ended with Halloween. You decided to be a skeleton again, which made it easy. You did a Halloween parade at school (which was actually your last day at Fern), and then that night we all went Trick-or-Treating. It was your first year going door to door, which you thought was super fun. We went around three blocks, and saw lots of other families. You liked seeing other people's costumes and seeing the decorations. After every house, you had to shine your flashlight into your bag and show me how much candy you got. It was a really fun night, like so many of our nights together.
Love,
Mom
The silly family:
We got your school pics back:
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