now boarding

One year on...

Story date: September 1 2009.

Wow! Tom's back to school tomorrow so that means the start of his second year at the Cathedral School.

It's a cliché I know, but time has flown and Tom's quite a different boy 365 days later. He's much more self-assured, no tears and he's talking enthusiastically about his duties as a 3rd desk chorister - although he's understandably not looking forward to returning to school after nearly 8 weeks off, but then who would?

 
 

We've not packed a thing although this time tomorrow night he'll (hopefully) be fast asleep in the dorm. We're all SO much more relaxed but of course we're going to miss him like stink.

The school will have a new Head, there'll be some new staff and some that have left we'll miss. 

His prep will be trickier, he'll be at home maybe only one evening a week, which itself will mean more trips into town for visits. Is it all working out?

Half-term

This first half of term seems to be so short, hardly settled from Christmas than off for a week again! The week's break seems mostly to consist of lots of TV, computer time (he now has a youtube account) and a little prep and music practice.

It's now the day before we go back (tomorrow, Sunday night) and time to ensure all prep is done, is it? Tom seems to feel that he's been given year 4 prep - it's challenging for sure and that's the point. Using a dictionary to find 10 words he doesn't know. That's easy but we're using an illustrated dictionary I was given when I left school - so a few of the definitions lack a certain contemporary context.

We decide to go buy him a pocket dictionary.

Some of his prep is a little tricky, the instructions occasionally open to interpretation - personally I think they would often benefit from examples.

To be fair, I'm not sure he does 10 minutes piano, 10 minutes cello every day - but then it is half-term holiday. This is our digital piano - glad we bought it as it needs no maintenance or tuning. Both his uncle (who's a musician) and his nanny (who's a piano and singing teacher) both really rate it.

It's an entry level Yamaha Clavinova CLP230 

Half term and now back to school

WOW what a long half term - two whole weeks of it and not without it's own challenges.

He was exhausted of course so we tried not to organise much the first week. In fact with two weeks we needed his Nanny and Gramps to help cover. Which they obviously loved. Tom's generally less high maintenance, which is also good.

Go Go Bones are also quite good. They're the craze going round school. Even I have some.

He even came into my office two days - which he loved, I was so chuffed and my colleagues all loved him too as he created little characters for them.

But two weeks passes quickly and taking him back was a little less easy - but we made it.