Cute kids

As the editor of a community newspaper, my job occasionally involves taking photos, so early one recent morning I drove to a building not far from my house to take photos for an article about a Montessori school.

The lighting inside the school was pleasantly dim and the children unusually calm, a result of the natural lighting, the director explained.

I’m the mother of a 20-year-old, so it had been a while since I’d been around children so young, in this case, infants through age six. All around me, cute, curly-haired kids, some still rubbing sleep from their eyes, were reading books and wielding pretend hammers.

Stocking footed, I stepped into a classroom where I stooped low to take a photo of one youngster sucking her thumb while sitting in her teacher’s lap.

In a few minutes I had all the photos I needed, including some that I would never run but that reminded of how cute kids can be, with their tossled hair, runny noses and bare rumps.