My New Favorite Title.

Last week it was eighteen first graders in Bergen’s Class.

This week it was seventeen four-year-old’s in Willow’s co-op class.

The day was long but it was really oh-so-sweet.

What a privilege it was to watch my child interact with her tiny peers.  To see her serve as the helper and offer all of her classmates a squirt of hand sanitizer as they headed to lunch.

To eat lunch with her at the same table and to feel her wee little hand pat my hand as I walked by her seat.

I was the helper, of course, so my task was to help.

To help paint seventeen small hands with black paint and then supervise the placing of seventeen hands on sheets of paper as well as the subsequent washing of seventeen hands at one sink.

To help craft together an angel out of several shapes cut from construction paper and tissue and pipe cleaners.

(Have I ever mentioned that I seldom do kid crafts of this style in the School of Keigley?)

To help open seventeen capri-suns, lunch boxes, broken zippers, string cheeses and lunchable containers.

I keep being fascinated with the lunches moms pack their kids.  One adorable four-year-old opened her Little Mermaid sack to pull out a bratwurst wrapped in a homemade pita slathered with some type of sauce and hammer that puppy down while every other four-year-old was chowing on turkey or crackers or bologna.  I think I had packed our kids cold quesadillas that day.  My lunch was nothing compared to the bratwurst mom, I’ll tell you that.

During lunch, one little man seated beside me tapped my arm.  Between bites of unnaturally colored yogurt, he asked, “Did you know that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings?”

(This is also the same young fellow who asked me, mid-black-hand-painting-project, “Is my hand so cute and little because I’m the baby of my family?”)

But one thing stands out as my absolute favorite part of being the helper today in the pre-K class.

It was the way the other children addressed me.

For the entire length of the day ,

whenever the kids needed my attention,

they said,

“Hey, Mrs. Willow’s Mommy.”