Counting The Days
The weather has already begun to turn cooler here and the heat has turned itself on quite a few mornings. The number of days we have left to lounge about outside in the sunshine are numbered. Sigh.
Today was one of those days. I had the older kids do a bit of their semi-independent schoolwork in the morning and then we spent the rest of the day outdoors, not doing much of anything special, just enjoying the day and living in the moment.
Overall, it was a great day. One of the ones you just want to bottle up and save on a shelf somewhere, and take it down on a freezing winter afternoon when you haven't been able to go outside and play in 3 weeks and everyone is ansty and fighting with each other.
The children rode bikes, rollerskated, rode their skateboards and practiced "tricks" on them, while I cringed at the prospect of them getting injured. Every once in awhile I would throw out, "I am not going to the Emergency Room today... I mean it". Because I am mean like that, and I do mean it ;-) I counted how many times they could bouce basketballs without stopping, how many times they could jump on the pogo stick without falling, how many times they could hop on one foot. I timed races and measured long jumps. It was like our own track and field olympic event.
Thankfully after a few hours of that they got tired and began doing more sedate things that didn't require so much counting on my part. I have found that when you are counting you can't really do much else like read, hold a conversation, or even walk away to use the bathroom.
My younger boys got out their watercolors and painted many reams of paper. This is a photo of my 3 yr old practicing the first letter of his name. It is an "F" in case you can't tell ;-)
The 3 yr old also timed me going to use the bathroom. Apparently it took me eleventy-sixty minutes.
The bench he is painting on is the one we got out of the trash a few weekends ago. A perfectly wonderfully, already broken in, wooden bench that I have been using as a somewhat coffee table on our front porch. My 9 yr old was horrified at the very idea of us bringing it home. He kept saying 'It is garbage! Someone had it and thought it was yucky. So they threw it away, not gave it away. That means it is garbage!' We tried to explain to him the idea of one persons trash being another persons treasure, but that only incensed him more, since this clearly was NOT treasure. Sheesh, treasure is gold afterall <insert eyerolling at stupid parents who know nothing>
Today was one of those days. I had the older kids do a bit of their semi-independent schoolwork in the morning and then we spent the rest of the day outdoors, not doing much of anything special, just enjoying the day and living in the moment.
Overall, it was a great day. One of the ones you just want to bottle up and save on a shelf somewhere, and take it down on a freezing winter afternoon when you haven't been able to go outside and play in 3 weeks and everyone is ansty and fighting with each other.
The children rode bikes, rollerskated, rode their skateboards and practiced "tricks" on them, while I cringed at the prospect of them getting injured. Every once in awhile I would throw out, "I am not going to the Emergency Room today... I mean it". Because I am mean like that, and I do mean it ;-) I counted how many times they could bouce basketballs without stopping, how many times they could jump on the pogo stick without falling, how many times they could hop on one foot. I timed races and measured long jumps. It was like our own track and field olympic event.
Thankfully after a few hours of that they got tired and began doing more sedate things that didn't require so much counting on my part. I have found that when you are counting you can't really do much else like read, hold a conversation, or even walk away to use the bathroom.
My younger boys got out their watercolors and painted many reams of paper. This is a photo of my 3 yr old practicing the first letter of his name. It is an "F" in case you can't tell ;-)
The 3 yr old also timed me going to use the bathroom. Apparently it took me eleventy-sixty minutes.
The bench he is painting on is the one we got out of the trash a few weekends ago. A perfectly wonderfully, already broken in, wooden bench that I have been using as a somewhat coffee table on our front porch. My 9 yr old was horrified at the very idea of us bringing it home. He kept saying 'It is garbage! Someone had it and thought it was yucky. So they threw it away, not gave it away. That means it is garbage!' We tried to explain to him the idea of one persons trash being another persons treasure, but that only incensed him more, since this clearly was NOT treasure. Sheesh, treasure is gold afterall <insert eyerolling at stupid parents who know nothing>
I am sure this has already made it to his spreadsheet. I can read it now: Not only did my parents get stuff out of the garbage, they put it right out on the front porch for everyone to see.
1 Comments:
I had the same thought today, better use the nice weather before it takes 25 minutes to dress everyone only to have them say they now need to use the bathroom. I'm impressed by the F by the way. My F is still drinking the paint water and mostly enjoys painting his stomach.
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