Mommyness

B (my oldest, who is 7) came home on Wednesday all excited. "Tomorrow is backwards day!" he told me. I was a little confused, because normally they do their spirit day things on Fridays. So I asked if he was sure. Of COURSE he was sure. Positive? Yep. Not on Friday? No, already! Ok.

So, Thursday morning we put on a button-up shirt backward and buttoned it up. He also wore his watch upside down and put his backpack on his front.

Thursday afternoon he came out of school with his shirt on right, looking all dejected. I immediately flashed to what it would have been like for me to get the wrong day and wear my clothes backward when I wasn't supposed to when I was in second grade. Oh, the mortification! I would have been praying all day for a hole to crawl into. It would have been horrible!

So I asked what was wrong, and he said he'd had a bad day. While he re-tied his shoes, I asked about the shirt. "Oh, it's not backward day today after all, so I turned it around," he said, casually.

"Is that why you had a bad day?" I asked. "Because you went in with your shirt backward on the wrong day?"

He gave me his patented are-you-on-something? look and said, "No. I just turned my shirt around. I had a bad day because I lost my Spiderman watch."

Oh, well, right then. Heh.

I am totally confused as to how two people who were painfully shy, dorky kids managed to produce a kid that honestly doesn't much care what anyone thinks and is naturally social. I'm going to take it as a sign that we're doing something right, though.

He's also shaping up to be a bit of a leader, which is slightly less surprising to me. He is the oldest child, after all. But the game of chase from last year (where three little girls chased him all recess long every day) has now turned into a giant game of capture the flag, minus the flag. The boys have their "castle" and the girls have their "fort" on opposite ends of the playground equipment, and they try to sneak over and capture each other's space.

"... so, then [girl] snuck into our castle, so we all had to slide down the slides and run away, but [boy] went and snuck into their fort so they all ran away too and we got our castle back. And then I gave out medals to people who were brave. I gave [boy] the sticker from my banana, too, as an extra reward. He's putting it in his roly-poly house."

"So, what, you're the leader of the boys' team or something?"

"Nah. I'm just the one with all of the ideas. It's because I read a lot of books, I think."

That he does. And our local library doesn't have a lot in his reading range, so I'm going to have to go buy some more soon. Yay for used bookstores and Barnes and Noble gift cards...

In other news, today is catch-up-on-housework day. Woo?