Today at daycare

We get a daily update from daycare. A quick read on the day's happenings. The Toddler-gram.

This is what you live for as a working parent. You're not able to be there for each little moment of discovery – so you live vicariously through this 8.5" x 5.5" piece of paper. Go ahead. Ask it a question.

Did my child eat?

Why yes. She ate breakfast, lunch and a snack. And she ate enough of each of them that the teacher marked "All." That's my little over-achiever.

How did she feel?

Well, according to the sheet she was "healthy" and "full of smiles." That's better than the alternative of "sluggish" and "more tears than usual."

How was her bowel movement?

Those of you without children are probably snickering right now. But anyone who has, or has had, children will tell you that for the first several years of their life – much of your conversation will involve what comes out of them. Puke. Snot. Piddle ...

But mostly crap. Poop. Boom boom. Caca. Turds. Baby brown. Dookie. Bum nuggets. Doodie. Excrement. Mr. Hankey. And so on and so forth ...

Today, in case you're wondering, Kaylee was boom boom free. Either that or the teacher was just up to her arms in it and didn't have time to write it down.

Knowing my daughter, I'm betting on the latter.

And that takes care of the multiple choice portion of the form. You can only glean so much information from multiple choice. The real gems come from the fill-in-the-blanks section. This is where the teacher fills us in on the activities of the day.

The word of the day was "tomatoes." I assume this had something to do with lunch. When I asked Kaylee about it, her reply was "moes." I'm not 100% sure what she meant by this, but I'm taking it as an affirmation that there were in fact tomatoes present and that they were discussed in some fashion.

Although, she is getting into the "parrot" stage. So she could just be repeating what I said.

Repeating what I said.

Then things get really interesting. There are three sections that are usually related: "Movement," "Self-Awareness" and "Played."

Usually these are just different ways of saying the same thing. Basically a way of making it look like you did a lot more today that you really did. (Similar to that e-mail you sent to your boss last week.) You'll often see "Marching" under movement. Followed by "I can march!" under self-awareness. "Playing marching band" would wrap up the list.

See? What a scam.

Today's was a little different. Now, the teacher still ran the scam of filling three slots with one activity. What's different is what that activity was.

No marching. No counting. No spinning. Today's movement was "Drowning duckies."

Yeah. You read that right. The class played "Drowning rubber duckies and then watching them float."

Now "dipping duckies" I can get behind. Even "dunking duckies." But drowning? Isn't this how Ted Bundy got his start?

Next week my little serial killer in training will probably play "stab the bunny." (I can stab!) Or perhaps it will be "set the dog on fire!" (I can burn!) Who knew that the torture of small animals was actually part of the pre-kindergarten education?

Oh, and she made marker and tissue art. She says it's a picture of a skinned kitty – but it just looks like scribbles to me. But I'm just happy that they embrace the arts.