This morning I took Henry with me to get the oil changed while Eleanor was napping at home with Chela. I brought Henry's tricycle b/c the place I like to go to is in a residential neighborhood with sidewalks and lots of trees and old houses with petite porches. I really love that part of Hyde Park -- but it's also where a lot of students live. I was following Henry and feeling nostalgic for Europe b/c, well, it smelled like Europe. I couldn't put my finger on it. And then I did. Car exhaust, beer and urine, mixed with birds chirping, flowers, early morning sunshine, and coffee.
After Henry collected all the rotten, ant riddled fruit from various trees and placed them in his basket, we headed back to the lube place. Austin is great. Probably the only city that has a hip lube joint attached to a coffee shop. There was an older guy reading the paper and playing with his white braided beard and just looking so late 1960's and a 20-ish girl chain smoking and reading something impressive, while Henry rode around in circles.
Friday was the last day of school for Henry, however, he is in the summer camp at his school. He's with all his same friends but has new teachers. I was worried he might freak out b/c he LOVED Miss Ashley and Miss Maggie and has had them since he was 20 months old. But he walked in the new room and was excited to see all his friends and didn't seem to mind he was in a different room with two new teachers (well, old...Ms. Rosemary is probably in her 60's and has been teaching at St. George's for 30 something years. She's English and rides her bike to school). Henry's old teachers made him a "diploma" of sorts. It listed all of his major milestones over the last year, but they were more like Henry-isms. It listed his period of time when he walked into the room and acted like a lion and noted the period of time when he would point out the images on his Tshirts to all his friends ("Look Harper, I have a truck on my shirt"). I got sorta teary about how well the teachers knew my boy and had picked up on all his isms.
Today when I was leaving to come to work, Eleanor was a bit fussy and even though she'd only been awake since her last nap about an hour and a half, I felt like she was sleepy. Chela was sure she was hungry and frantically got everything ready to feed her. I had this panicked moment of "Oh God does Chela know my daughter better than me?" and then E rubbed her eyes, threw the spoon and I exhaled.
And last but not least, Grandma Paula was here this weekend. She was complimentary of our parenting and told us how she would never tell us how to parent but that it would be nice to hear Henry say Please and Thank You. Which, he does, but it's not consistent and we don't make a fuss about it. But I had a talk with him and told him that it makes adults really happy when you tell them Please and Thank You and now he's doing it every single time (we'll see how long this lasts) but I gotta say, when he's bossing me around but saying Please, it does make me feel less annoyed and it does make me happy:-)
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