Cole loves playing checkers. Last summer he spent several days with my parents, and apparently played numerous rounds of checkers with his Great Grandad. Last week Cole wanted to play checkers with me. He has an amazing ability to recognize patterns and spatial concepts, which makes him great at checkers. After solidly and legitimately beating me twice in a row, he began to gather up the board, and said with a subtle smirk,
"My work here is done."
I just lost it. Cole has great comedic timing at his young age. As an aside, he still credits his Great Grandad with some of his checkers moves.
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The great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided kindergarten would not be required by the public school system. Naturally, then, many public schools only offer half-day kindergarten. Some theorize this is because the vast populous of preschool-age Pennsylvanians are, in fact, in preschool and do not need kindergarten, and can start first grade already prepared. The district then gives the kindergartners standardized testing to see if they a little extra help to be prepared for first grade, and those few who do are put - with their parents' permission of course - into an Extended Day Kindergarten. Secretly, I confess I was hoping Cole would qualify so he would have the same schedule as his brother and sister, and Regardless, our school district does offer the half-day program, and so Cole attends in the morning. Luckily for us, this means we get to keep paying for some sort of after-school care (Yay!!). Going on ten years now, we've been paying for childcare, daycare, preschool, after-school care...it's wearing thin...Mama needs a new pair of shoes...
But I digress. After Cole gets out of school at 11:45, the bus takes him to the YMCA in the borough (you remember the borough, right? Not to be confused with the township, or the city...not the same). Thankfully, they have a great schedule for a different activity each day - turf day, gymnastics, soccer, tumbling, and on Mondays - swimming.
So I picked up Cole yesterday (Monday) and immediately saw that he was not wearing the same clothes in which he had left the house in that morning. I asked him why he was wearing those clothes, which, as an aside, was a too-small t-shirt with "Arkansas" all over it, and a pair of khaki pants with one knee ripped to shreds. Something like an orphan would wear. He replied that it was swimming day, and his teacher told him to put those clothes on. This clearly did not make the least bit of sense to me, because 1) his teacher wouldn't have cared to make him put those clothes on, as it would have been just as easy and convenient to put on the clothes he took off before swimming which were the clothes he left the house in; and 2) how did those clothes even get out of the house? I knew they were in his closet, and I knew I hadn't put them in his backpack. I was very confused. So then I asked Cole where he got the clothes. He told me he got them from his bag, after he went swimming, and that I forgot to pack his swimsuit. So at this point I'm thinking well, he must have been swimming in his other clothes or something. Now at this point, we've got two different issues we're talking about, but anyway, since he brought up the forgotten swimsuit, I ask, "So what did you go swimming in, then?"
He looks up at me like I have two heads, and says,
"In the swimming pool."
Duh, Mom!!
I never did find out what piece of clothing he wore to swim, but at this point I lost interest. Later I would find in his backpack the clothes he first left the house in that morning, and a wet bathtowel and another pair of shorts - wet. But no swimsuit...
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A few days ago, I was getting out of the shower and Katie came into the bathroom. Not much explanation is necessary here, but Katie looked me up one side and down another, and then said,
"Your....face....is so pretty..."
It was quite humbling. Buuuuut she didn't stop there. She continued,
"Your face is as pretty as every star in the sky...as a flower...but not as pretty as me."
Thanks, honey, for your candor. A friend just recently told me that the some of the traits we loathe in our children are values we pray they have as adults. This would be a good example of one of those traits.
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