Captain Fritzy Tamera: Pirate Extraordinaire

Last night I attended my first pirate birthday party. It was Supermommy's little boy's third birthday and it was so much fun. We all got pirate names (based on our first pet and the first street I lived on-which also works for finding your porn star name). We also had treasure chest cake (no Lent for me last night), and "rum and coke" (aka Roy rogers). My pirate duties included holding babies, getting hit with a ball repeatedly (a little boy thought we were playing a game of dodge ball, and according to him I suck), being very excited by all the pirate's "booty", and playing with flurp (this silly putty that makes farting sounds- this was the funniest gift the birthday boy got). My big job of the night was to take pictures of the birthday boy blowing out the candles to his treasure chest cake. I tried to get some shots of him while everyone was singing, and then when it was time for the money shot, he coughed all over the cake. I think I took maybe one picture after that, but I was laughing too hard to know for sure. Supermommy really knows her little pirate, because she made cupcakes that were off to the side and not hacked upon.

Speaking of little ones, I went on more preschool observations yesterday and met a really grumpy preschool teacher (which made me really sad for the kids) and a slightly off preschool teacher. The first preschool (with Ms. Grumpmeister) was the exact opposite of the preschool I was at last week. None of the kids ever even acknowledged I was in their room, and I was sitting very close to a group of them playing with Dora toys. One of the kids looked like something out of Children of the Corn, which was slightly disturbing. The teacher also seemed upset that the kids were playing well telling me, "They are never this good." Nice.

At the second preschool I walk in and met my new best friend. This teacher wanted to show me all the wonderful things she does in her classroom, which included making the kids say the Pledge of Allegiance, and that they are proud to be American every morning (twice that day for me). That creeped the heck out of me. Mrs. Patriotic told me that for Christmas (because for proud Americans there is no other holiday) she made all the parents a dvd of their child saying the pledge. Not a video of them playing and having fun, but of them saying they are proud to be an American. I know she totally dubbed crazy pro-America music on it, and had a flag waving gently in the background (and maybe fireworks).

She wanted to show me how much fun they have playing outside. All the kids did was run around (it did seem like they were having fun), but the scary thing was one kid was not playing with the group and this teacher never once went to find him. Just let him play unsupervised for at least 15 minutes (this child also looked like he was a Child of the Corn, which I thought was odd to see more than one in a day). I also got to watch the kids play duck duck goose, which was hilarious part of my day because they were too young to fully get the concept, so it was just kids running in a circle screaming "Goose!"