Preschool

My "baby" started preschool today, the first day he could according to MA law, at 2 years, 9 months of age.

He did great!

I must admit, I was little worried. He still cried every time I dropped him off at daycare, though I suspect they were crocodile tears. Hari took him for an orientation session last Thursday, where they hung out for an hour or so and Xander was apparently kind of clingy.

When we got there, as we went up the stairs, he asked, "Why going to Jessie's school?" It's the same preschool we sent Jessica to for 2 years, so he certainly recognized the building. "It's your school now," I told him.

Once we got there, he was clingy. I sat with him for a little while. We played with some playdough, then took out a monkey puzzle. When it was Circle Time, I had to leave, because, as we told him, Circle Time isn't for parents. I handed him over, crying a little (him, not me), to one of the teachers. I hung out in the hall but didn't hear any crying, so I left.

I called a few hours later and they said he was doing really well. He hadn't cried and he was laughing and playing with the other kids. I got the full report when we picked him up in the afternoon. He did much better than any of us expected. At one point, he told one of the teachers, "This is my school now." He took his rest time without any trouble. He talked to lots of people, teachers and children. He far exceeded my expectations. And he had a huge smile on his face when Jessica and I got there to pick him up.

He's my big boy now!

A picture says a thousand words

We had a pretty disastrous trip to Six Flags today. How can a trip to an amusement park be disastrous? Well, it's supposed to be fun, right? However, a certain, very short, male person in our group did nothing but whine and complain and cry pretty much from the moment we got there to the moment we left.

Oh, except when I bought him a gigantic (billed as "small" yet still outrageously expensive) ice cream cone. It's hard to cry when you're drowning in ice cream.

The kids ate their cones on the way out. As I was walking alone, pushing the stroller, I saw a few people look at Xander and smile. I thought it was just because there was this little kid with this enormous* ice cream cone. At one point, we passed a woman who said, "He's so cute."

I thought, he probably does look pretty cute. I should take a picture. So I got out the camera. When I walked in front of him to take the picture, I found out why everyone was smiling at him:

Jessica fared a little better:

Oh, and for those of you that aren't on Facebook, here's a cute picture of the kids from yesterday. Can you guess what they were eating?

*Note to Nutan:
Look! I managed to use both "enormous" and "gigantic" without resorting to "ginormous." It can be done.

This and that

Xander has reached what a friend once described as the "charming" stage of speech where he puts out a constant dialogue of what he's doing. Examples: "Mommy, I put my shoe on." "I picked flower." "I rode in kayak." "I helped Daddy's police car." Better late than never!

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One of his new tricks is the way he responds whenever you ask him what color something is. First, he always says blue first, no matter what color the item is. Second, he always says, really fast, "I don't know, blue?" so that it comes out something like, "I dunno, blue?" Then when you tell him it's not blue, he'll respond with something like, "I dunno, geen?" I think this is just a game, because he can sort items into groups of color and he's correctly identified pink and orange, so I don't think it's random guessing.

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There's been some disagreement between his parents about his hair length. Daddy would prefer than Xander have the same haircut he does--about a quarter inch. I like it long. Little boys can get away with long curly hair. Although we saw one boy this weekend, about 2 years old, practically with ringlets. I'm not sure I would go that far.

Anyway, I've been polling everyone I see, asking for their opinion. Most people agree it's okay, even adorable, for him to have it long, though some (cough, cough, Uncle Eric) won't do so in front of Hari. His two daycare teachers really like it long, so much so that they are trying to teach him to say to his daddy "No haircut."