Sweetheart Snack

At the start of this month, we got the month's calendar from Joe and Clara's school, and learned that today, in honor of Valentine's Day, parents were welcome to join their children for "sweetheart snack." Julie has been excited for this event for at least a week, if not longer. Having picked Joe and Clara up for a number of doctor's appointments at the tail end of snack time, she was curious to see how this would go down. As one might imagine, snack time in the infant room is sort of a messy affair of smashed Nilla wafers and the like with two infants in high chairs, older infants at the little table, others ambling about, all be-crumbed. In the toddler and "twos" rooms, it is not uncommon to walk in to snack time and find all of the children totally silent as they munch and sip away. So Julie wondered, should she have conversational gambits in her back pocket? (As it turns out, no.)

Julie thought that "sweetheart snack" might be best shared in a room where she wouldn't be more of a nuisance than anything else, so she told Miss Maneesha this morning at drop off that she'd be back to share snack with Joe. When Julie arrived at the appointed time, she found Joe and five of his companions waiting for "Joe's mom" and "Julie" to have cookies. Julie was THRILLED to see they were the frosting covered sugar cookies from Target.* Less thrilling was the fact that the milk was whole milk. (You can't have everything.)

So Julie sidled up to the table and was instantly engaged in conversation. Of the five other kids, Julie knew three of their names. Sadly, for the purposes of this post, the opening sally came from Unknown Name Girl, who noted that Julie was wearing a heart! Unknown Name Girl also had a heart on her shirt. So did Suzy, and Nina. Sophie did not, but she was wearing penguins and had a bear on her butt (true) and was wearing underpants (also true, Sophie showed them to Julie).** Then, Julie learned that napkins are unfolded into big squares at snack time, and that we wait with our hands in our laps until all our friends have snacks and drinks before we begin. Very civilized. When we're done, we wash our hands and look at our faces in the mirror to make sure our faces are also clean. After snack, we play! Joe made Julie bacon, and got Sophie the coffee Sophie requested. Sophie wanted Julie to put a dress on her. Sophie could do the zipper herself though (Joe told her "You got it."). Julie also spied a choo-choo train on the floor with different colored cars, each an 8" x 10" piece of paper, with matching cars to place on top. So this is why Joe can often be found lining things up in a row on the floor, and making matches if he can! (For example, he recently got a hold of some pictures and was laying them down on the floor in a row and trying to match them up. He does this with all kinds of things not infrequently.) Fascinating.

It's safe to say that having this glimpse into Joe and Clara's mostly secret world was a total kick. Julie is already hoping there is a "shamrock snack" next month.

*They are almost as good at the Jewel-Osco version that she used to love getting in Chicago.

**Sophie called Julie by Julie's first name the entire time, in a charmingly precocious way.