Collard Greens!

We still have a lot of Halloween candy left, because I dole it out slowly--a couple of pieces a day. I'm actually considering stashing some away for his Christmas stocking...Our neighborhood apparently takes Halloween very seriously, as evidenced by the ridiculous pile of loot he received from 20 minutes of trick-or-treating.

But I digress.

The boy is star-of-the-week at school this week, which means that I was asked to pull together something starry, like family pictures, for the wall. Does anyone have printed pictures just lying around the house any more? Of course, they sent the letter home last Friday, and because I just threw the pile of papers in the back of my car, I didn't notice it until Sunday night. Bah.

Dear Preschool,

If I had time to pull something starry together, I wouldn't be paying you to take care of my child all day.

Sincerely,
Works-too-much

Seriously, though, I was excited about this, but disappointed because we could have discussed this ALL WEEKEND if I'd actually looked at the stuff they sent home on Friday. We could have made a PLAN and he could have helped me pick out pictures and it would have been nice quality time for us.

I found a few pictures and asked the boy to pick out three favorite books for show-and-tell.

I picked him up from school Monday afternoon, and he was excited that Teacher V. had read his books to the WHOLE CLASS and Teacher V. wanted to know where I got one of the books so she could get it for the classroom.

I asked boy what he wanted to take for show-and-tell on Wednesday. He wanted to take Eddy, our iguana. I explained that we couldn't do that, and suggested that he take in a picture of Eddy, along with a bag of collard greens to show the class what she eats. He was excited about this idea.

Tuesday night, I printed a picture of Eddy and put some collard greens in a bag and told the boy that everything was ready for school. I had been talking with him all day about what Eddy eats so that he would remember that the leaves are called collard greens.

I asked boy if he would like one of his Halloween candies since he had finished dinner and it was almost shower time (he prefers showers to baths). He sifted through the bowl, and said what is this? while holding up a pack of RAINBOW!!! Twizzlers (I would have been much more excited about Twizzlers as a child had they come in multiple colors).

I said, those are Twizzlers.

No, they are not. They are like the bad guy in Candy Land.

Any Candy Land experts out there? No? Well, lucky for you--I AM. I am an expert in Candy Land because I have been forced lucky enough to play it over and over and over again. For those of you who may not be such experts, when you land on a licorice space, you get stuck for a turn.

Oh, they are licorice! You're right--they ARE like Candy Land.

Of course, this meant that we had to play a game of Candy Land before he went to the shower. We played the game. He beat me, and I noticed he had one Twizzler left. I told him to eat his Twizzler because it was shower time. It was a green twizzler.

He picked it up, held it up in the air like a sword, and said,

Dun-duh-na! (bugle horn sound). This is green! It is a COLLARD green!

And then he giggled like crazy at his own joke. Just like mommy does. Just like mommy's daddy does. It runs in the family, and if you don't find it as funny as we do, we'll gladly repeat it twice more so that you are given additional opportunities to laugh at us...

I kind of like having boy around. A mirror.