Mother's Day Tea

This past Tuesday, Nathan had a Mother's Day Tea at his preschool.  When we realized that morning that I would be coming to his class that day for a party, he got SO excited!  Then when Sarah and I showed up at his classroom at 10:30, he was almost bouncing off the walls with happiness!  The first order of business was for him to paint my hand and help me make a handprint.  I let him pick the color of paint (blue) then he very carefully, but very proudly, painted my hand and then directed me on how to place it on the paper, smooshing my hand down with his to make sure we got a good print.  While this was going on, Mrs. Holly did a handprint for Sarah, who cooperated excellently!

Next was circle time, where Mrs. Holly read a cute book about an elephant calf and his mommy, but most of the kids were way too excited about their special guests to sit still and listen to the story.  Sarah was pretty funny in that she kept standing right in front of the book so she could get a good look at the pictures, of course not realizing that she was blocking everyone's view! 

The next activity was the highlight of the morning - the kids performed their special "dance" that they had been practicing for weeks.  Mrs. Holly had already told me that Nathan knew the whole dance, so I was eager to see how he would do with performing.  Though he did get a little distracted by some new friends in class (the MWF kids joined the T/Th kids for the party), you can tell he really knows what's going on!



After that there was another song, something about a hot dog, where I started recording, but then the Moms were supposed to go dance with our kids, so I shut off the camera and did that instead!

Next we went into another room for some more activities and treats.  Unfortunately this is where the event kind of devolved for our family because Nathan got sullen and didn't want to cooperate with any of the remaining activities.  Even when his favorite Mrs. Amy, the music teacher, came in to do some songs, he just didn't want to participate.  She even mentioned that Nathan's the one who always asks to do a song/rhyme called "Alligator Pie", but he didn't want to join in that day.

I think the reason that Nathan was acting out was two-fold.  One was that he likes his day to unfold like he is expecting, and I don't think he realized how different his day at preschool would be because of the party.  And the other is that I think he was still going through an adjustment period after I had been gone to Boston - he gave me lots of trouble on Monday and Tuesday morning, just testing, testing, pushing boundaries, defiance, lots of screaming and time outs - yuck!  But thankfully after nap on Tuesday his attitude was much improved and the rest of the week has been back to our normal. Anyways, not to dwell on the bad, but this definitely reminded me of this strong side of his personality that can usually be kept in check, but is definitely part of his nature.

So overall I'm going to remember best the glowing look of pride as he painted my hand and directed me in making my hand print (he came home on Thursday with a cutout of his handprint on top of mine and Sarah's pasted to the side - definitely keeping that school artwork!) and the fun dances that he was so excited about.  Thanks Nathan for a sweet Mother's Day memory!