confetti

Last night when I informed Sam that his friend Judy would be extending their afternoon playdate by staying for dinner, he said the news "filled his heart with confetti." They had a good time (see below). Last time she was here (a few weeks ago), I was in the kitchen while they constructed various things at the dining room table. Sam began a declaration: "Judy, I love you *so* much, that..." and she cut him off: "Sh! Not in public!" Aww.

(On another previous occasion, noted by Stephanie, Sam requested that she (Stephanie) draw a picture of a god pretending it's going to eat someone. "If it looks exactly like The Monster, I can tell Judy that it's just a god so she knows." Sam and Judy spend a lot of time talking and thinking about The Monster, first observed in Judy's house but since then seen numerous times by both of them as well as a coterie of classmates, and which they battle continuously and enthusiastically. As Sam put it to a friendly purple-haired Trader Joe's staffer, who'd handed him a sample, a few weeks ago: "The Monster is what really brought us together.")

Sam's kindergarten Family Week was last week. On Monday, we went in almost an hour earlier than usual in order to decorate the Drama Area-- Sam had requested a rainforest, and I'd spent a few evenings the previous week cutting big leaves out of green construction paper with him, and then stapling them to green streamers. I'd also made some paper parrots and snakes. We attached all of them to the ceiling in the classroom. After the kids got there and had their morning meeting, we had the Family Interview: the four of us were asked a series of questions by the class (well, Frida didn't spend that much time in her chair, preferring instead to rearrange the date-number cards on the calendar behind us). Where are your ancestors from? What's your favorite letter? Kind of art to do? Type of car? Thing to wear? Then J. took Frida to daycare, and I stayed on to do a "special snack" with rotating groups of kids: I'd brought sushi rice, squares of nori, and toppings-- sliced Japanese omelette, cucumbers, and avocado. So the kids smooshed sushi rice onto the nori (or just onto a napkin, if they were wary of the nori), and added toppings as they liked, then dipped into a little bowl of soy sauce. Reactions ranged from delighted (both by seasoned sushi lovers and enthusiastic newbies) to skeptical, but everyone at least tried the rice. Three hours after I got to work, just as I was getting out of a meeting with a team of research assistants, I got a call from one of Frida's daycare teachers-- she'd thrown up. I picked her up and spent the next two and a half days at home with her. Thursday she was well enough to go back, and J. dropped her off while I headed back to Sam's classroom to do the postponed special activity. Last year we did a big didactic "parts of the brain that do X" activity, but this year we changed it up and made animal masks out of paper plates. Whew. (Thursday afternoon was my worktime at Frida's daycare-- it's a coop-- so I only worked one full day last week. Oy.)

Snippet of video from this evening, taken by our upstairs neighbor on her fancy new phone: