St. Louis Holliday

Sunday night I reminded Puck to write a birthday card for his 3rd grade teacher, as requested by the room moms. A few minutes later he handed me this masterpiece:

“Happy birthday Mrs. S!

from Puck

PS sorry for the bad handrighting”

I’m sure she was very touched. Or she would have been if Puck had remembered to look for it in his homework folder to give to her at school Monday morning.

Meanwhile, after I landed a plate of egg – over-easy as he likes it – in front of Puck for breakfast, I heard him talking to Yali.

“I am just going to eat your little cheeks up! You are the cutest baby in the world!”

This must have been the sequel to the impromptu song he serenaded him with last night, which went something like this:

“You are the cutest little taco in the world!”

As we ran Puck into the gym for school that morning, the Headmaster called to me from across the carpool lanes, “Happy Opening Day, Collette!” as rain fell steadily over the parking lot.

Fortunately for the entire city of St. Louis, who might just as well declare Opening Day an official national holiday, the sun decided to make an appearance just a couple of hours before game time.

So while the Boys of Summer began tearing it up on home turf downtown about mid-afternoon, I was up at school collecting my sons for the drive home.

Annie-Bea filled me in on more of her ancestral heritage, proudly listing off her Russian, Italian, Scotch, and Dutch lines, not to mention that tie to Pocahontas – Americans are a peculiar race. Puck and Bob ran off for another game of hide-and-seek. And Heidi got busy making an alphabet chart to teach Yali his letters.

“I think his talent is whining,” she noted before she started writing up the lesson material.

Truer words were never spoken. One minute throwing a temper tantrum, the next – grinning from ear to ear like a king’s fool.