Beginning next Wednesday, Dominick will be attending a parent's day out program at a church just four blocks away. The program is fairly unstructured, geared more toward providing an opportunity for socialization. It's a good next step for Dom, especially after attending Stay & Play. This is different because, unlike Stay & Play, I will not be there. This particular PDO is open during the summer, which is nice. Many of them end in May.

Then, starting in September, Dom will go to preschool three days a week. We visited on Thursday, and I mailed in the enrollment form today. I really liked the teachers, the rooms, the overall atmosphere of the place. Being an architectural conservator in my life before kids, I also love that the preschool is in a Gothic Revival stone building. The classroom has high ceilings and tall, arched leaded glass windows on two walls. You can't beat the convenience, either: it's just down the street.

When we got there on Thursday morning, the kids were making bread. After cleaning up, it was time for yoga. (Mike was skeptical of the idea of a bunch of three-year-olds doing yoga, but the teacher said they actually follow along. We watched for a while and saw that they do.) The bread-making is a special activity that happens once a year, but yoga or creative movement happens every week. There's also a music teacher once a week and a science teacher who comes in about once a month.

So, unless a rush of enrollment forms beats ours, Dominick is all set. I have a feeling he'll really like both PDO and preschool, even if there might be a little initial anxiety.

The last couple of photos I posted have been of Noel, so here are two new ones of Dominick. One shows him with some Play-doh food Mike made to match pictures in a book. The other is a photo of Mike swinging Dom upside-down like a pendulum. (They do this to the tune of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake as played by our Little Tikes alligator piano.) It's funny because Dom always holds his shirt up with both hands because he hates having his belly exposed, so he looks very rigid as he swings.

More photo problems for me! I have no idea why the first one is sideways. It's not that way on my computer. Oh, well. I'll post it anyway.