Stay Cool

Today Kiernan received his yearbook, on this his last Wednesday of First Grade. He came running out of the classroom to greet me and his friend Oliver poked his head out the door and yelled, "Kiernan! Miss White wants to see you!"

Kiernan went running back in and emerged a few moments later with his yearbook. I promptly put it in his backpack and he asked if we could go play at the play structure, which is something we let him do almost every day for a short period of time. It's good to blow off a little steam after school.

We headed over to the play area and he pulled out his yearbook and started reading it. In no time at all he was joined by friends, the kids he plays with after school most days.

I pulled out the book I'm currently reading, and tried to get a few pages turned. I found that I couldn't. What he was doing was too interesting. So I got a couple pictures and listened as surreptitiously as I could.

Little things like this are so great to me. Won't make much sense to most people, but they just tickle me. He was going through the yearbook, page by page, methodically. One of his friends wanted him to jump to the pages for their four classes of first graders. Kiernan didn't. Instead he went page by page. "These are the eighth graders he said," studying the page. He noticed a familiar face. "She's been in our class before!"

How to explain why this tickles me so? I have this thing about delayed gratification. I understand getting your yearbook and jumping to the index, finding your name and looking up the page numbers. I get that. But I prefer the anticipation of going through the book page by page. Wondering if you'll see yourself, or someone you know. He was taking his time. Finding the older siblings of his friends on the playground and calling them over. "Jennifer! I found your brother! Come look!" "Jaden! Here's your brother!" Remarking about various teachers he knew and kids he'd seen here and there.

Eventually he got to his class, and was excited about a candid picture of himself with a couple of his friends from another classroom. I just loved watching the process. The way he took his time.