Holiday of Playdates

The past few days have been spent in a whirlwind of playdates and events where JR has found friends of every stripe. It has also been just another reminder of how small our world truly is.

Yesterday, before we managed to get out of our pjs, the family across the street called. They had just returned from visiting grandparents in another state and wanted JR to come over to see their gifts from Santa. We made our way across the street until 11:30, when we had to leave to walk over to the home of one of JR's classmates. His mom had put together an awesome New Year's Eve party for the kindergarten set, complete with a countdown at noon, lots of confetti, poppers, silly string, and noisemakers. While there, we learned that C's across-the-street neighbor is JR's friend T, who used to live around the corner from us, and whose parents are active members of our community garden. We also learned that C is in the same ballet class as our across-the-street neighbor, whose home we had just left.

As we were leaving C's party (with a confetti-filled treat bag and a snow globe with JR's picture inside it), my cell phone rang. JR's preschool friend S, who lives in another neighborhood and now goes to a different school, was heading to our neighborhood playground. Would we like to meet up with them? A few minutes in the playground convinced the moms that we needed to be inside, so we invited S and his mom in. JR and S discovered that when his rocket launcher is filled with confetti before being launched, it makes a REALLY AWESOME mess. And I mean REALLY AWESOME mess.

Five minutes after S left with his mom, my cellphone rings again. N's dad was calling - he was taking N and a soccer ball out to the corner park - did JR want to come along. Of course he did. After a few minutes outside, the parents again decided that we needed to be inside, so we lured the boys into N's house for hot chocolate.

We made our way home around 6:00 to prepare our portion of the annual New Year's dinner being held at our friends home. JR was excited, because his friends E and C would be there. The adults ate antipasto, ravioli with sausage and meatballs, venison sausage, salad, another pasta dish and lovely strawberry shortcake and Italian rum cake while the kids rushed their way through a few ravioli so that they could head upstairs to play and watch Happy Feet.

We were home before midnight, but did hear the cheering outside as 2007 ended and 2008 began.

This morning, we headed to E and C's house for the traditional New Year's brunch before heading out to the parade with E and C - where we ran into our across-the-street neighbors, N and his parents, and JR's old preschool friend L, who now lives in the suburbs but had come into town for the parade.

We ended the day at my friend Paul's annual post-parade party - where we ran into one of JR's school friends.

So will the theme for the New Year be: "It's a Small World" ?

Out of this World Graduate

 

One of the reasons it has never been hard to leave JR and go off to work is that he spends his day at a wonderful preschool with the most creative teachers. On Thursday, he graduated along with 10 other classmates. The teachers, as they do every year, made the graduation hats. This year, though, they totally outdid themselves. Each child was outfitted in a hat that represented his or her favorite thing. So one child's hat was a pirate captain hat, another a shark, a horse, a lion, a butterfly, a spider, a tennis court and a baseball diamond (complete with balls that dangled off the court), a Seattle Seahawks helmet, the Coliseum (burning while Nero fiddled), and for JR, my boy who loves outer space and rockets, the entire solar system. The hats were awesome. The graduates were adorable. The parents were proud and the teachers - I can only hope that the rest of the teachers that JR has in his school life are half as creative, dedicated, and nurturing as Esther, Heather, Kate, Gina and Christina have been this year.

Early Summer

80% of JR's preschool class are kids with spring birthdays (the other 2 are in October). So every weekend between mid-April and mid-June, he has a birthday party. Today's party was a backyard barbecue and his buddy received lots of summer yard toys, all of which had to be tried out immediately. Of course, none of the parents had predicted the need for bathing suits, so all the kids stripped down to their shorts (for some, their undershorts) and tested the new water toys, just so JR's buddy would know they work, of course.

I've Got Mail!

A letter arrived in the mail today addressed to "Mom" at our address. I opened it up and found:


Meatballs. My first letter from my son - and it's about meatballs. I love this kid.

Malingering

This morning JR made his first ever attempt to skip school by pretending to be
sick. He's been off for 3 days (Friday was a teacher in-service
day). On Friday, he refused to get out of his pajamas all day and told us Rudolph (his stuffed reindeer who goes everywhere with him) was sick. We took his temperature, and the thermometer never got put away. Since his asthma has been acting up a bit, we've also been monitoring him a bit more closely anyway. Apparently, all of these events coalesced in his little mind as a perfect ploy for staying home from school. So when he awoke this morning, we had the following conversation:

JR: I need to take my temperature because I'm sick and can't go to school.
Mom (knowing his temp is perfectly normal): Okay, but let's get
dressed first. Then, if the thermometer says no fever, you will be
all ready for school.

We completed our morning routine. Then, 2 minutes before we're supposed to leave the house:

JR: Mom, you forgot to take my temperature.

I took his temperature. Temperature is normal.

JR: But Rudolph is sick and needs me to take care of him.
Mom: (Checking Rudolph's brow): Rudolph's temperature is okay too.
Maybe Rudolph is just saying he's sick because he'll miss you today.
Maybe you should take him to school with you.

Which he did. Apparently, Rudolph spent the day watching JR from his cubby, cuddled up in JR's wool hat. Rudolph had a "whole big invisible preschool" inside the cubby, according to JR, but he got to come out and snuggle with JR at naptime.

Distracted

I was so caught up this morning in discussing the schools dilemna (Joseph's lottery ticket for the public schools we liked came up short, but he did get into a fabulous private school and there is still the option of the cozy Catholic school and ....) that I dropped JR off at the preschool but carried his lunchbox all the way to my office.

Once I realized I still had his Spiderman lunchbox in my clutches, I called my supervisor to let her know I'd be late, found an ATM so I'd have money to pay the cab which I then hailed, and ran the lunchbox back out to the preschool.

Back at my desk, I opened my calendar to discover that I wasn't supposed to be in the office at all. I had a doctor's appointment scheduled and was now 5 minutes late!

I know I'm obsessing over the whole kindergarten issue - but I hope my scatterbrain morning is not predictive of how my next few months are going to go (until this is all resolved).

It's only kindergarten, right?

Red Shirt Day

Last night at dinner I learned that today was "Red Shirt" day at the preschool. Friday has been designated Pajama Party day. JR's dad and I marveled at the creativity of the teachers, who have been stuck inside with the rambunctious four and five year olds all week, due to the cold weather.

So this morning we outfitted JR in red from head to toe, inside and out. He even wore his red "Bob the Builder" underpants and red socks.

At school, teacher Kate said "Wasn't it clever of JR to come up with red shirt day?" "What?" "Oh yes, JR and his buddy C dreamed it up and announced it to all the kids yesterday at Circle Time."

My guy, the trendsetter.

Conversation Walking Home (or why I know I'm raising a boy)

Tonight as we were walking home from Music Class, JR told me that his hands were cold.

Me: Where are your mittens?
JR: In my pocket.
Me: Why don't you put them on?
JR: Because they have spit on them.
Me: How did they get spit on them?
JR: Well, we found a brown thing that looked kind of like a dead snail, and we buried it. (Aside: how does he know what a dead snail looks like?)
Me: And the spit? ...
JR: Well, we put sticks and leaves and stones and grass on the brown thing when we buried it.
Me: Did you put spit on it too?
JR: No Mom! We put the spit under the snail.

Later, when I asked him to recount the incident with the snail for his dad, JR said:
Mom, it wasn't a snail. It wasn't moving. And it was brown like peanut butter.

I don't even want to know.

My Feminist-in-Training

Apparently, at the playground today, a heated discussion ensued about whether girls (in particular, JR's classmate E) could be racecars in the ongoing game of Cars. JR not only came down firmly on the side of "girls can be racecars," he invented a pink, Spanish-speaking racecar that was perfect for pink-jacketed, Spanish-speaking E.

Buzz Lightyear on Parade

The little guy got to wear his Buzz Lightyear costume to preschool on Halloween and the class went on a parade through the neighborhood. Here is the class, with all 3 Buzz Lightyears, heading back to school. (Thanks to the mom who took the photos)

Apparently, he's a bit of a trendsetter, too. On Friday night, at the school Halloween party, he was the only Buzz Lightyear in town. By Tuesday morning, there were 3 Buzz Lightyears. Who knew our little guy could exert such influence over his playmates?

Typical Morning

JR wakes up smiling and happy. "Mommy, I love you." "Daddy, I love you." We get dressed (much discussion of which shirt to wear; the one with the football player, the one with the truck or the one with the superhero on it). We go downstairs to eat our cereal. If there is any time left before our departure (me for work, JR for preschool), he gets to watch TV while I gather up the detritus that accompanies us everywhere.

Then the fun starts. JR doesn't want to wear the black VANS sneakers, he wants to wear his "light-up sneakers", which are now a half-size too small. He doesn't want to wear a jacket. "I'll wear my hat. That will keep my whole body warm." He doesn't want to walk, he wants to ride in the stroller. As his volume increases, my stress level ratchets up. How do I not give in to the temper tantrum when I really need to keep to the schedule so that I can arrive at work on time (otherwise, I don't work enough hours to be able to leave work on time to meet the preschool's rigid 5:30 p.m. pickup schedule)? How do I remain the calm, loving mother and not turn into "Mean Mommy"? Why oh why, when I purchased the SUV of strollers, did I not factor in how heavy it would be to push when loaded down with a 40 lb. 4-year-old?

There he is, all 40 lbs., tears streaming down his face, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor. "Stroller, Mommy, stroller. I can't walk. I need to sit. My legs don't work."

"My legs don't work." Someday this will be funny, right?

The BigHearted Boy

When we met JR, the orphanage director described this 11 month old baby as "kind." At the time I remember thinking that was a strange adjective to bestow upon an infant. How did they know?

Whether he exhibited kindness as an infant or whether the orphanage director's words had predictive power, they were prescient. JR is indeed a kind, big hearted, generous sort. We see it all the time.

Two anecdotes of kindness:

JR recently acquired a simple foam puzzle of a skeleton with the bones labelled. He mastered it immediately. Around the same time, his preschool class was studying the body. JR decided that he not only wanted to take the puzzle to school, he wanted to GIVE the puzzle to school. So Monday morning, he took it in and presented it to his teachers. They were thrilled. They were particularly pleased because the plan for Monday was to have the children glue bones onto their body maps (life size outlines of their bodies). The skeleton puzzle would be the perfect display for the class, a reference point for their artwork.

JR has been invited to the joint birthday party of two sibling friends, L & J. Unfortunately, their birthday party is the same weekend that our family is taking a mini-vacation to the "mountains."
This morning, JR said to me, "Mom, L & J's birthday is coming."
I replied, "I know, honey, but remember that I told you we were going to the mountains that day."
"I know Mom, that's okay. I just wanted to tell you that maybe when we're in the mountains we could look for a princess for L and a Star Wars toy for J."
"Oh, and Mom....?"
"Yes...."
"Do you think the mountains will have a store with a bone with a ribbon, so we could get a present for L&J's new puppy, too?"

Our big hearted boy.

Music Class

JR has started a weekly toddler's music class at a local music school. I was worried about this, given his prior reluctance to join tumbling class and his general aversion to new situations. I was also nervous because despite his father's best efforts, JR has seemed disinterested in music. Baseball ... soccer ... miniature golf ... he is passionate about sports. But music ... eh.

But his preschool has hired a phenomenal young woman as a part-time music teacher and for the first 2 weeks of school, all we heard was "Gina this" and "Gina that." Three of his buddies had also signed up for the same music class. So I was cautiously optimistic.

JR loves music class. Loves, loves, loves it. So about 5 days after the first class we happened to drive past the building. "Look JR," I said. "That's where you go to music class."
"Mom, I've been meaning to ask you about that. I thought we were going to go to music class every day."