The Love of a Child

DH has been having a stressful time at work lately. Nothing job-threatening (unless he decides to up and quit out of sheer disgust), but he came home Thursday night, very late, after probably one of his worst days ever... and smiled. Why did he smile, you might ask? Greyson had been very happily amusing himself in the entranceway enjoying the blow of air from the register - his latest obsession. At the first rattle of house keys he stopped and quickly turned around to see who or what it was. When he saw his Daddy, his little face just lit up and he squealed with delight. He bounced up and down a few times, waving his arms, and then crawled as fast as he could to the door to meet him. I have never seen him so excited. When DH scooped him up into his arms, that little baby looked like he was about to explode with joy... and DH with pride and gratitude. Isn't it funny how just when you convince yourself that the whole world is against you, the sweetest, purest, most genuine love shows itself?

And now on to the more mundane. We did, in fact, skip park day on Wednesday. I just couldn't bring myself to leave the house just yet. We played a phonics game to review the soft g and c sounds. There was a list of silly instructions like Trace your hand, or Do a dance that is strange, or Hold the rice in two hands. The instructor would read the sentence and the student would have to read the bold word. If they read it correctly then they could do the silly thing. It was pretty fun and Cameron even asked to do it twice. We were doing Balance one cent on your head, but dropped the penny. So as we were combing the penny colored carpet to find the little choking hazard before Greyson did, Cassia grabbed the bag of rice and said, "Let's just balance the rice on our heads instead!" And in true Cat in the Hat fashion we hear Look at me, look at me, look at me now! and that is what the girl said as she fell on her head and came down with a bump from up there on the ball and Cameron and I, we heard all the things fall. OK, not quite. She was standing on a chair, not a ball but we did heard "Look, guys!" and then "Oooopsie," and then something that sounded like a waterfall. Yes, that was the sound of a pound of organic brown basmati rice raining down onto the floor. Game over.

I tried to get Cameron to start on his math while I cleaned up the rice but he just sat there. Why exactly do I have to read addition problems to him?? The whole session was a disaster and included lots of snapping, fussing, whining, and threatening on both parts. I've really got to learn to get school started earlier in the day before I am tired and at my stress limit. He did finally get that I was at my limit and did the last half of the page by himself without guessing or forcing me to walk him through every single, little, tiny step of it. I was very happy about that but also a little annoyed because that just proved that I was right all along... but there was no need to be petty about it.

Thursday I didn't bother. ;) I spent the morning going through my new Story of the World book and Activity Guide and trying to make some sort of loose schedule for next year. I plan on schooling year round but I want to try to plan out our history to fit in a traditional school year. This is partly because I intend on leading a 4-H project on Ancient Technologies to coincide with our studies and 4-H only runs September through May, and partly because I want to leave a large buffer in case we slack. Not that we would ever slack or anything. ;)

So I wasted all morning doing that while the kids played LEGOs and assumed various identities. Next was gymnastics. I wasn't sure if we should really go or not because Cameron had been complaining of a stomach ache off and on all day, but they really needed to get out. Cameron was oscillating between crazy-out-of-control-maniac and exhausted. Cassia was oscillating between sweet and obstinate - nothing new there! At the beginning of class she burst into tears because she thought that one of the coaches had forgotten to say hi to her, lol. Anyway, they both did fine with their classes but had some bouts of tummy trouble around dinnertime. So we've likely infected about 30 or 40 kids with a nasty virus. Ooops. They haven't had any other incidences of it though so today we are off to the park to infect another 10. ;)

And most importantly...

Happy Moving Day, Maria, my friend!! May this new phase in your life bring you nothing but joy and contentment.