I’ve made it halfway through music and art camp. The kids this year haven’t been too difficult. I’m just not used to being on my feet and constantly moving all morning, and I’m on high alert the whole time, as the “responsible adult,” so I’m exhausted when I get home.

The new book launched yesterday, and I hope everyone’s enjoying it. I guess it’s good in a way that I’m out so much this week because I can’t be obsessively checking my sales numbers. It seems to be doing pretty well so far. At least, it looks like I’ll break even on the production costs unless sales drop off drastically after the first week.

It’s my birthday today, and a group of the adults from music and art camp are going out for lunch afterward for a party (to thank me for giving up my birthday to volunteer). I wonder if I can get the kids to sing Happy Birthday to me.

They really are rather cute. There’s a group of boys that I found hanging around the storage shed in the playground during the recess/snack time. It turned out that they saw a lizard that seems to be living under the shed, so they left part of their snacks for it the day before and they came to see that the snacks were all gone, so they left more snacks for it. I’m not sure whether or not lizards eat animal crackers, but they were convinced that they were feeding the lizard. Then there’s the little boy who’s the neatest colorer I’ve seen, of almost any age. He looks so young you can barely believe he’s old enough for kindergarten, but when they finished their craft projects there were coloring sheets they could do, and they were basically the “adult coloring book” kind of thing, very intricate, but this little boy managed to color it in perfectly. You’d have thought an adult had done it.

Kids that age make friends so easily that it’s a joy to watch. They come in so shy on the first day, and an hour later, they’re all best friends and playing happily together. There are kids from a variety of backgrounds and races, even nationalities, and that doesn’t seem to matter to them. Adults could learn a lot from little kids.

And now I have to go face the kindergarteners again.