I have personally had an amazing fall, and one of the reasons is because it’s felt so nice and long.  Some years fall feels like three days and then we’re stuck inside for several months, but this year … wow.  The colors are more beautiful than ever and we keep getting these gorgeous days.  I’m torn between loving every second of it and mourning that it’s going to end one of these days. 

In the meantime, I have a whole bunch of Huck tidbits to share.  A few weeks ago he climbed into bed to wake me up at 7:00 with the announcement, “Only 212 more days till Pentecost!”  That’s not really a sentence a non-morning person like me wants to hear first thing.  Then a few days ago I was commenting on all the Christmas decorations going up and wondering why there’s no turkeys anywhere when he said, “They don’t go all out for Thanksgiving like they do for Halloween, Christmas and Pentecost.”  I do not think Pentecost is what Huck thinks it is.

His school has Town Meeting every Wednesday morning where all the teachers and students gather to show their work, share announcements, sing songs and dance.  Never in a million years did I expect Huck would be comfortable enough to share something in front of the whole school any time soon, but last week he did.  According to my spy (Troy), Huck stood there and waited patiently until it was finally his turn to speak into the microphone and told every single adult and child in the room that he spent the weekend in the Poconos for his friend’s birthday.  Can you imagine speaking in front of your whole school at age five?   I would have thrown up.   But almost all the kindergarteners do it.  Kids these days.

Recently I was in the classroom helping his teacher Marilyn with some paperwork during “work time.”  I heard Huck say to his “girlfriend”  Oriana over in the Dramatic Play section of the classroom, “No, no, babies come out HEAD first,” and when I whipped around my head to see what was going on I saw her standing there with a little baby doll under her shirt.  His girlfriend. My grandchild. Maybe I shouldn’t volunteer in the classroom too much.  A few days later we had our family conference where we talked with Marilyn about how the year has gone so far and what each of our goals are for Huck over the next few months.  Huck’s goal, which he had written down, was to learn to count by 14s.  This made me smile for the rest of the day as I silently wished his teacher luck.

Huck loves to practice his brand new skills by reading signs wherever we go.  His technique is to sound out the word and kind of guess at what it might be, so I’m constantly getting tickled by him saying something like, “Free chickens?” while reading a subway bank ad for free checking.  He got a hold of some old scripts of the play Troy and I are writing and asked if he could have them.  He highlighted various lines and told me how they should be said (practicing his drama class skills), and then he surprised me by making a Playbill for us, which we’ll probably use as our poster one day. 

And lastly, Troy or I always say a little prayer before dinner, and the other evening Huck insisted that he say it.  After a very brisk and robotic “thank you for this food,” he explained that the reason he wanted to say the prayer is because he keeps them nice and short “like I like them.”  The other night his prayer got a little more detailed as he said, “Thank you for this food and for my Mommy and Daddy.  (Pause)  Mostly Mommy.”

Aw shucks.