Sometimes Mean

One of Travis's classmates in Pre-K had his father pass away last week. They sent a little note home with all the Pre-K kids, explaining about the little boy's loss and that the school counselor had come into the class to explain what happened to the kids, and they all prayed for the boy and his family and then made cards for him for his return.

Now, Travis has told me about this little boy before, his name is Jarell, and Travis describes him as "sometimes mean". So, I decided to take this opportunity to explain that while Travis might think of Jarell as "mean", that no one really knows what someone has going on in their lives; and we talked about how it might have been very hard on Jarell if his dad was very sick, and that might be why he sometimes acted out.

So, last night, we drove out to my sister's house to see my aunt and grandma visiting from North Dakota. On the way home, Travis was kind of in and out of sleep. At one point, he woke up and said he had a dream about his old pre-school, about how he was afraid of the Blues Clues stamps on the first day (I can't believe he remembers that... it was a full year ago). Then he starts talking about this little boy Tyler who was in his pre-school last year, and about how Tyler was "sometimes mean and sometimes funny" -- which had always been his description of that little boy. Anyway, then he said "and his dad didn't die while we were in pre-school". I'm taking this to mean that the lesson he learned from our little discussion is that people who are sometimes mean probably have a dying parent. Oops.

Sophie has started waving. I'm very excited. I can't get her to clap for the life of me, though. She thinks I'm mildly interesting when I clap at her, but she treats it more as some idiotic gestures that her excitable mother is making and not at all as something she intends to emulate.

Noah and Travis are really starting to play well together. Noah is finally at the age where he is understanding more how to play with someone -- before it was a lot of just trying to do whatever his big brother was doing... which generally meant snatching toys away from each other. Now, they both do a pretty good job of finding ways to share or to play together. It's very endearing to watch. Take today, for example, both boys wanted to play with Travis's football field (a Christmas present from last year); but Travis actually agreed to let Noah play on his own for a little bit and even helped show him how to set the players up. In a few minutes, Noah brought the football players to Travis and said "Travis can play now!" I could see how proud of himself he was that he voluntarily turned the toys over.

On the calendar for this week: Pre-K field trip to the pumpkin patch; doc appointments for the kids; nephew's birthday party/costume party; friends coming up for the ND game on Saturday. Next week: my birthday.