First day of school! First day of school!

Yep, it all began again on Monday. The boys are finally in the same school again, which is great and Connor is thrilled to be at the same place as Jamie. As often, there was much grumbling about it. Jamie is not so much anti-school as he is pro-summer, so he resents school as the end of the happy-time. For his part, Connor tends to go along with whatever Jamie says, so he's adopted the "we don't like school" party line as well. But for all of that they've both done. Jamie periodically slips and admits to having had a pretty good time, especially being back with his buddies.

The only thing with Connor is that he continues to prefer trying to hang out with Jamie's friends to making his own. There is a very sweet boy who is in Connor class and on his baseball team, who, Connor tells me, "wants to be his friend." But Connor claims to not like him. The other morning we were getting out of the car to walk into school and this boy passed and said with a great big smile "Hi Connor!" Connor just scowled. Sigh. They're always a little grumpy in the morning but really.

Give me a D!!

So I took the boys to the doctor's office this week for Connor's 5-year checkup. The boys put on quite a show. They spent the entire time in the waiting room, hallways and examination room tumbling over each other and hurtling themselves around, my exhortations of calm notwithstanding. Nobody seemed to mind though because this was all accompanied by ripples of laughter and silly noises.

When we were able to corral the boy-ness for long enough for the Doc to do his work all was pronounced well. The best part was the vision test. Connor really likes doing letter recognition, so he was into it. The nurse would point to a letter and Connor, one hand over an eye would yell "E!" "P!!" "D!!!!" getting louder every time. The whole office pretty much stopped to watch. Then it was time to do the other eye, so she told him to cover it with his other hand. He looked confused for a bit, then slowly raised his hand, but without uncovering the other eye. He stood there for a little and then said "Hey! I can't see!" Much hilarity. Eventually, we sorted it out and discovered that he sees quite well indeed.

A hard question to answer

Kids, as we know, ask extraordinary questions at ordinary times. The other day I was changing Connor after swimming. I think he had a tummy full of Goldfish, which seemed to get him thinking. With great earnestness, but without real concern, he asked, "Dad, when you are full of food, how is Jesus inside of everyone? I mean, how does he fit in there?" Clearly, some discussion with school had stuck with him. I tried to answer in sort of metaphysical (and no doubt heretical, too) terms, and that was good enough to an extent. But he still wanted to know how Jesus fits inside. I changed the subject eventually.

Bedtime trouble

Every night the boys get to "read" in bed. I put it quotes because Connor can't read, really. But he likes to look through the pictures and then ask for a bookmark when it's time for lights out. But tonight after we got back from our great trip to Nonni and Diddy's, we were getting ready for bed and he decided he wanted to do some coloring. Since we were literally off to brush teeth I said no, but we'll do it first thing tomorrow, trying to be cheerful. But no, he wanted to do it in bed. I felt I needed to draw the line here a bit so I stuck to my guns. He got very very unhappy and there was a scene.

Eventually I used the opportunity of him crying to brush his teeth for him (mouth's already open after all---is that bad of me?) and sent him off to bed. He started quietly playing with some Lego ships in their room and I told him he could do that while Jamie read for a few minutes, as long as he was quiet about it. But then Jamie starts freaking out because he doesn't want Connor to break his Legos. So then Connor freaks out. Eventually I get Jamie to relent as Connor very seriously promises to be super careful. So I leave the room in peace. Five minutes later Connor comes out and says he needs my help. As we get to the door, he whispers, "Don't tell Jamie!!" Sure enough, there is a broken Lego ship on the ground. Unbelievable! So I am now stealthily rebuilding it while Connor keeps intoning, "Don't tell Jamie!" Miraculously the surgery was completed and Jamie never knew.

Ah, Connor

There is a sense in which Connor is clearly aware that being blonde and cute makes his life pretty easy. He's more or less straight up admitted that he knows he can get away with things because he's cute. Maybe it's not related, but there is this slightly endearing cluelessness about things sometimes with Connor, as if he can leave the details to other people to work out. He's confused about when Sarah's coming back and keeps asking if it's going to be today or tomorrow, despite the fact that I've explained this a bunch of times. And just when I think he's growing out of it, the other morning I put a t-shirt on him with a large gorilla. He pointed at it and said, "Oooh! Is that a fox?!!" Ah, Connor.

Anteater family

Connor has always been a little bit more into animals than Jamie was. While Jamie likes having stuffed animals in his bed, for instance, and tends, typically, to be very loyal to a few of them, Connor really adores having as many of his "guys" around him as possible, and is much more apt to carry them around the house. He also likes to pretend that we are a family of one kind of animal or the other. There's clearly some therapeutic quality to this because it's helping him work through missing Sarah. As often with Connor he's a little fuzzy on the chronological details of the trip. We had explained pretty clearly that she would be gone for three weeks, but of course the day after she left he saw a plane in the sky and excitedly asked if Mommy was on it.

But the day before she left he asked if we could pretend he was the Anteater baby and Jamie was the Anteater kid and I was Anteater Daddy and Anteater Mommy was going on a trip. So we've done that periodically. One of the only discernible differences between our Anteater life and our normal existence is that when being an Anteater Connor gets to snuffle his food off the plate. This pleases him lots more than it does Anteater Daddy.