But I remember these days like they were yesterday.
On 2/26, I dropped off my brother at basketball practice and went on to the Y at 9 am. I went in and there were a steady stream of children coming in. The worst part... they were all the age of six or under, but it wasn't unbearable. I had walked in from the back room and a little boy came up to me and said, "Wanna see my bruise?!" and I said, "Sure. What did you do?" So as he was rolling up his sleeve he told me that he fell during recess. It did look pretty bad. He asked if I had recess and I said, "No." He exclaimed, "WHAT?! NO RECESS? I can't live without recess." And I only laughed, I think I use to feel that way.
I met two new women in the nursery. They were nice and way better at storytelling than me. One of them offered if I wanted to do a craft with the older kids. That was something I was willing to do. I went upstairs to the supervisor's loft and grabbed some construction paper, animal cut-outs, and wiggly eyes. I came back and set the craft stuff on a table and one of the janitors said sarcastically, "I wanna color!" I went back into the nursery and said I was ready. Three kids came out and I knew I could watch three and make sure that they weren't going to do anything crazy with the scissors or eat glue. Suddenly, a family signed in their two sons and daughter and they rushed to the table. I looked at them and went, "Uh-oh." The girl grabbed a frog cut-out and asked, "Can I do this one?" I said why not with a little trepidation, thinking that watching six kids will be difficult. There was one boy in particular that didn't understand the concept that the glue went on his paper and not on his hands. I asked the boy to go wash his hands and he said, "No, I like peeling it off my hands." I said okay. I took my attention from him onto another boy who seemed to like glue.. and I mean ALOT of glue. I asked him, "Do you need all that glue?" He replied, "I don't think so, but I want to make sure that it will stay on the paper forever." I looked at his area of the table and there was glue and marker everywhere. His paper was soaked with glue and there was no way it was going to dry. I set it on the ledge so he could take it home. He asked me, "Do you think I have enough glue?" I said, "Yeah, you have more than enough," and he said, "Okay, can I go back in the nursery?" And I was more than glad to say yes. The girls were well behaved during the craft. I was happy.
I went to go find the cleaning solution and when I came back one of the mother's picking up their child asked, "Did they have fun?" looking at the mess all over the table, and I said, "I believe they did." Your son did three (which included the glue-y mess).
After I cleaned up the next hour and a half went smoothly. I began to learn the difficulty of trying to disinfect EVERY SINGLE TOY (easily over 400 including pieces) and kids still wanting to play with them. I was in the middle of cleaning the "Superhero/Action Figures" and a little boy took three of them. One ended up in his mouth and the other two he sneezed on. I was thinking Great. Most of the kids though were distracted by Finding Nemo. I always thought that the first ten minutes was sad because Coral (Nemo's mom) was killed and all Marlin (Nemo's dad) wanted to do was to protect Nemo from anything bad. Their was a girl who was probably three or four and after Coral dies and the screen goes black, she asked, "What happened to the mommy?" I thought, what should I tell her and before I could phrase it nicely, a boy who was six said, "She DIED!!!" I looked at the boy and said, "You didn't have to say it like that." The girl kind of shrieked in terror and she asked, "Is it true?" and I said, "Yes." She said, "That's sad," and I nodded my head.
It was time to go. I was already looking forward to the next time. The craft was fun and it was more personal time with them and their friends and me.
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