Spencer Starts Preschool

Can you believe it? It's time for Spencer to start preschool. We chose the preschool program at College Park, a public magnet school in the San Mateo/Foster City school district that offers a Mandarin immersion program.

To prepare Spencer for the upcoming transition, we read countless bedtime stories to him about kids starting preschool. We hung out in the school's playground on weekends to get him used to the new setting. Eunice organized two playdates for Spencer with some classmates before school started, and even got us invited to the birthday party of one of Spencer's classmates, all to make sure that Spencer would love his new school and fellow students as much as he loves his daycare "office" down the street.

We knew we were in luck during the open house the night before the first day of class-- there was a play kitchen in the corner complete with toy versions of BBQ pork buns and tofu! Spencer spent the entire time whipping up pretend food, working his way up to actually talking to his Lao Shi ("teacher") by the end of the night.

And the first day did indeed go well. There were definitely a couple of "Daddy please stay a long time" requests, but Spencer went straight over to the kitchen and was playing on his own in no time... and hardly protested when Ryan waved goodbye on his way out.

Favorite memories of Spencer's first days of class: Spencer repeatedly referring to one of his classmates as "stepping boy" after he supposedly stepped on Spencer's imaginary food, Spencer insisting that he only has one name ("Spencer") before getting used to his Chinese one ("Lin An"), and Spencer's excitement hanging up his coat and putting away his lunch box all by himself.

The loss of control (for us as parents) is definitely a little strange-- even though he's been going to daycare for a while, we knew the routine there so well that we still felt like we knew everything that was going on in Spencer's life. Not so much anymore.... he tells us unreliable stories about playground encounters that mix fact with fantasy, brings up books we've never heard of, and (especially for Ryan), asks us to sing Chinese songs we don't know.

Ahh, he's growing up so fast... but we're loving it!