Art Class and Playdate with Andrew and Julian

We had a great day yesterday. Eli and I picked Simon up from school and we went straight to art class. I had made Simon some fake chicken nuggets to eat for lunch and I gave them to him in a ziploc bag in the car. I should have taken a couple out for myself first because I asked him for one and he said "no. These are not for you. Mommy made them for ME." I had to wait until he was playing in the park outside art class and then I snuck one and luckily he didn't notice. The messy table in art class this week contained a big bowl of dirt and some pots and pans. Simon loved it and cooked a big mud pie and then fed it to me. He mixed it in a bowl and then poured it into a pot and told me "don't touch the pot. Is very hot." Then he waited a minute and said "oh, it beeped. It's all done cooking." And he poured it back into the bowl so that I could eat it. I'm glad he grasps the concept of just pretending to eat. Eli had a bottle while Simon was cooking and then he happily observed everything that was going on for the rest of the time while Simon played with clay, painted and decorated a paper plate to look like a pumpkin. For the music part of class, Simon was sitting on a folding chair and he wanted Eli to sit next to him, so I put Eli on the chair (I was holding on to him obviously) and Simon put his arm around him and kept talking quietly to him and kissing him on the head. Too bad I didn't have my camera.
Simon was playing with his trains and he shared them really nicely with another little boy, Patrick and his sister Beatrice. They were all playing outside after class but when it was time to go we realized that Percy (the train) was missing. Beatrice had been playing with him and she said she didn't remember where she put him. Her dad told her that they couldn't leave until they found Percy and they were all helping to look. It was starting to look like Percy wasn't going to turn up and Eli was crying and I wanted to go so I said that it wasn't a big deal even though it kind of was a big deal since those trains cost $20!! Just as I was about to give up, Beatrice suddenly remembered that she had put Percy inside part of the fire engine play structure so the crisis was averted.
When we got home, Simon went almost immediately in for a nap--I only had to go back into his room once and that was so that he could ask me if he could drink his milk. He wasn't sure if it was fresh milk or old milk. He slept until almost 6 again. Shira, Dave and Elan came over for dinner in the sukkah and then Simon taught Elan how to play football in the backyard.
Today after school we went to Julian's house to play and Andrew came too. The 3 of them are going to play together every Wednesday and we are going to rotate houses. Last week we went to Andrew's and next week they will come here. They play really well together and I was proud of Simon because at one point Julian was bothering him and he looked like he was about to hit him--all I had to do was say "Simon..." and then he looked at Julian and said "can you please stop doing that" and Julian said "sure" and stopped. Simon ate dinner at Julian's so when we got home he had a bath right away and was in bed before 8. Unfortunately, at 8:15 when I had just started to feed Eli, Simon started crying for me. David went into his room but Simon wanted nothing to do with him and only wanted me. He told David that he was going to sit on his bed and wait for me and cry. It was SO sad--I could hear through the monitor. He did eventually stop and when Eli was finally done (a full hour later), I went into to Simon's room and he was asleep on his bed but facing the wrong way. He woke up when I came in so I picked him up and sang him HaTikvah a couple of times and put him back to bed. Poor thing, that was all that he wanted and he had to wait so long for me to come in. I told him that we would do something fun after school tomorrow and he said "like what?" I asked what he wanted to do and he said play with cars and trucks and choo-choos and dump them all out and make a big mess! Great--I can't wait, especially since I literally spent three hours today cleaning this pig sty and it finally looks like it did before I had no time or energy to clean!
I took a break from cleaning long enough to take a couple of pictures of Eli today: