Either Kid can now read chapter books pretty fluently, or he has a photographic memory. Either one is kind of weird, but neither justifies why, once again, he was the last one through the school doors this morning. We careered to school, nearly took out a city bus and a cat (not really, but Kid believes it to be true), were temporarily blinded by the rising sun and the bits of frost on the window that I hadn't gotten in my frenzy of last-second scraping, and entered the alley in a cloud of gravel dust. He grabbed his backpack, scooted out of the back seat, blew me a kiss and took off running through the frozen field, shoes undone, jacket unzipped, arms and skinny legs flying in so many directions that it's nearly impossible to believe that he had a torso keeping them all together. Such fierce love for him as I have should surely be strong enough to get him to school on time so that he's not THAT Kid with THAT mom in THAT car. Every morning I seem to have a new excuse for the frenzy. This morning it happened to be that I discovered that Kid can read Jack Stalwart unassisted, so of course we had to read until I heard the school bell ringing 6 blocks away. Yesterday it was that I couldn't find a juice box for his snack. Tomorrow? Probably a rabbit will have been discovered in the laundry room along with a talking weasel.
And then I could be THAT mom with THAT talking weasel.