Kindergarten Is Hard on Parents, Too

Keir: Yesterday, Felix's very first day of kindergarten, went pretty well, I think, although it was really designed more for parents than for kids. After two hours of learning the rules and finding his way around--amid a crowd of kids and parents--he was done. But we think his teacher, Mrs. Parker, will be great. She did manage a little floor time with the kids and that was fun to watch. She used a frog puppet named Kelso, who was also shy about his first day at school, to put the kids at ease. Felix and Cosmo still really love to talk to puppets and it's so watching their faces when they do so--they fully enter the puppet reality. When Mrs. Parker told the kids that they could each bring Kelso home for a weekend, Felix raised his hand. "I'd really like to bring Kelso
home for the weekend, but I can't," he said. "We don't have any flies at our house."

Marya: Dropping Felix off this morning, for his first full day, was great. He was so excited, he ran straight for his teacher, then proceeded to run around with the mob of kids who were running around in circles. I was teary as I walked away, looking back and seeing him - a boy growing up, excited to be part of a new group. Then I realized I was clutching his backpack and had to go back, which sort of broke the moment.

Felix's first day at Kindergarten

A few changes around the house

Last weekend we painted an orange wall in the boys' room...


...and began vermicomposting! We welcomed a few hundred worms into our home, prepared a nice bed for them and got acquainted.

Everyone's a Critic

Just now.

Keir: Well, Felix, I'm going to go change the cat box. (Beat.) I'm going to change it into a dog box.
Felix: Dad, stop it!
K: What's wrong, Felix? I'm just telling a joke to try to make you laugh.
F: I'm never going to laugh.
K: Why not?
F: Because they're such bad jokes!

Smokers

At breakfast this morning we noticed an article about smoking.

F: Once I saw a man who was smoking a cigarette, a cigar, and a pipe all at the same time.

M: Really?

F: I really did, it's true. I was two and a half and you were looking the other way.

C: Once I saw a woman smoking a cigarette! It's true. I really did!

Sticks, Poop, Senior Citizens, and Good Manners

Some random exchanges from the past couple of weeks....

While we were in Montana, Cosmo slept in the car almost all the way to Flathead Lake. Suddenly, Grandpa Tom and I heard a voice from the back seat.

Cosmo: What if you had a stick that was four thousand feet long?
Keir: Were you dreaming about sticks, Cosmo?
Cosmo: Yes.

*****

Rallying the troops.

Keir: Come on, Felix. We're going to go visit Grandpa Dave and Grandma Laura.
Felix: I don't want to go see Grandpa Dave and Grandma Laura. It's not very fun and there's too much senior citizens.

*****

Keir: Come on, Felix. You need to poop before you go to bed. I don't think you've gone poop for days.
Felix: I'm tired of pooping all the time.

*****

Back in Chicago, after school, on the bus.

Keir: Cosmo, did you draw any pictures today?
Cosmo: Yes! I drew a picture of a truck.
Keir: Will you draw me a picture of a truck?
Cosmo: Yes. But the green one is for me.
Keir: Will you draw an orange dump truck for me?
Cosmo: Yes. I'll draw an orange truck for you, and a blue truck for mommy, and a purple truck for Felix.
Felix: No!
Keir: Felix....
Felix: I don't like the way he draws trucks.
Keir: Felix, if someone gives you a gift, it's because they want to make you feel good. If you say thank you, it makes them feel good. So just say thank you and take the gift. You don't have to play with it if you really don't like it.
Felix: Paper can be recycled.

New Bikes!

Felix got his cast off the day we left for Montana. He wore a splint most of the time we were there--but less and less as he began to feel more comfortable without it. Last Wednesday, we got a thumbs-up from his doctor after a good X-ray and exam. We asked him when it would be OK for Felix to ride a bike again and he said, "Oh, probably not before 4:30." (It was 4:10.) Felix, however, wasn't sure he would be ready to ride until "probably November," but when we rescheduled a trip that had been postponed by his injury--to the bike store--he forgot to be worried. Both Felix and Cosmo love their new bikes.


Felix was also really proud that he was strong enough to lift his bike. This was followed by a monlogue that went something like this: "I'm so strong that, when I lift a hammer, even though I know it weighs something, if feels like it doesn't weigh anything."

Cosmo, too, proved that he is really strong:

In action:

Dress-up Day at school

Illinois Railway Museum

On the town with Cosmo

About to cross a street, Cosmo knows the drill:
This crosswalk is for people to cross the street. We are people, so we can cross here.

And as the bus rode over several pot holes, Cosmo announces with enthusiasm:
It's shaking my penis up and down!

Two Judges, Three Judgments

Not a moment's peace.

Keir: Felix, just back off! Keep your hands off your brother and leave him alone. I'm trying to make dinner and I can't do it when I have to keep separating you.
Felix: When I'm forty, I'll probably sound like you.

*****

At the petting zoo.

Keir: Felix, do you smell that? That's manure.
Felix: Yes, I smell it.
Keir: Do you know what manure is? Animal poop.
Felix: Eww.
Keir: Did you know that farmers use manure? When they plant seeds, they cover them in manure, and the manure helps the seeds grow faster.
Felix: You're crazy.

*****

Looking out the window of the bus.

Felix: That woman is smoking a cigarette!
Cosmo: She's bad!
Felix: Her lungs will get coated in tar, and they'll turn black!
Cosmo: And she will die!
Felix: And she's doing it right outside a hospital.
Cosmo: We have a book about that.

Two More Stories: Railroad Crossings & Machinery

Railroad Crossings

by Felix Graff

Once there was a railroad crossing. It was so old that the crossing guards never went down, because no one ever cleaned the rust off the gears. And when a train went through, a car was driving and he couldn’t see the lights flashing and he couldn’t hear the bell ringing because he had his music up way too loud and he was looking around out the window and didn’t see any lights flashing. And he went through the crossing and he saw the train so he stepped on his gas pedal super fast—so he just made it across. The train engineer stopped just in time.

Then he went through another crossing. It was so old the lights couldn’t flash, the guard couldn’t go down and the bell couldn’t ring. And there was just an extra crossing guard that never got rust on its gears. It was built so well it never got rust. And those guards went down and it warned the car. And the car stopped in time. And when it was about to almost go through an open bridge, it slammed windshield first into the guard. And do you know what happened? The guard broke down, falling across the street, making tire after tire go flat. And then, finally, when another tire went flat, some workers came, and they picked up the crossing guard and they put it in the dump because it was just like so old. And then they put another crossing guard in, and that one, the same thing happened with that very car again! So they had to fix it. And then it never happened—almost never—only it happened one time, again, with another car. Actually, it was a bulldozer that crashed. And guess what? Its bucket that pushed things broke off. And it bounced over the fence and it fell into the water and sank. And it never got a new bucket again, so it had to stay in the scrap yard.

Machinery

Once there was a garage door machine and it was old so whenever it opened it only went four inches up, and the opening place was sixteen feet up. Then the car could never get into the garage because the door kept going lower and lower and soon it got so low it touched the ground. The garage door on every wheel was an eyeball. Then there was a wheel and it didn’t have an eyeball because all the eyeballs were black. But the other garage door never stopped working so he backed up into the street and used that garage door. The garage door was 9 years old.

Felix Graff, Author

This week, Felix started dictating stories to us. Here's the first one.

Moving Stones
by Felix Graff

There was a moving stone and the castle. And when a little boy came into the castle, the moving stone moved and hit him on the head with a hammer, because he was a bad boy. That moving stone was 1,000 feet high. Then, next to it, stood a stone that was 9,000 feet high. And then the castle fell down. The stones, they knew somebody was saying a bad word, so they rolled out of that bad mess and they caught that bad guy. He was talking to the stones like mean. The stones move because they want to scare people when they say bad words. And the stones, they sometimes move to say “hi.” When they got that little boy, they rolled out of the castle mess. And then another bad guy came into the castle and wanted to shoot the good stones. He didn’t want to shoot the bad stones because they would kill him with the hammer. And they also had axes. The good stones and the bad stones had compactors inside them. Suddenly, a mechanical claw reached out of the good stone on the other side they didn’t see. And they got all three of them by the neck and put them in the compactor of the one that was 1,000 feet high. And when the moving stones compact, they move up and down inside and it makes them have all sorts of bumps and rings outside. Then the moving stones went to a new castle and the new castle fell down, too, and then they went to another new castle that almost never fell down. And then they rolled out and there were still some more bad guys that they got because they had hammers and axes. They got them because they moved out. One moving stone went rolling back and forth, back and forth, and it was 10,000 feet high. And there was a bad guy in front of him and his axes were 400 feet long. His axes swung down and killed the bad guy. There were still some moving stones and guess what happened? There was even a stone 2,000,000 feet tall. And it punched the bad guy. And he’s dead. And there’s more and more moving stones being made.

Breaking News!

. . . pun fully intended. Felix broke his arm yesterday on the playground at school. But let's hear it in his own words:

I was at the playground. And I fell off the bouncy bridge. And I broke my arm because it twisted really hard. And I went to the Children's Memorial Hospital. And I got an X-ray and a cast. And at the Children's Hospital I saw a ball contraption and it was turned off, because the little motor that made the balls go around wasn't spinning--it didn't make the balls go around the chain. That's the whole story!

He chose this picture:

Here's another version of the story, as told to Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy the manta ray:

He's doing fine, although the rest of the summer will certainly be a bit different from the one we had planned. The first big challenge: finding a shirt that will fit over his arm!

May Days, Part 3

The last big event from May: Cosmo's last day in Room 5. (As a 3-year-old, it's time to go to a mixed-age classroom.) He brought flowers for his teachers: Miss Donna . . .


. . . Miss Milica . . .


. . . and Miss Carol, the head teacher. Miss Carol adores Cosmo, and has called him a "model citizen." She also told us, "He has it all: brains, looks, and charm."

On to Room 3! (And, soon, on to June!)

May Days, Part 2

More photos from Wildlife Prairie State Park.

May Days

Seems like it's been ages since we posted any photos. Here we go, all the way back to May, back when Felix was a mere four years old. (Cosmo, of course, was already three.)




The kids really enjoyed our visit to Wildlife State Park. There was wildlife, of course, but more importantly, there were trains. Trains small . . .


. . . and big.


(We stayed in the caboose on the end.) There was also a train, medium-sized, for riding.

For Father's Day, Straight Talk about Money

At bedtime tonight, after lights-out.

Felix: Daddy, can we take the train to St. Louis this year?
Keir: I don't think we're going to go to St. Louis. We do want to take a train trip this year, but we haven't decided where we're going yet.
F: Did you know that sometimes the train goes to New York City? It goes to St. Louis, but sometimes it goes to New York, too.
K: I did know that.
F: You can take Amtrak to St. Louis for $28, to New York for $60, and there's a third place but I forget what it was.
K: ...was Mommy telling you about these prices last summer?
F: No, there was a sign on the bus.
K: Well, those sound like some pretty good prices.
F: How much money do we have? Do we have $70? I think we have $70.
K: We have more money than that.
F: Do we have in the hundreds?
K: We actually have thousands of dollars.
F: (astonished) We have thousands of dollars, so we must be rich. But rich people have gems.
K: Well, Mommy has a couple of gems.
F: (cackling) We have thousands of dollars!
K: We can't spend all of it on train travel.

More Mystery Meat & Construction Conundrums

On the bus home from school:

K: Cosmo, what did you have for lunch today?
C: I had meat for lunch.
K: What kind of meat?
C: I don't know what kind it was.
K: Was it chicken? Or turkey?
C: It was just plain meat.

Felix, after leaning forward and bonking his head on a kitchen cabinet door (while standing on a chair):

F: Whoever constructed these cabinets didn't do a very good job. They shouldn't have put them in the place where they put them. Because, if someone is standing here and the cabinet door is open, they bonk their head.

Mother's Day