Hey, I'm Only Three Weeks Behind.

There are lots of things I love about Willem's preschool. And usually I'm fine with the fact that it's trying to grow into a private Christian elementary school. Unfortunately, along with the whole "private school" thing comes an onslaught of fundraisers and elaborate Christmas and "graduation" programs which tend to veer into "overkill" when one's kid is only four years old and just needs to get out of the house for a few hours every week.

Case in point: the Christmas program they put on three weeks ago. To facilitate easy costume changes, every child had to wear a white turtleneck and black pants. So I had to go out and buy a white turtleneck and black pants, which were frankly not items I felt Willem's wardrobe was lacking.

I wasn't even sure if I could find a white turtleneck. I'd never looked for one before. My first try was J.C. Penney's (seemed like a sure thing) and I found one on clearance for $4.99. THEN I found one at Target for $3.99! I'm totally taking the Penney's one back. After dithering over some off-black cargo pants, I happened upon a pair of true-black cords which seemed to me way more acceptable than black slacks for a four-year-old.

The DAY OF the program they told us the kids needed to wear black socks. Sheesh. A four year-old needs black socks about as badly as he needs a pair of shiny black pointy tuxedo shoes. Which is not very much. I actually forgot this little tidbit of information and brought Willem to school that night in his usual white socks. He was returned to me in a pair of thin black nylon ankle dress socks. I didn't know such a thing existed.

Willem was thrilled to finally be up on the stage where he'd seen his brother the year before. I was expecting a night of carols and a re-enactment of the Nativity. We had that, but the first part of the program was an adaptation of the Nutcracker, and each of the classes performed a little ballet. Willem is really into his ballet class, and when I happened to run into his teacher at the school, she told me she really enjoys having him in class. "He has a really dry little sense of humor already." Uh huh. But he also has a lot of enthusiasm for dancing, and he often comes home and demonstrates his new moves without any prompting on my part. I quite enjoy watching him jump around the living room yelling "Changement! Changement!" in a very respectable French accent.

Hi, mom!

Willem is a cow here, in case you can't tell. He was really into the hand motions, which the older kids in the two back rows that you can't see were doing. This was their song; he was just supposed to be waiting for the group number. Like the kids you see standing behind him.

Here the kids were all lined up to put a new toy under the tree to give to Doernbecher's Children's Hospital. You can see how pleased Willem is to be giving away the Playmobil helicopter I picked out. Actually, he was crabby because the toys were being collected here in Camas; he wanted to take it to the hospital and give it to a doctor to give to a kid himself.

Aww.

Every school family was asked to bring a dessert to share after the program. When faced with a thirty-foot table crammed with every Christmas treat imaginable, my boys chose these bright blue-frosted store-bought cookies. They are suckers for sprinkles.

One show down, one to go at the end of the school year. I'm hoping for more ballet.