Coloring With the Big Dogs

Fans, those of you who have been with us when we were Adventures With Joe will perhaps recall Joe's beloved Ms. Nicholle (who really did spell her name that way). Ms. Nicholle was one of the teachers in Joe's toddler room with whom he had the greatest of love affairs, and who wrote daily doings reports with a daily immediacy and heart that has yet to be equalled.

The reports of Birdie's daily doings, for example, are usually written in a kind of "just-the-facts-ma'am" format, with much made of what the class as a whole did, and little mention of how Clara figured in the milieu.

So it was exciting to read today's report about Birdie's day:

"Today I. . .had a very good day! Clara was so happy to be outside today. Her [sic] and her friend Lucas had fun going down the slide together and crawling under it too! At group time we learned about Earth. We read 'I Love My Earth.' We also used our number chart to count from 1 to 10. Then Clara colored a picture of Earth using a blue and green crayon. She loves to color!"

See?! So many revealing details! As to this last, we can report to you via our stringer in the field on Monday (a really great guy named Ted), that Clara does indeed love to color. Ted reported that when he arrived at school that evening with Clara to collect Joe, Clara was sort of hanging out by the door for a bit. Some of Joe's classmates ("the big kids") were coloring at a table. It wasn't long before Clara made her move. Ted said she walked over and sat herself down all, "I know what to do here, thanks." (He also reported that naturally all the big kids had to sort of sniff around and mark her paper. Big kids? Big dogs?)