Lessons and Adjustments

In 2 hours and 6 minutes (not that I'm counting), P's first official week of Kindergarten will be in the books and we've survived...barely. It's been a long week for many reasons, but mainly because P's been sick on top of going to school for 7 hrs a day. He's not sleeping and is an emotional wreck when I take him to school every morning. It breaks my heart but I know it has to be done. Yesterday I did pull him out early for a dr's appt (and a long, much needed nap before the apt).
Every day when I pick him up he gets in the car, tells me how much he missed me and Easton and then proceeds to fill me in on the day. I usually get to hear about how his teacher yelled a lot first and then he gets to all the fun stuff. When we get home, we go through his daily binder and talk about the worksheets he did.
I am not a worksheet teacher. Never have been and hope to never be one. So the first day P came home I went through his worksheets and informed him that we didn't need to keep all of them. I thought he understood...until he opened the garbage can. In a very dejected voice he asked, "Who threw away my papers? I worked hard on those." Ouch! Talk about a stab to the heart. I felt like the WORST. PARENT. EVER. I asked him if they were important to keep and he quickly answered yes. Lesson learned. Now when he gets home every day I take out his worksheets, hole punch them and put them in a special binder so he can look at them. I learned that it doesn't matter if I'm a worksheet type teacher. My son, who is at school for several long hours a day, is proud of his accomplishments and I should acknowledge them.
Tonight he and I are celebrating the lessons we've learned this week by spending some quality time together. We are going on a mother/son date and I can't tell you how excited I am about it!! I was going to take him to buy a Whoopie Cushion and out for ice cream but he asked if we could have a sushi date instead. Music to my ears. I'm looking forward to our date and especially to the end of the school day so we can have 2 whole days together. 1 hour and 57 minutes.........(not that I'm counting)