Here you are having just sailed by 4.5 years old without a party, gifts or a letter from the prime minister. How this was not a nationally recognized event, Jack, I will never know. Because it meant a lot of things to you, including starting at your new preschool.
Your dad and I can only hope you continue to love school as much as you love preschool. The weekends are sheer torture for you because it means you have to wait TWO ENTIRE SLEEPS before you go to school again. You tend to pull out your favourite line when we mention this fact.
"That's too long."
Everything, for the record, is too long in your book. Time until your mid-morning snack, time until lunch, time until mid-afternoon snack, time until dinner, time until you can watch a show, time until we go to the park. I can feel your pain, Jack. I have days where the time until it is bed time in this house is TOO LONG. By about a quadzillion minutes.
What amazes me most about this new school for you is that you actually seem to be learning. Each day, one of us manages to drag out of you what you talked about in class, and you bring up all sorts of interesting things, like firefighters, police officers and recycling. As a mother deeply attached to all of those things, I am very excited to hear this is happening. And that you actually seem capable of retaining that information and sharing it with us. Getting a four-year old to do that is a feat akin to climbing Everest with no oxygen pack.
I was not sure how you would deal with the fact that you were not bringing your own snack to school this year. This year, it was a class snack brought in by volunteering parents. I don't know what I thought they may bring in that would deter you from snack time as I have found so very few items that ever stop you from snacking. Liver, I think. And maybe raw chicken. The first day, I asked what was for snack, and you quite happily replied, "The crackers you have when you are sick."
I sensed Day One of class snack time wasn't completely thought through by the teachers, but you did not seem to mind this one bit. In the following days, you have been thrilled to report yogurt tubes, strawberries and other such preschooler delicacies. This was all good and dandy until you told me you had a "long shape of cheese and I loved it."
"Do you mean long and round, like a tube?"
"Yeah. It was so good."
"Like a cheese string?"
"Yeah. That's what it was. I want you to buy a million of them."
Child, I almost simultaneously wept and wanted to strangle you. I can't even attempt to express how long I have tried to get you to eat a) cheese and b) cheese in string form. No other kid we know doesn't eat those. But magical, mystical preschool seemed to have transformed you from the kid who refused to eat solidified dairy to the kid who can't stop singing its praises. I knew my dollars there were going towards something good. If you learn not a single other thing there, I will always be comforted in the knowledge that they taught you the wonder of cheese.
Love,
Your Momma
