We had quite a fun day. Sarit, mom of Lillian in Tani's Gesher class organized a morning outing at The Little Treehouse in Chestnut Hill. It has an area where kids can play while parents drink coffee and visit. This was a chance for me to see how Tani interacts with his classmates. There was a train area that drew Tani's attention immediately. He could have played there for hours but of course some of his classmates wanted to play with the trains too and the anti-sharing instincts of young preschoolers kicked in: grabbing, shouting "mine", crying --- anything to get a few more coveted trains even if Tani had 4-6 trains already. Melissa was good at encouraging him to share and helped diffuse a couple of incidents. We want Tani to be able to learn to share without adult intervention - to ask for what he wants of his peers but also to share and be generous. I think there was at least 20 minutes where Tani and two of his classmates played together in harmony. Afterwards we went to the Little Shop at Germantown Jewish Centre to look for a menorah and dreidel for Tani. Tani has been reading "My First Hanukkah Board Book" and wanted the blue menorah and dreidel with a face and hat that he had seen in the pages. While we were looking Tani found a wooden toy school bus with magnetic passengers, i.e. they didn't slide around on the bus. That way Tani could move the passengers on & off the bus and they don't slide around the bus when it was moving. He played and played and did not want to part with it. So we asked him if that was what he wanted for Hanukkah and he said "yes". We left GJC and made a quick stop at the co-op for bagels. Then Melissa decided it would be good to head downtown to Chinatown to pick up Tani's backpack full of trains that we accidently left at a Chinese restaurant when we stopped for dinner last Monday on the way home from DC. After retrieving them we headed for the art museum - Melissa had heard about a "Tours for Toddlers" program where kids would get a tour of the Art Museum. We parked and were walking to the museum, but Tani was having too much fun running around the fountains, up the museum steps, around the stone pylons on the landings. Once we got in the museum, no one had heard of the "Tours for Toddlers" and Tani didn't seem in the mood for looking at art but rather for playing with his school bus which he insisted on taking to the museum. So we went back down the stairs with lots of running on the landings on the way down and then running on the sidewalks and around the fountains. We had hoped he'd take a nap on the way home but he didn't. Once home, Melissa was able to convince him to take a shower - we have a hard time getting him to take his once-a-week bath/shower. His curls are gorgeous after he washes his hair.
Then after looking at some short home movies of Tani as a baby it was time to head out to dinner with Manel & Jordi and Debrah & Levana. We went to a pizza restaurant in Mt. Airy. Tani almost fell asleep on the drive over - we encouraged Tani not to fall asleep and he shouted "I'm not sleeping". We laughed and he got mad at us. It was very funny since he was dropping off to sleep as he shouted he wasn't sleeping but we understand that it's still not nice to laugh. At the restaurant Tani ate whole wheat cheese pizza - I was surprised he liked it so much. It was nice to catch up with Jordi and Manel after Manel's senior recital the night before. Jordi made sure that Tani didn't escape out of the restaurant after he was finished eating - he'd pick him up and tickle him. Finally I told Tani he could go out, but then he just wanted to come right back inside. The temperature has been around freezing since yesterday's snowstorm, while on Friday it was ~60 deg. After we got home Melissa did the bedtime rituals - PJs, brush teeth, a book or two, talk about his day, and then lights out. He asked Melissa to sing him a long Hebrew song and he was out before the song was over. A very nice Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment