Returning to Form

After the change of the schedule due to the summer, and then my business trip last week, we’re returning to form with our usual schedule.

Today was Thursday – meaning the Monster goes to school, then I pick him up and take him to gymnastics, and bring him home for dinner, homework and bed.

Most of this is fairly easy, of course.  He’ll take his breakfast – sometimes with the assistance of a “Play With Me Sesame” to get him to sit still – then get on the bus and head off to school without much of a fuss.  I show up at his school around 3:30 to collect him and zip over to Rebounders for “I Can Do It Too” (ICDIT), then wait while he gets worn out and zip back home with him.  And he’s used to this schedule.

Except that I have the new car now.

Since before the Monster was born, I’ve been driving a gold PT Cruiser.  It was a good, dependable car, and certainly it’s been easy to teach him which car is “Abba’s car”, so that makes transfers easy.  (Likewise, he recognizes my wife’s car, which has also been hers since before he was born.)  Of course, now that car is kaput, and we just got the new car yesterday, a Chrysler 200, which was delivered to our house in the evening after he’d returned home.

So I headed over to the school as normal this afternoon, parking my car in the lot and heading in.  His teacher, Ms. A, called into the classroom to let him know I was there and he zipped over to his cubby to get his bag, coming out straight away.  It was a good start, and he was answering questions appropriately.  Where are we going?  (Going. To. Gymnastics!)  Who are we going to see?  (Miss. C!)  I even managed to ‘expect’ his needing to touch the ground outside, and made sure we weren’t in the way of people or traffic while we walked to the car, all while I was talking to him about how we’re going to “Abba’s new car”.

I made the mistake of parking next to a gold car.  Not that it looked at all like my old car, but it was gold, and I was trying to steer him towards a light blue car.  And he balked at that idea.

It took a few minutes, but I finally convinced him to get into my car when I showed him that his booster seat was in the back of the strange car… and he finally let me get him in. I spent most of the ride to Rebounders talking to him about the new car.  Do you like the new car?  What color is the car?  What color is the seat?  What color is the ceiling?  Do you see the lights?  (I had been smart enough – barely – to look to how I could engage the child lock to ensure he didn’t open the door, because he did quickly discover where the door latch was and tried to pull on it.)

By the time ICDIT was done, he seemed much calmer about getting into the car and treating it about the same as he’d treated the old car.  Next step is trying to teach him the new license plate number as well, since he’s never actually learned that on any of our cars…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *