arf arf

we got a dog.

not a real dog, but a loaner from e's pre-school class. the teacher has a stuffed clifford dog that she sends home with each of the kids for a few days. e has been talking about clifford for weeks. when her teacher introduced the dog to the kids a few months back, e went to school hopeful every day. after a few weeks of still not getting a turn, her optimism turned to despair. each day she would tell me who the lucky soul was that had been granted possession of clifford and each day her heart would sink a little deeper. although i was sad for her, i knew this was a good real life lesson in patience. and sure enough, her patience paid off!

on tuesday she came bursting out the school doors carrying the coveted basket that contained clifford. she was beaming! as soon as we arrived home she went through the contents of the basket and showed me the ropes. clifford comes with a food bowl, bone, brush, two clifford story books, a towel, and a notebook. each caretaker is to fill out a page to put into the notebook before returning him to school. it was quite adorable. we read through the pages of the book and learned about all of clifford's exciting adventures. many of the entries even included pictures.

it just so happened that we had scheduled a play date in the city for one of the days we were taking care of clifford. and it just so happens that this particular friend (cayden) has a clifford lovie. e was so excited to bring clifford with her to the play date to show him off to cayden and cayden's clifford.

as we were leaving the city, e was showing clifford all of the sights that we pass on our way out of city. i happened to have my camera on the seat of the car, so we were able to get some drive-by photos of clifford by buckingham fountain and clifford by the sears tower. e was pretty excited to return clifford to school with her photos and was very proud of her accomplishment of having provided clifford with an exciting visit.

once upon a time i taught kindergarten. i did this same activity with my students and always loved reading the entries that each family sent back for the doggie notebook. but i must say, i never really knew how cool this was for each of my students. having seen it from the perspective of a mom was pretty amazing. e's quite young, but i think she might remember this one for years to come.