Growing Up

Victor and I made the hard decision a month or so ago to pull Lucas out of the school he (and we) love and enroll him in the Cambridge Classical school. We have been very curious about classical education and really wanted to try the school out for a year. My mother's heart wanted to avoid telling him until the day we left for school so he wouldn't be sad all summer. On the way to school in Sept. I could say "Oh, by the way Lucas you're going to a different school this year...". Victor however didn't think that was a good idea. So we told him yesterday. He cried for 15 minutes saying "No, don't send me!" He finally stopped crying and went outside to cry whimpering. I followed him a few minutes later and we had a really good talk down in the sand. My little baby is growing up. He promised to try to let God help him not to be sad, and he promised to help Marisa not to be sad when we told her. A little later I took him out for icecream. By this time he had had more time to think and I asked him how he felt. He said "I feel pretty good about it - I really like history so I'm excited about learning about ancient Egypt. (We told him that's on the 2nd grade curriculum). I was so thankful that God had helped him through such sadness in such a short time. We made a list of pros and cons for the school and these are some things he came up with: He gets to learn Mandarin - out of the blue a few weeks ago he told me he wanted to learn Chinese. He's excited about doing multiplication - their curriculum is a year ahead in math. He's excited about learning Latin and wearing uniforms that have a shield with the latin words "soli deo gloria". He's excited about making new friends - he is the most extroverted child I've ever seen. (Of course he's also very sad about leaving friends behind.) He's excited about the "jingles" they chant to memorize grammatical terms.

After talking to him when he had calmed down, we realized he thought he had to go to school in the evening because that's the only times we've been there for the orientations. We assured him he could go to school during the day. He also was upset there was not a high school, but we assured him that there would be one by the time he made it there. It was really neat seeing my little boy growing up and talking through a problem, going to God for help and then smiling and playing and being my little boy again. God is good. Oh, and Lucas told Marisa they were going to the Cambridge school while she was playing with legos. Without even looking up from her building she said "OK, we can go there."

After our icecream, Lucas tried on his uniforms and we snapped this photograph.