Okay, here’s a series of updates. It was going to be very general, because there hasn’t really been anything of substance in almost two weeks, but I’ve broken them up into themed posts.
First up: The boy!
Kindergarten is going swimmingly for the boy. He’s settled in so well with his teacher, classroom, school bus, and new friends (because remember, everyone he meets is a new friend) that we’re a bit at a loss, because we were bracing to deal with at least one tricky bit somewhere. I forgot to put dessert in his lunch on Friday (worst mum of the year award goes to… me!) and stopped by the school on my way to do groceries with a homemade cookie. I’d intended to just drop it off but the office called him right down, and he showed up in a tumble of fun with his bestest new friend, colourful hall passes around both their necks. He looked at me oddly and said, “Um, Mama? What are you doing here?†as if he couldn’t process the fact that I was in a place where I usually wasn’t. Didn’t even get a kiss or a hug after I passed him his care package; he ran off again with his friend back to class after an “Okay, bye Mama!†Yeah, he’s fine.
Two weeks in kindergarten and he’s sounding words out on his own. I know a lot of this comes from the incredible amount of prep we did with him about sounding words out while reading, but all it took was Someone Not Mum or Dad to really get it going. I’m thrilled at how wholeheartedly he’s throwing himself into school. We didn’t doubt, but we did secretly worry; what if he didn’t like his teacher? What if kids on the bus were mean? What if, well, anything? But all is well.
All is so well, in fact, that HRH went and joined the parental governing board. You see, the parent welcoming meeting and class curriculum meetings after it were scheduled on the same night as my first orchestra rehearsal, so HRH went to the school meeting. “I promise not to join too many committees, ha ha ha,†he said on the way out. I figured it would be sensible to wait a year to get a feel for the school, and he thought the same. Except, he said apologetically when I got back, there was one position left open on the board, and no one was volunteering for it, so…
We have been reading the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series of books before the boy’s bedtime at night, and we’re loving it. We are very excited about the movie coming out next weekend. The boy has already been asking for the music, and I have had to tell him that we can’t buy it until the Tuesday before the film comes out. He told me that it wasn’t fair that I had two owls and he had none, so he tried to wheedle me into buying a dreadful one at the grocery store, but I said I knew of a much better one. We went to the bookstore that afternoon and he bought his very own lovely silky stuffed owl, whom he has, of course, named Soren, even though it is a Barred Owl and not a Barn Owl. And also on the book front, he brought home his first Scholastic book order form, and I was terribly excited until I opened it. It’s all… so young. We don’t read many 3-5 year old books any more. There is a book on the planets, and a Scaredy Squirrel book we don’t own; we may order those. But I was pretty disappointed in 99% of the flyer.
Not much this month; not a lot of time for reading, or the energy/focus for it.
Let’s see, what of importance happened last week that I didn’t sit down and write about?
One month till the boy turns five. Thirty-one days.
One of the funniest things about this past month was his discovery of baked potatoes. That sounds odd, but it’s so much fun to see him get excited when I tell him that we’re having baked potatoes with dinner. He saw an illustration of one in a picture book and asked what it was. HRH explained it to him, and he said they sounded delicious. So I baked potatoes the next night to go with dinner, sliced it open, put a curl of butter on top, and he was thrilled. He asks for them all the time, now. It’s like he’s discovered the most exciting food ever. Baked potatoes. Really. I mean, there are other cool things associated with dinner, such as how he clears the table and puts the dishes in the dishwasher and such, and usually asks to be excused (every time he got up from the picnic at Tristan’s naming ceremony, for example, he asked to be excused, which amused me; he must be the only little boy in existence who asks to be excused from a picnic blanket, not once, but three times), but the baked potato thing is just so wacky.
His preschool is working on a play. He came home with a little script, very excited. They’re basing it on Leslie McGuire’s picture book This Farm is a Mess. The kids are all the different animals, and the educators are the narrator, the farmer, and the mama chicken (the baby chicks are being played by the three babies of the daycare). The boy has been cast as the goat, and said he needed a costume. So I, with my years of experience creating costumes out of nothing, pulled out a pair of black socks with holes in them, and cut off the toes. “What are you doing?†he asked. I slid them over his forearms and said, “These are your hooves and legs,†and I thought he was going to pop from excitement. I then pulled out an old grey t-shirt and cut out a tail and two floppy ears, tipping each with black marker. I sewed the ears to a black headband, put a big safety pin through the tail, gave him one of his grey shirts to wear, and voila, we had one little black and grey kid goat. He has been practising his “meh-eh-eh-eh†sound, and we sit down every day or so and go over his lines. The day he brought home the script he arranged HRH and I, and said, “We will do my play. Dada, you can be the farmer, and Mama, you can be the narrator; that means the person who tells the story,†he explained, patting my hand. I just about exploded with that indescribable feeling of pride mixed with joy and triumph. My son knows what a narrator is. I, of course, desperately want to be there to see this play be performed, but parents are almost certainly going to distract them (the average age here is two or three years, after all), so I think they’re planning on doing it in front of a video camera to make a movie instead, which we will all get on DVD. If they do this, I am praying that they do credits, because that will absolutely blow the boy’s mind.