Three months. Three months? Three months!
Day Care
A. just finished his first week of part-time day care at a premier “child development center” down the street from my office. I call it “school,” he calls it “e-cole” (ironically — he’s speaking French before we even taught him). Last week, I took him on three mini-visits so we could spend time in his classroom together, so he was rather shocked when we arrived on Monday and I said, “Mommy working, A. school.” The tears welling in his eyes told me he understood. He clung to me as we went inside, attached himself to my leg as I put his things in his cubby, and refused to sit down with the other children for the morning snack. When I said good-bye, he went wild with cries and screams and latched himself onto my shirt (which he totally pulled down, exposing my bra to the class), and when the teacher picked him up he hit her repeatedly. Oh boy, assaulting the teacher, not getting off to a good start…
But things improved. I went to the director’s office and watched him on the closed-circuit TV, and he had stopped crying and was staring at the other kids. So I felt a little better about going to work, although all morning I couldn’t help wondering if A. thought I was leaving him there forever. When I called the center at noon, the director told me he was napping, which either meant he was relaxed and happy or stressed out to the point of exhaustion. I left work at 4:30 to pick him up. When I came into the classroom, it reminded me of when I came back to the orphanage on my second trip to Ethiopia — he looked at me with a shy half-grin and waited happily to be scooped up in my arms.
Days 2 and 3 went much better, and he seems to be thriving. He is making art projects (crocodiles, elephants), playing with lots of educational toys, having a ball on the playground, and his English had already improved a touch. When he starts full-time in August, I can only hope he is still this excited about school. (And I hope I am still this excited about going back to work — the second day, my ankles swelled from having sat down for nine hours straight, something I haven’t down in, well, three months.)
Language
New words are coming fast and furiously out of that little mouth: Tree, sand, hole, wave, bug, towel, slide, swing, down (as in “go down,” which he says when he is finished eating), sleeping, seat, open (“open-it!” he’ll demand, holding out a cereal bar), doctor, shot, soap, fingers, hand, leg, eyes, mouth, more (and “no more” is a favorite, used when something is totally gone — “no more yogurt” when he is done, or “tree no more” when we were watching a nature documentary that showed a tree getting cut down), paper, broken, hair, cooking, home, and animals. And he understands a lot more than that.
We are getting lots of simple sentences, (“Mommy cooking meaty pasta” “Daddy is working outside?” “This one!”) In fact, “This!” has replaced “Ho!” as his expression of amazement.
When something is big, he’ll point and say “Big one!” (This started at the beach, when we were playing in the waves at high tide. I’d tell him “Look, a big one!” and he’d repeat “Big one!”)
He just started responding to me with “Okay.” I’ll say something like “We’ll go outside when I finish cleaning the kitchen, okay?” or “A. brush your teeth, okay?” and he’ll say, usually resignedly, “Okay.”
There was a stunning moment at the playground today when he was pointing at a truck in the sandbox and calling it a “car” rather than a “machina.” It killed me to correct him: “Truck, honey. It’s a truck.” I would bet money that this sudden departure from machina has something to do with peer pressure at school.
Food
Not much progress here. He starts the day with medicine-spiked yogurt and then usually doesn’t eat again until noon, when he’ll enjoy a plate of vegetable-spiked ground meat mixed with tomato sauce and pasta, which he’ll eat with bread. He also enjoys peanut butter, hard-boiled eggs with ketchup, cereal bars, and cheese. He was on an applesauce kick for awhile but this has ebbed. He likes salmon but doesn’t eat a lot of it. Since all of his snacks and meals are included at the day care, I am expecting school will expand his palate, which is good and bad (since snack is usually graham crackers and fruit loops… would much rather have him chomping down eggs.)
Building up an appetite (note feet touching pedals --only works downhill)
Gymboree
Today was our last day of Gymboree, as it doesn’t make sense to continue it now that day care has started. A. enjoyed going to the indoor play gym, and honestly, on rainy days it was a lifesaver — a great way to get him out of the house and active. But the Play and Learn classes were just grating. Do parents really need to be coached on how to play with their kids? Do we really need a “professional” throwing a bunch of rubber blocks on the floor and telling kids to pick them up because it’s yummy, yummy ice cream? And Gymbo… egads, that effing clown. The hokey music. The contrived product placement (“It’s bubble time! Our bubbles have great hang-time, are non-toxic, and are available for sale in the lobby!”)
A. loved the indoor gym equipment, and I loved playing with him on the equipment, but if I had to sit through another Play and Learn class I was going to add a new verse to the Gymbo song (“Dance, Gymbo, dance… hug, Gymbo, hug… punch, Gymbo, punch…”)
Catching bubbles at Gymboree
