Grief

Dennis had a rough night last night. He was asking me about our plans for Christmas morning and questioned why he wouldn't be showing Gran what Santa brought him (like he does every year). He just realized that they are actually moving away and won't be here on Christmas. He began to cry harder than I've heard him cry. I could not console him. He was practically howling in grief. He called and talked to Gran, crying pitifully the whole time, and I wasn't holding myself together too well either. I could not write about it last night. And there are tears in my eyes now just remembering how hurt he was and how I couldn't fix it.

We let him stay up way too late and set up our first ever Christmas village. He's very proud of it and we were thrilled to see his smile return before he went to bed. Today he was somewhat subdued, tired from the long day on not as much sleep as usual. He got on yellow at school for kicking a kid that was pretending to sleep under his desk. He was quite good at church, though, and managed to do an excellent job later on his reading homework. The reading coach did finally call to tell me about his transfer--he actually tested past first grade, too, but they put him in with the first graders to learn some reading rules. And since he's so far ahead, they also put him in the Accelerated Reading program through the school library. He checks out a book every day and reads it, and the following day he takes a computer test on the book and then checks out another. I'm very pleased with the lengths they are undertaking to keep him challenged! He still spends part of his day with his kindergarten class and all his friends. All that and he gets art, music, Spanish, and technology classes as well! Not too shabby for our public school. I guess we'll work on math more at home, but yesterday we discovered that he's learned his 10 times tables. Elisabeth asked him casually what ten times three is and he only paused a couple of seconds before replying "thirty". Surprised, we began asking him other ones (ten times six, ten times nine, ten times ten) and he correctly answered each. I haven't a clue where he picked it up.

Tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day and his little Reeboks are out beside his door to be filled with goodies. His elf is busily reading a Christmas book in the living room. He's loving all the Advent activities and his calendars (electronic and regular!). Maybe we won't stay sad over the upcoming departure too long. Time will fly until we're together again with Gran and Pop.