Candsassles

I spent yesterday following Henry around a sunny beach while he sat, chest-deep, in low tide while giggling at clumpy wet sand sticking to his hands and attempted to confiscate other children's sand toys from beside carefully built castles. When the tide came in, his cousins and friends attempted to keep the water out. They dug a hole and used the sand to build a squat wall, barracaded by newly-bought boogie boards. One girl laid down in the water and held out her arms against a wave, shouting to her friends, "I can't hold it off!" in desperate panic. They scrambled and shoveled and shouted orders and updates at each other. Henry ran around dumping out their buckets and pushing over the rainbow-colored boards. He fell asleep in the car before it was even out of the parking lot.

Yesterday felt like long, prosey paragraphs, even while it was happening. Today was more like snippets of action.

Today:

• Henry greeted the girls with: "nǐ hǎo" (pronounced knee-how).
• I was quickly trained on how to drive the 14-passenger bus and am now an authorized driver for MCI.
• We organized three trips to Walmart and the students shopped like next week was Armageddon rather than the start of school.
• A girl brought us presents from China and then told me she had bad news for me, following with, "I was so excited to give you these things that I locked my keys in my room."
• A 17-year-old girl asked me why she couldn't go spend the weekend with a 24-year-old boy in Portland. (She wouldn't tell me his actual age, saying it was "a secret" but that's my best guess)
• A girl asked me to switch roommates and I had to explain why we didn't put her with her best friend.
• The godmother of the Brazlian girl scratched Darby's chin through the rip in our screen door, the rip caused by Henry's tiny fingers and big head.
• The cafeteria used their two-day old cookies to make ice cream sandwiches.
• A co-worker and I decided to go to Oliver Garden tomorrow after we drop the kids off at the mall. I'm pretty sure there's still the neverending pasta bowl. Yum.
• Henry learned the word sandcastles, although intially called them candsassles.
• I walked up and down three flights of stairs over fifteen times. Once while carrying a mini-fridge.