Aspirations

Jude: "Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a hero."
Me: "Oh, that's so nice, Jude!"
Eli: "Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a... (thinking)...a... monster."

This past week was the first week of the preschool year and Eli's very first day of school. It's amazing how different Jude and Eli are. In almost every single way. Jude loves his dad. Eli loves his mom. Jude hates bedtime. Eli will tell us that he wants to go "night-night". Jude loves meat. Eli prefers veggies. And since Jude has never given us a problem when we've dropped him off at school, I was fully expecting a meltdown of epic proportion on Eli's first day. But on the way to school Eli told Kwang, "Daddy, I'm not gonna cry there." And he didn't cry when Kwang dropped him off but he did look as if something had rocked his world. The first thing he said to my mother-in-law when he came home was, "I missed you, Hamonee!" That night he ran a fever and, I kid you not, we all thought the cause may have been stress from having gone to school. Turns out, he came down with hand, foot, and mouth disease. Poor guy.

Kwang thinks it's good for Eli to go to school so he can socialize with peers and participate in different activities that can't be provided at home. If I weren't working, I would probably want to wait a year before putting him in. I mean, he's already learned so much at home:

Close, Eli. Very close. And also very cute.

It recently dawned on me that I finally have a child whose hair I'll be able to style. This was such an exciting revelation that I took out a baby brush and feathered Audrey's peach fuzz:

I guess this is what having two boys has done to me. And I have a feeling that expression on Audrey's face is the same look she is going to give me the day I'll want to break out the John Hughes movies to show her the classic teeny bopper romances I loved to watch growing up. Pretty In Pink... Some Kind of Wonderful... They just don't make them like these anymore.