future aspirations

I got to daycare at the usual time to pick up the kids tonight. I always go to Sam's room first since there's a good chance he'll have to use the potty before we go and I don't want to have to keep track of Grace while helping him. It's always interesting to walk in the room and see what he's up to. He usually doesn't notice me right away so I get to observe for a couple of minutes. Some days, I'm so happy with what I see and some days I'm completely appalled at what I see. I've walked in on him playing nicely with his friends and I've walked in on him smacking one of his friends or whipping wooden blocks across the room. It's hit or miss with that kid.

I've never been prouder than I was tonight, though. It was a funny little scene when I walked in the room. The teacher was at the end of the room by the door and all the kids were down at the other end on their fishy mat on the floor where they generally read stories or have lessons. And there was my son (my baby!) sitting on a little chair at one end of the fishy mat, wearing a plastic, patterned smock and playing teacher! It was one of the cutest scenes ever! He was holding up construction paper shapes glued to popsicle sticks in various colors. He held up one at a time and called on one of his "students" to tell him the shape and color. And get this: if someone got it wrong, he didn't yell "no, you're wrong!" Instead, he helped them figure it out. Bella told him the pink rectangle was a pink square and, pointing to the shape, he said, "try again, Bella...look, this side is longer than this side." When I was finally able to get him to leave the room, on his way out he proclaimed, "Great job, boys and girls!"

I guess we can add "teacher" to his long list of possible future professions. As long as he never has to teach his sister, I think he could work wonders in the classroom! It will now rank somewhere amongst firefighter, daddy, politician, priest (wow, does that kid ever love going to church), sanitation engineer (for about a third of his life, all he talked about was the garbage truck hence last year's Halloween costumes), doorman, helicopter pilot, UPS man, etc., etc.

Sam, the garbage man & Grace, the bag of garbage (or white trash, if you will)
Halloween 2007