Last year, for Alec's first day of preschool, I stood him in front of the house with his little rolling backpack and he dutifully waited while I took several pictures suitable for framing. This year, he insisted on holding this random frog and then he kept making that goofy face that little boys make.
Soon after Tom and Alec got to preschool, Tom called to give me a heads-up that Doodle, the class rat, had died two days prior. (But I just SAW Doodle at the preschool board meeting; Doodle we hardly knew ye!) Alec has been asking a lot of questions about death, so we wanted to keep an eye on the Doodle bomb-drop. Alec is gradually becoming aware that higher and higher orders of animals die, ever since the death of his fish, Greenie, whom many months later he still starts to say goodbye to every time we leave the house. He'll say, "But lizards don't die. They grow a new tail and then a new head." He's up to, "But cats don't die."
When I got to the preschool at noon for the lunchy meetup, Alec was in circle time sweating in a tiger suit and loving it.
