Recital

Chick w/ Gun 2, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Brenden has this school thing last night - I guess they call those 'recitals' - where he got dressed up as an angel with all the other 3 year olds and he sat there on stage looking three ways of bored and doing a little gold-mining. Since his preschool is at a Methodist church the recital was all about Jesus' birthday (not complaining, just saying). Most of the music was your basic pre-recorded feel-good kid's choir stuff, with the kids shouting along with the parts they remembered. The whole thing was basically what you would imagine a recital featuring 2-4 year old children to be like, and totally amusing for us parents.

I spent the recital wondering if Brenden would get into trouble with any of the kids up on stage with him later in life - will he ever get busted by the cops for drinking beer at the park (I did - I was with friends at Stone Mountain. Hey, it was the 70's so the cop just confiscated our case and sent us home)? Would he be dating any of those girls up there with him? One pretty girl next to him was the only angel with wings - she sang and danced to all of the numbers. I bet she practiced all the songs at home the entire previous week. Sometimes I think God did me a favor by giving me a boy.

Sometimes I don't: Brenden kept losing his halo, and on one occasion during the singing he was pantomiming loading, cocking, and shooting his finger. This is 2008 but fortunately this is also Alabama, so no one had my son escorted to a waiting police car on charges of terroristic threats. Brenden loves guns, but I have a tough time thinking he needs to be cured of that (see above photo).

I'm ashamed to say last night was the first time Jon and I met Brenden's teachers. I'm going to try to make it to some of Brenden's school activities next year if I can stay away from blowing all my vacation / sick time on things like surgery. I'd really like to hear what the teachers have to say about Brenden without the information being filtered through his baby sitter.

Back at home later that night, Jon was busy in the bathroom and ignored Brenden when B barged in on him. Then Jon looked up and noticed that B was holding one of his disposable razors in one fist and had a shocked look on his face. Then blood started running down Brenden's chin while he cried and howled.

He ran and got blood all over me, and I managed to get him cleaned up enough to see that he had shaved a thin line of skin off the lower part of his lower lip. I gave him a washcloth soaked in ice water and he stuck it on his lip and snivelled for a good hour while sitting on my lap.

He woke up a couple of times crying (I know kid, razor cuts can smart) so I didn't get much sleep last night. His lip will be fine of course but I suspect he will do a lot more whining as today wears on. Note to myself: no ketchup tonight!

I was also not amused by the non-snow event. We were promised 1-3" of snow and I saw nary a snowflake. We haven't had a good snow since Dec 31 - Jan 1 of 2001. I remember that one because it started snowing 10 minutes before midnight. I remember the time because I was on the ground at a bonfire waiting for a planeload of skydivers to jump at the start of the new year. When the plane took off I could see the moon, and then the moon got a little hazy, and by the time they jumped the moon had disappeared and big, fat flakes of snow were drifting down. Despite the decided lack of visibility, every jumper made it back safe. So did the airplane. Jon taught me how to drive in the snow the next day.