I Think He's Falling Hard

Caulder's first week of kindergarten was pretty rough. And then, suddenly, he couldn't wait to go back to school every day. We weren't really sure what made the change, so I asked him if he had some new friends. He said, "I have lots of friends, but only two I talk to."

"Interesting," I thought. That reminds me a lot of myself. Then I asked him about his new friends, and we had this conversation:

CJ: "Their names are Presley and Raul."
me: "What are they like?"
CJ: "Raul has brown skin. Presley has brown hair and a Tinkerbell backpack and today she had a flower in her hair."

"Hmmm," I thought, noticing the vast difference between the descriptions of Presley and Raul. The next day when I dropped him off CJ made sure to point Presley out to me, even though I didn't ask him to. The day after that when Cole picked him up from school CJ told him, "Presley looked extra cute today, Dad. She had her hair in a ponytail."

And every day since then he's given us some little tidbit of information about Presley. She was wearing a dress today. She asked where he was when he'd been out sick the day before. She was playing princesses at recess, and even though "usually I would never play a girl game, I pretended to be a ninja knight so I could rescue her."

The week before last I told him he'd get to ditch school on Friday to go to Idaho to see his cousins, and he - the boy who would have given anything to skip a day of preschool the year before - said, "I don't want to miss school, Mom. I need to go so I can see how cute Presley looks today. She always looks cute. It's kinda complicated."

Aunt Rylee and Uncle Andrew were teasing him about Presley (he's told everyone in the family about her), and they asked if Presley was his girlfriend. He said, "No! I don't have a girlfriend." Then he raised one eyebrow, grinned and said, "But I think she might have a boyfriend!"

And one day he came home from school and told me he'd found a roly poly in his classroom... and gave it to Presley. That's right people. HE GAVE A GIRL A BUG. I almost died right there from the cuteness of it.

Ahhhh, young love. All I can say is this Presley is one lucky girl.