Tor's transition to "big school" has gone remarkably smoothly. He goes to breakfast club at 8:15, has kindergarten from 9 to 3:20, and then has after-school club until 5:15. Each of those groups has different kids, albeit with some overlap, and different teachers, and he's done an admirable job just going with it and making new friends. They also do "forest school" once a week, where they go outside for most of the day and pick berries, build a fire, drink hot chocolate, and build things out of sticks. He's tired and irritable some nights, but honestly that's nothing new.
One kid from his daycare also is in the kindergarten, and he told me that they're not friends anymore because "now I have new friends." So we talked about how you don't need to stop being friends with people when you meet new friends, and talked about all our friends in the places we've lived, and I taught him the song about "make new friends but keep the old." Hopefully that takes.
Tor is getting highly sensitive to people's emotions and will sometimes report to us when someone is sad, as well as telling us how he's feeling. Yesterday he told me that he and Dad were walking in the city center, and they saw a man selling magazines, and the man wanted Dad to buy one, but Dad said not now, and "I saw the man's face and i could see that he felt very sad." That was a tough one. I said we want to make everyone happy, and we have to do what we can, but we can't buy magazines from everybody (we see a lot of people selling magazines). But there are other ways we help people and everyone has to help in the way they can. I'm sure there are better answers, but that's what I came up with on the bike ride home. No judgement.
Tor has also begun using similes with noticeable frequency. "My leg looks like a bridge." "The camera sounds like bread crusts crunching." "The fresh-squeezed OJ tastes like cow poo." I pulled him up on that last one because 1) it's rude and 2) how does he know what cow poo tastes like? He explained, "I've seen a lot of cow poo and I know what it smells like, and the smell is what this juice tastes like." Touché, son, touché.
Finally, he's getting even more helpful (though, on the balance, he's also a complete basket case at least three times a week), so we try to reinforce that whenever possible. Today Col took a bath and while I was getting him dressed, Tor drained the tub, squeezed out all the toys, and put them back on the shelf. Massive fanfare! Gold star for Tor! As soon as I got Col dressed, Col barfed all over himself, me, and the rug. While I cleaned him up, I asked Tor to go to the drawer downstairs in the kitchen and get me a big tupperware. He came up with a glass bowl. I told him thanks but no, the drawer above that and it has to be plastic and big. He came back with exactly the right vessel for catching toddler puke. Celebration! Tor is great! (Now Col is in bed with the tupperware next to him--fingers crossed it's a 24-hour thing.)
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| Ready to conquer day one |
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| Veg sesh after the first day of school |
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| He's from Minnesota, what can I say |
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| Modeling our friend Casey's hat and a smirk that's all Tor |
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| "I spelled your name!" |
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Tor and Dad had a special outing to the lab where he got to use the electron microscope to look at a dead fly located specifically for this purpose. A few TorTales buffs may recall that
the first-ever post on here featured Tor at an electron microscope--another place, another time.
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| Proud to be in the driver's seat |
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| Wearing his lab camouflage |
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| The Kafkaesque outcome |
I'll write more about Col for his big oh-two next month, but to touch on where he's at, the kid likes being engaged in conversation at any given time and will nod and shake his head as if he understands exactly what you mean. This tactic allows him to slide by if you're using yes-or-no questions, but once you ask him why or how or when, or "What did you do at the playground," it breaks down. He's pretty good at who and where questions, though, and is particularly endearing in holding up his hands in an "I dunno" gesture when you ask him where something is.
I absolutely keeled over laughing at the pic of Tor sleeping with his head hanging off the bed! So awesome!! We miss you guys so much and fingers crossed we'll all be together for a year, in about a year's time!!!
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