First day of... school

Benjamin started preschool on Monday. He'll be going 3 days a week. He LOVES it—particularly the playground.

I'll try to post more about it later (and add one of the not-so-great first-day-of-school pictures I took), but for now here is what his first "What I did Today" sheet said:

I ate turkey and cheese, grapes, peppers, and corn. 
[Note from Maman who packed the lunch: It wasn't corn. It was chickpeas.]

I ate graham crackers.

Other drinks/snacks I ate today were: water, juice, milk

[I'll skip the diaper info.]

At naptime I slept from 12:55 until 2:28. Notes about naptime: good nap.

Today I had fun when we:

• Had fun making a key chain.
  
• Practice[d] the planets and states.
  
• Story time
  
• Spanish time
  
• Played outside
  
• Trace[d] the letter "O."
  
• French time
  
• Bubble time
  

2yo checkup

We had a very rough July, beginning with each of us taking a turn being the sickest we've been in many years (which for Benjamin means the sickest he's ever been, period) (and, I just learned, the sickest Nathalie has ever been, too) as we passed a bug from mother to son to father and on to the neighbors ...

And once we were all healthy again, we could focus on the fact that our beloved Lutèce was not.

There was some other awfulness, too, which I won't burden you with, but the upshot is that all of that is now behind us, and we marked that improvement with a very positive pediatric checkup.

After examining Benjamin, Dr. W told him, "You're perfect."

He is. He's also

• 36.5 " tall
• 27 lb 6 oz

and still 50th percentile for weight and 90th for height, as he has been for most of his 2 years.

The nurse measured him at 37 inches long, lying down, but when Nathalie was out-loud shocked by that number, the nurse measured again and said, "Well, maybe 36 and a half..."

Nathalie said, "I guess he was tall enough to ride that merry-go-round after all." She'll have to explain to you what she was referring to. I didn't ask. (I laughed, but I didn't seek details.)

In addition to Benjamin being tall and lean and healthy, he also didn't cry (!)* at his one vaccine shot, said goodbye to doctor and nurse (although it was to the nurse that he said, "Goodbye Dr Wisman"), and told his mother the next day that he wanted to go back to see the doctor again.

There are other big changes coming up, but I'll let Nathalie blog about those — and I'll pressure her to put up some of the great photos of the boy that are still sitting on her digital camera.

- proud papa

* I keep a copy of the "Le Papa Pingouin" French music video on my iPhone for "emergencies" when we're out and Benjamin needs extreme distraction. It succeeded in distracting him before, not-quite-during, and immediately after his shot. I highly recommend this newly discovered strategy.