My Morning With Emily
If you don't want to hear a story about little kids, then turn away. Otherwise, read on.
I went to Emily’s school today. The school had a “pancake breakfast with your grandparents” day. The pre-school has fund raisers and things like this that I have to fight by cynical dark side and say nice things about. For this event, the kid could bring someone else if a grandparent could not make it. Considering the kids are 3 or so, a lot of grandparents are still in the workforce and probably could not take off. Or like us, both of our parents live very far away. So I went.
I’ll admit it started out a little shaky. I was the first non-child there. Out of 8 kids, 4 ended up having grandparents. I was the only non-grandparent. But for the first 5 minutes or so it was me, my daughter, and 3 other little kids in a room with miniature furniture and thousands of play items. In a room with bright colors, names on cut-out buses on the wall, cubby holes with flowers and a tank with painted snails. The other little kids looked at me, the two people who work there are women, like David Duke at a Black Panther rally. Like Mark Witaker at the GOP fund raiser. Wide-eyed kids starred at me while I tried to pick up plastic fish with a tiny fishing pole and stay within the stencil lines. But two other grandmothers and one set of grandparents made me feel more auspicious about the morning.
Then came what seemed like a very long period of random alone play time, a period where the kids could do whatever they want, which, at least to me, is contrary to the whole “school” thing of learning and education. I was worried that this structured setting was nothing but a prolonged playtime. But one of the teachers then had a session which seemed like it was a normal thing. She had a little lesson and read a couple of books and did things in sign language. It was nice.
Then we went on to the pancakes. It was in the gym of the church and was set up on two tables. The grandparents, and me, sat next to their little ones. I think for some of the other kids pancakes are a rare thing, and at least for one kid something they have never had. For Emily, Patti’s famous pancakes are on the table a couple of times a week. Emily LOVES pancakes and goes through them like me drinking beer on a Saturday afternoon in August. She ate 4 and all the other kids, grandparents and teachers were very impressed. That’s my girl. Eat like a lineman and don’t apologize.
I had a very nice conversation with the complete grandparent set. The guy was a venture capitalist in the tech field and him and his wife both lived in a pretty nice section of Boston. The teachers made coffee for the adults and I got to have a couple of Aunt Jemima’s best.
During bed time Emily and I were talking. When I put her to bed I usually have her tell me about her day and what she did/what made her happy/how she feels. She said something about the pancakes. Testing her I said she had 2 pancakes and held up two fingers. She yelled out she had 4 pancakes and held up 10 fingers. Young kids can be the ultimate test in patience and really push the limit on what a person can take, but the other 10% of the time they are really fun.