Noah's Big Project

Today is the last day of 2011 at Noah's Day Care.

Noah's ear infection is under control after 3 days of anti-biotics.  The morning traffic was so light that we made it in under 35 minutes door to door. Noah spent most of the ride reading his favorite book and giggling when he noticed the new pair of socks he was wearing today. He seemed to love the black and white checker pattern on them.

During the day, Noah's classroom teacher published an end of the year blog post, which sported quite a few photos with Noah in it.  The one i love the most was one of him sleeping side by side with two of his classmates. We've always wondered how he napped in class. Seeing him sleeping in the picture is immensely satisfying, even though we see him sleeping at home all the time. But this is different. He was content, resting, with his peers, away from home.  He is having his own life, separate from us. this picture suddenly made that concept real.

The napping picture reminded Grandma Aiqi of a different incident, which she told me over the phone.  During the first couple of weeks when Noah just started going to Day Care. He was often too excited to nap during the middle of the day. Once ZM went back to check on him during supposed nap time.  All the kids were sleeping on their little cot. The floor was almost filled with little sleeping toddlers. All the kids but Noah! he, for some reason, had his shirt off, bare chested, lolling around while two teachers sat nearby and watching him, making sure he won't disturbe the sleeping bunch. When ZM told me of the scene, he added his own humorous interpretation, "Noah looked like a little gangster hit men, checking on the aftermath of a battle."  We all laughed. Imaging bare chested Noah as a little gangster hit man...

Today, when i went to pick him up in the afternoon, most of the kids were playing in the toddler yard.  A teacher was blowing bubbles, Noah was so focused on the bubbles, that it took him a good 2 minutes before he noticing me standing directly opposite him, in the middle of the yard.

The little tricycle.

One of his classroom teachers told me that Noah, as if trying to make the most of the last day of the term, undertook a big project. He "collected" all the wooden tricycles from the entire yard, piled them all up, made quite an impressive display. It took him quite a long time to accomplish that.  There are usually a dozen or so such tricycles in the yard, often with a kid pushing it, pulling it, turning it upside down, or even riding it. I could imagine the kind of "persuasion" Noah had to exercise in order to collect all of them to make his project happen.

I'm impressed.  How did he get the idea? and where did he get the patience to see it through. That's quite something for a 17 months old.