We had a nice day today

Mommy took Jack to school; it was Friday, so Kate stays home with Daddy. And since Daddy's work is largely a Sunday through Thursday schedule, I don't always have to work so much.

We went to the grocery store to get fruit salad for Kate's Halloween parade at preschool (she doesn't go Friday, but she can come in for the parade) and dinner things. We got the pricing scanner, which she and Jack both love, and she scanned the items one by one. After each one, she said "I DID it!" And then, "I did it AGAIN! I did THREE!"

Back at home, we got her into the Supergirl costume. She posed and stuck a fist in the air and put her hands on her hips. She was into it. We drove to her school, she was happy all the way up to her classroom, walked in, saw the other kids in costumes, froze, and buried her face in my leg. First just saw shy, but then tears when I tried to talk her off the ledge. I won't go on too much about it, but it was bad. At one point all of her friends came over and circled around us. What's wrong, Kate? Kate? I said, well, I guess she's a little shy now. Them: Kate's NEVER shy!

Finally I got her to walk with me in the parade of kids. We lined up with her class. She held my hand and buried her face in her other wrist. Then, Mackenzie showed up in a dragon costume. This might be a boy she likes. She started to come out of her shell (almost literally). She talked to him. Then suddenly, the meltdown was over, and she was walking along, chattering away about her costume. "Maya, what are you? Oh, that's great! Mr. Brendan, what are you being? Oh, that's great! This is my Daddy...."

After the parade, and lunch in the classroom, we went to the party store to get a Halloween wig. Kate turned a few heads, still dressed as Supergirl. Lots of Aws and so cute! and so forth. Kate was kind of oblivious, fascinated as always by all the decorations and toys.

At home, Kate said, "can we do a project?" I don't do many projects with her, so I said sure. We dumped out her big art jar making a horrific mess, and she wanted to make a bird. So using glue and pompoms and pipe cleaners and googly eyes, we made a bird. It's the best things we've ever made together.

We got Jack at school, brought him to clay class, came home after that, made dinner, sent Jack and Mommy off to his Halloween dance. Then she drew pictures in the kitchen while I cleaned up, and we played music. The House of Pain song "Jump Around" came on, and we danced and jumped around. Kate hadn't heard the song before, and probably shouldn't again any time soon, but she laughed and jumped.

I read her stories before bed. As I was putting her to sleep she said, "We had a nice day today." It was half question, half statement, I think. I said yeah, we had a nice day. I kissed her goodnight and she went right to sleep.

pre-Halloween

- We drove by these wild decorations near Kate's preschool the other day. Kate always gets very excited as we drive by; there are all kinds of ghosts and skeletons and monsters. She lights up: "Ooh! I like the vampire the best. No, actually... I like ALL of them the best!"

- We went to Eden Farms in Stamford last week, and went through the Spooky House. It wasn't very spooky, but Kate enjoyed it, and I think Jack did too, until he saw an older boy saying it wasn't scary, so he took up that mantra too. So I of course pretended it was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. I dunno, Jack, I might have nightmares tonight. He looked at me with what appeared to be disgust. "How can you be SCARED? It's not real. It's not scary!" I said, well, what about these eyeballs in this jar? He looked at it doubtfully. Then: "No...THAT's not scary..."

- They went through the hay maze, around and around and around again. At one point Kate looked a little nervous (it was only shoulder high on her), so I went over to check. She looked up at me. "Oh! Hi Daddy." She was fine. Jack paused to fix a scarecrow whose head had fallen off, just like I did a few minutes earlier. Good boy.

- We carved a pumpkin last night. Both of them drew the faces they wanted carved, and I did my best to merge the two. Jack also drew a witch on a broom to carve into the back of it. Geez, Jack, I'm working with a serrated knife in PUMPKIN here. But it turned out OK anyway.

Acting up

Went to pick Jack up at his clay class. It's a weekly thing on Fridays, and I guess at pickup last week the teacher didn't have a chance to talk to me. This week she said she had to; Jack was looking downcast.

Apparently Jack and another boy (older, natch) were using the clay working tools to, uh, swordfight. There are a dozen kids in the class, the teacher said, and she couldn't keep an eye on all of them. And she said, "I never specifically said, 'Don't swordfight with the clay tools,' but I thought it was self-explanatory..."

I nodded and listened and looked sternly at Jack, and weighed in, "Yes, we frown on swordplay in our house, and Jack knows that," and so forth. And when she does I spoke sternly to Jack, saying, "Jack, you understand, right? You use clay tools for what they're for, not for fighting. And you won't do that again, correct?"

And Jack nodded seriously, and I apologized to the teacher, and she said, "They were both very good today, but I thought it was important that I speak to the parents." And I agreed.

And we got in the car and headed for home, but before we drove away I said to Jack, You know, I thought you were going to be kicked out of the class, there. Don't do anything like that again, and you listen to your teacher. And he nodded, and we headed for home.

But as we drove home I was thinking, Well, he's six.

poi

So I read Kate "Harold and the Purple Crayon" tonight, and we get to the part where Harold makes all the pies. And I say, as I always do, "poi," because that's the way Grandpa R used to say it.

And Kate says, "Daddy! It's not 'poi.' It's PIE."

So I keep on reading. And there were all nine kinds of poi that --

"DADDY! It's PIE, not 'poi'!" And she was laughing now and so was I.

belt

Emily got Jack his first belt last week. Thursday was a home day, and Jack was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but he wanted to wear it anyway.

So I found it, and he proudly put it on himself, and tucked his shirt in. I said, well Jack, you don't really need to tuck in a T-shirt. And I untucked it for him.

He looked down, then looked up, a little sad. "But then nobody can see my belt," he said.

So we tucked it back in, and he was happy.