Thursday, September 20, 2012

Danger Men

My once very "fareful" Elijah is transforming into a daredevil.  My always "on the edge of disaster" John is remaining so.  My adorable, stationary baby is motating and "helping.  See for yourself.




Friday, September 7, 2012

Learning...together

My sister often comments that she is without the mothering gene, which is just ridiculous, but she didn't ask me.  I am the one missing crucial genes.  Like the one for teaching small children.  Like the one for how to decorate my home.  Like the one on how to convince 8 month-olds to sleep through the night.

But, John and I, together, are learning.  Last week we delved into the "Letter of the Week" preschool curriculum I found online for free.  Often you get what you paid for but in this case I hit the jackpot.  I can whip up lesson plans torturing 8th graders with analytical questions on any story but ask me to teach a small child and I run to the corner and cry.  This curriculum lays out language arts, math, science, art, social studies, music, and character/Bible lessons.  We are skipping the studies on composers and artists; somehow I don't think John will miss that.

John seems to be enjoying himself and even figured out the other day that letters are everywhere.  "Hey mom," he said while we were in the van, "that sign has the letters O and P on it."  I might not be too bad at this small child teaching thing but I should disclose that he did cry the first day because tracing straight lines was too hard.  (If only he knew about algebra, now that is something to cry about.)

My favorite is Wednesday because we do art.  Last week it was apple stamping and this week was bubble painting.  We also really like Friday because we get to cook: apples last week and brownies this week.

What am I learning?  How to be a mom whose focus is her family.  It is much harder than you might think.  I constantly have to remind myself that this is where God wants me to be right now.  It is so outside of my comfort zone to exercise patience, love, forgiveness in a never ending cycle all day long.  My affirmation comes in smiles from Daniel and declarations of letters from John and in the peace my heart feels.


Lesson #1: Chalkboards are way better than worksheets.

"Don't tell Elijah it was me!"