Today he called her "my Ava." I've never heard him claim anyone as his own before besides mommy and daddy.

These are a few of the many great photos included in the awesome mother's day gift Atticus's teacher assembled for me: a book of photos and artwork from his days at school. Holy crap, the cuteness! Ava looks like she's used to these kisses (Yeah, yeah, you love me, I know).

 Here he is with his friend Sophia.

 I did it!

 Playing hookey?

Making art alongside his friend Peyton (who used to be Atticus's best friend before Ava displaced him).

And a note I forgot to include last time about the last couple of weeks, while Chris has been gone. Atticus has been one very sad boy--acting up, crying, whining, never wanting me to put him down. Last week, he got up from the table as soon as I sat him down for dinner, ran down the hallway and grabbed a framed photo of Chris, then deliberately dropped it. It landed on both of his big toes, giving him a bruise and a minor cut. We have had some fun the last few weeks, but it's also been rough. It will be so good to get back into a normal routine again when Chris returns.

It turns out Atticus is a bit obsessed with his friend Ava. His teacher says he follows her to the changing table when it's her turn and crawls off his cot onto the floor so that he can see her before falling asleep (the teacher put an end to this by rearranging the cots so that he can see her without leaving it). His teacher said that kids don't usually form bonds like this until age 3 1/2 or 4, so this is evidence that his social skills are advanced for his age. That sounds so much better than he's a stalker, doesn't it? It's a good thing she likes him too or we'd really be in trouble.

 We had a fun day yesterday--play date after play date. But when we left the last play date, it was nearly 6:30, so I stopped to pick up some food to go. And it took forever! Atticus went nuts at Zivaz--he was a delirious mess. Here's a tiny taste of it. At one point he pulled his shirt over his face and spinned around and around.

 This morning we went to the botanical gardens. I so wish Chris had left the good camera so I'd have some decent photos. Alas, here's a blurry cellphone photo of the lizard sitting on the rock inside the train garden. His belly was bright blue with some green smudges. He blended in well with the rock. Godzilla!

Atticus checked out some of the insects at the bug exhibit, including millipedes, a mealworm, and some pill bugs, all of which he handled. Again, totally blurry, but that's a baby millipede on his arm.

Blurry picture of the super moon through the car window. I think it was even more magnificent yesterday morning when I got up for my run.

Some things that happened yesterday:

When Atticus awoke, he promptly informed me that he had a big elephant-sized poop in his diaper. Yes, that's how he described it.

He helped me make a buckwheat breakfast cake and we topped it with walnuts and sliced bananas and shared it.

As we drove away after I picked him up from daycare, he said "Bye bye, school. Bye bye, Ava." Ava was nowhere in sight.

When we got home he had the most intense meltdown I've ever seen him have. It lasted only about ten minutes, if even, but it seemed longer. Itwas so wild by Atticus standards that I worried momentarily that he'd ingested some kind of poison. He slithered all over the floor; intentionally slammed his head into the coffee table; kicked off one shoe and hobbled about the house like a psychopathic killer (movie psychopathic killers almost always have some kind of physical deformity); fixated on the medicine dispenser sitting on the bar across the room (I'm pretty sure the meltdown was brought on by teethign pain) and moved in on it like a rabid animal that spotted prey, and threw it across the room (repeatedly). Finally, I grabbed him and whispered to him about all of the people who love him, and he calmed down, then wanted to nurse and wanted that medicine he'd thrown every which way. The rest of the evening he was his sweet, normal self.