Flashback

Last night we attended the parents' open house at Sam's new school. We spent an hour hearing all about the dropping off and picking up procedures, the inclement weather policies, and who to call when your kid inevitably comes down with the swine flu.

(In an unrelated but interesting development, one of the parents we met actually works at Sam's old school but has chosen to send her own child to the new school. Makes me feel pretty good about our decision to switch, huh?)

After some snacks, we were ushered to the individual classrooms to meet the teachers and hear a little more about the Montessori teaching principles. We sat in tiny chairs. Correction: everyone else sat in tiny chairs. My big preggo ass couldn't handle the tiny chairs, so I stood behind everyone else while they shifted uncomfortably in their tiny chairs.

After learning about the teachers and the program, we were encouraged to take a look around. As we assessed the different learning stations, SOB started having all of these deja vu moments. He would touch something and you could almost see the memories coming to him.

At one point, in the life skills area, SOB encountered a small dish of dried beans. As he ran his fingers through them, a silly grin came across his face. I instantly knew what he was thinking. One of the first stories his mother ever told me about his childhood involved a three year old SOB coming home from Montessori school sounding rather peculiar. All afternoon his mother asked him if he had a stuffy nose or something, but he said no time and time again. As the day wore on, his voice became more and more nasal sounding. Finally, after hours of pestering he admitted, in an uber-nasal voice, 'I put a bean in my nose.' The resulting trip to the ER involved SOB's mother sitting on him as a resident used some long ass tweezers to pluck the now rehydrated bean from somewhere deep in his little face.

It's now become a family tradition, the telling of this story, complete with SOB talking in the goofy three-year-old-with-a-bean-rehydrating-in-his-nose voice. As we both stood there counting beans, I think we were both hoping that Sam can create some lasting memories, too.

Only hopefully his won't involve the emergency room.