marc.vic.max.elliot

Max had his first school visit today!  At our local primary school the new entrants have three visits to the school prior to starting, each about two hours long.Max was a wee bit nervous walking up the driveway to school but once he saw some faces he recognised he was just fine.

The first one is where the parents stay and the wee ones are shown around the parts of the school they’ll be using.  In saying that the kids were whisked off after five minutes today while the parents stayed in the teachers common room and spent an hour going the all manner of things such as the timetable they’ll be following, how everything is organised, what to expect etc.  The group of kids that are starting on the same day (Feb 7th – first day back after the Christmas break) number about 10-12 and he already knew about half of them which should make things a bit easier.
Anyway, after they’d been taken away and we had all been told what to expect we had our own tour of the place and ended up at the same place the kids were.  Max was quite happily sitting on the steps of the classroom having a snack with a friend of his, Freddy, who is already at school  and a new friend Lochlan.  The parents then went into one of the classroom for a cuppa and left all the kids playing outside.  The bell for class rang and after a couple of minutes I wandered outside to see where Max was.  After a few minutes of hunting I discovered that he’d gone into Freddy’s classroom and was getting ready to sit down!  Hopefully after another couple of visits he’ll be feeling even more comfortable and the transition from kindy to school shouldn’t be too abrupt.  The funny thing was as I was leading him back to the car he pulls on my arm and says “Daddy, when the bell rings that means that you have to go back to you classroom”

First visit and he already has one of the big rules sorted 🙂

Max has two more visits so that all parts of the day is covered. This first one was 09:30-11:30 to cover the morning break and the next two cover lunchtime and then the end of school.  Parents are optional at the second one and then actively discouraged from staying for the third visit 🙂

He sure is growing up 🙁

Not sure if you knew this but you can do conversions straight from the google search bar.
For example you can type “20 degrees c in f” and it returns “20 degrees Celsius = 68 degrees Fahrenheit”
Not only does it do units but it also does currency – “20 usd in nzd” returns “20 U.S. dollars = 26.3331139 New Zealand dollars”
Very handy and saves having to find online conversion sites like I used to.

In Auckland (again)

Do you know what I hate?  Using a public (ie: shared) toilet when the seat and lid are both down.  Lifting it up, you’re never really sure what’s going to greet you………

So here I am sitting in a cafe next to Giovanni Ribisi as we speak.  You may recognise him from shows such as friends and the x-files……

I know he’s only four but I want to get Max to be dry through the night.  I’m not worried that he’s not and that it is a physical thing (part of the brain needs to develop) and that bed-wetting is only called that in males over the age of 5 anyway but, hey, I’m a dad right – it’s my job to worry 🙂

What we have noticed is that he is starting to wake himself up to go the the toilet.  Good news and it shows he’s on the right track!

The first night he got up Vic was out and about 10pm I heard Max yelling out.  I went up to find him at the top of the stairs and all the lights were on.  I told me what he had done and I gave him a big hug and told him how proud I was of him before putting him back into bed.

The amazing thing is that every time he gets up he asks me in the morning if I’m proud of him.  It’s great/scary the impression that the experience of me telling him how proud I was of him has left on him and just shows the power of a father!

Well I’ve finished The  Road and thank God it’s over.  It’s the last time that I read anything that just happens to be on Oprah’s book club!

WordPress update to 2.3.1

iTheme update from 1.2 to 1.3.1 (plus a bit of hacking to increase the size of the sidebar bg image and the template to show author)

So far so good 🙂 Any problems let me know!

As you may have noticed from the sidebar I’m reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy at the moment.  At this stage I’m just over half way through and I just have to say that it is one of the most depressing things I have ever read!  I’m waiting for some ray of light, some scintilla of hope to appear but it’s not – just a constant barrage of hunger, fear and despair.  The most uplifting thing in the first 5 hours of reading is the fact they the man and his son found a cache of food.

Reading this book is like wading through a sea of grey, ash filled molasses…….