New school year

The new school year officially kicked off yesterday, with our very excited kindergartner and first-grader out the door and ready to party at 7:30 a.m.

The smiles were still there at pick-up time, albeit a bit tired and dulled with the tinge of real life. As Anika bemoaned, "There are too many rules. We spent the entire day going over classroom rules, and we ate lunch, and that was IT." When prompted, however, she insisted that she was excited to go back and that a classmate "who speaks Spanish and a little English" complimented her on her new kitten backpack. With all the new kids and only two boys in her class that were with Ms. Humphrey last year, my usual social butterfly was disappointed that there wasn't more talking. "No one talked to me much," she said. "Did you talk to anyone?" "Well, no." "Well then, tomorrow go up and say hello and ask their name," I reminded her. She smiled and went back to building the world's largest train track with Reni.

For his part, my kindergartner, who was quite silent at drop-off time (and even told me, with a slight shove, "Go, mama!") seemed A-OK with his first day. "I have three friends in my class from last year," he told me, "and I saw everyone else at lunch and on the playground." He told me that he and another boy were having a conversation about space and what they would build if they had a dump truck. He said his teacher is nice but "one boy got in trouble because he hit someone. But it wasn't me." Then he, too, turned his attention back to the train track building that was going on in his room.

My morning alone with Roman was also pretty nice. His ever-expanding vocabulary is fun to watch, and he is so pleased when he says something and we actually understand him. In no particular order, here are some of his favorite words:

- Yay
- Cookie (either the muppet monster or the edible type with chocolate chips)
- baby
- iPad
- no-no
- thank you
- oops
- uh-oh
- jump
- stinky (when we change a diaper)
- again
- all done
- Thomas (this one sounds more like "tah-dah")
- avocado (a-voh-caaaaaaahhhh)
- banana
- puppy (always accompanied by "woof! woof!"
- Raaaaaawwwr (any other animal besides a dog, cat, sheep or cow)
- chocolate (tahk-it)
-water (wa-wa)