I Love You Like Circles: December 2006

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together. ~ Robert Fulghum ~

Monday, December 4, 2006

Jingle Bells

I am not sure if this is an appropriate story for a blog and I am quite sure Jack will not appreciate it one day, but anyway it is too hilarious to keep a secret. We were riding in the car Sunday and Jack reports from the backseat that his "hiney is talking." To be polite, I asked him what it was saying and he happily reported...... "Jingle Bells!"

The nativity crisis

Last week I picked Anna up from school and a teacher had made the children a nativity scene from felt with lots of pieces! I asked her not to take all the pieces out until we got home so that nothing would get lost. Well.... the pieces mysteriously jumped out of the bag, as nativity pieces tend to do, and Baby Jesus was lost. Hysteria set in from the rear seat. Anna knew we were taking the car to the car wash and she said, "We can't take the car to the car wash, they will vacuum up Baby Jesus!" Everyone can relax because we did find him and now the nativity is hanging safely on her closet door.