Well, Zeeke is still making trouble at school. Each morning have him repeat the rules: "No hitting. No kicking. No biting. No spitting. Just be nice" and he seems sincere in his pledge. But the temptation to do wrong is strong. One day after school, Steve asked him if there'd been any timeouts and Zeeke declared, "I got time for hitting. I got timeout for biting. I got timeout for spitting. I'm nice!" Another day, when his teachers told him he had to stay in the timeout chair, he held the chair to his butt and walked over to where his friends were playing, still clutching the chair to his backside.
Friday, we arrived at school to find Zeeke's classmates all sitting calmly on the floor reading. Zeeke happily plopped himself down with them and accepted the book kindly handed to him by one of his friends. If we had just fled the scene without looking back. Instead, Steve turned and saw Zeeke roll the book up into a tube, stuff it into his mouth and start chewing. Sigh.
Because of schedule changes at the library, Steve now picks Zeeke up from school three nights a week. An unexpected side effect of that is a new Daddy fixation, somewhat reminiscent of his longstanding Mommy fixation. It's a nice change for Steve, but Karen's feeling left out some days. One morning she tried to snuggle with him and he told her, "No, go snuggle with Daddy!" He's very into where we all sit on the couch together. We each have assigned seats, which we're not allowed to change unless he decides to improvise and switch us around.
He's going through a very sensitive phase. He adores his stuffed lamb, often cradling it in his arms and telling us it's his baby, sometimes even stuffing in into shirt and telling us he's going to have a baby. One morning, Steve told him about a cat he'd heard crying outside during the night. Over the new two days, Zeeke asked about the cat a hundred times. "Is the sad kitty cat all right?" "Can we looks for the sad kitty cat?" "Is the sad kitty cat still crying?" "Can we help the sad kitty cat?"
During our weekend walks, we'd been pointing out all the pumpkins we'd seen. Steve bought him one, but Zeeke said it was a "Daddy pumpkin" and he wanted a "Zeeke pumpkin." Fortunately, during another walk, a chatty neighbor noticed Zeeke admiring her pumpkin and insisted we take it. We'll probably paint them next weekend.
Saturday, we went to his schoolmate Sofiya's costume birthday party. He had a blast, playing with all the kids and (of course) eating cake. Sunday, we went to lunch with Steve's parents.