Look Before You Leap ... Or Sit.

At School:
- One of my elves fell off the swing today at recess, so she sat recovering on the steps with one of the teachers. Another elf got curious when he saw her crying, and came over to investigate. I watched closely since one of the preschool standards for social relations is comforting another child. I watched as he went to sit down next to her, and he reached out, and I thought he was holding her hand ... and then he took an electronic hand-held toy out of her hands and started pushing buttons. Psych! I gave him a quick noise of disapproval and he returned the device. But without my prompting, he ran inside and brought the crying elf a tissue. I think that can count as being comforting :)
- At snack, one of my elves wanted to sit at the head of the table (like where dad sits on Thanksgiving). She had set her snack there and pulled a chair up. Some quick calculating on my part told me that she would only end up kicking the legs of the elves sitting at the long sides of the table. I told her the table was too small and she needed to choose a place on the side and not the head. I moved her chair back to it's original position and walked away. I turned around just in time to see that she hadn't paid any attention, and a good 30 seconds after I had moved the chair, she finally tried to sit down. Ker-plop! She took it gracefully though, stood up, curtsied for her giggling classmates and moved her snack to the place where I had asked her to sit.
- Back to the swings at recess time, I have an elf who gets very excited when he asks me to give him a push. He holds onto both chains and kinda jumps up as he yells, "Help please Ms. L!" and falls back into the seat of the swing. Another elf took the initiative to help push as I was on the opposite side fo the playground. Said elf grabbed the seat of the swing and pulled back in order to push, just as the excited elf had jumped up. And as you may envision in your minds eye there was another Ker-plop! This time, not taken so gracefully.
- This week, it's been really hot, and my elves have had some very specific habits. One just snuggles with me. One copies everything. And one counts everything. The snuggling elf came to sit by me at recess and just laid his head on my lap. The copying elf saw this, and came to also lay his head on my lap. The counting elf came over, counted something on the copying elf's face, and announced to me, "Four!". "Four what?" I asked. Then he pointed to the copying elf's face. Four sweat beads dribbling down his face. EWWWWWW. Gross, Get off!! One more thing I can add to the list of bodily fluids that I won't have to deal with next year.

Pictures:
First, our camping trip was cancelled due to fog ... so we had a beach day instead. This place just had a bunch of grills set up, they brought you coals, you buy the raw food, and then cook it yourselves. Yum!

Cooking the food.

Smiling. Erock, Dana, Me, Riri, Audrey.

Right on the beach.

The following weekend I visited a water village. It's supposedly an old village, but really it was just converted into a touristy destination. The actual town folk live in the surrounding city, so all of these buildings are now just shops and restaurants for visitors. Still quite pretty though.

Xi Tang

Just to prove I was there. No google images :)