"What, A.?" I ask, pausing as I finish the last few bites of my microwave burrito, no meat.
"I LIKE the cheese!" he says, as if this is an astonishing discovery.
This has happened before. We have sat down for lunch as a class of three and four-year olds, and A. has explained that he does not like a certain food on his plate. He's not forced to eat that food, but he will at some point during the meal call out, "I tried it and I liked it!" He is inevitably grinning hugely. Today it was half of a pita, filled with yellow cheese, cooked in the oven. I tried some. It was good.
I love A., who is so great. Today, he sat under the slide on a little plastic bench out on the wood chip-covered playground, hunched over and gripping his slightly dirty panda to him. When A.'s mother leaves him in the morning, he cries and cries, later becomes pensive, and then joins the group.
He sat in his brooding stage, obviously thinking of his lovely mother, when I asked him if the shirt he was wearing was any indication that he did indeed support the Yankees.
It turns out that the shirt is not; he seemed slightly offended that I would try to get him to leave his thoughts before he was ready, especially for such a silly thing as what his shirt might indicate his preferences are.
I sat back down on the blue plastic bench and turned away, quelled. But then E. and Female J. were having a disagreement over by the little playhouse, and so I had something to do.
Male J., who is not Female J., is very cute. They are all pretty cute. He has, unfortunately, become well-acquainted with the "Cozy Corner," which is where he gets to sit when he won't pay attention to what Miss S., the teacher, tells him to do. He has a tendency to pick his nose and then put his finger in his mouth, which we are trying to discourage. It's actually pretty discomforting, especially when Male J. is told to run to the sink and wash his hands again. At one point, I think he'd gotten tired of rubbing his hands together, and instead decided to clap them, spraying water everywhere. I'm not sure, but I don't think clapping does much for cleaning hands.
But, but, he says to the teachers, including me, multiple times a day: "I love you," to which you must respond, "I love you too; thank you, J." When you have, and sometimes when you haven't had time to yet, J. responds very enthusiastically, "I love you more," and then you can see how it becomes easier to take his nose-picking habit.
Female J. can be very sweet. This next part is not to try to contradict that last statement, but I thought I should make it clear that Female J. can be very sweet, and also has a hard time with naps. On her first day, which was also my first day, she did NOT want to take a nap, and let the teachers know by throwing a tantrum. The next day, she reminded the teachers that her aunt said she did not have to take a nap, and so sat coloring as we facilitated the larger group's nap-time.
Today, Female J. told me multiple times: "Remember, I don't have to take a nap."
I think it was the fact that she knew we were not going to try to make her go to sleep that gave her permission to go to sleep. She was out, and quickly. She lay on her cot, sunlight streaming in through a transparent green and flowy curtain, rain forest sounds playing on the CD player.
Sometimes, it is very unearthly to talk to other teachers in the quiet of the room, only the rain forest sounds, when all of the kids have gone to sleep. Suddenly, there really is a soundtrack for any conversation. Also sometimes, the CD skips on track four. Did you think those birds were real? because their chirping just became unhappily erratic.
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