- unloading the dishwasher before there is another full load of dirty dishes piled on the counter
- remembering to bring the reusable shopping bags to the store
- regularly baking bread
- hosting dinner party last weekend with good planning and reasonable self-expectations so that I had minimal last minute stress and was able to fully enjoy the party

and

- having a near-perfect weekday evening yesterday. C came home early, we all ate dinner together and had time to walk to the park afterwards. O and E played together on the play structure, J sat happily in the grass, Lucy chased a ball, and C and I played Frisbee without being interrupted for more time than I can remember since O was born.

One week ago it was nearly 70 degrees and I was out wishing I had put on shorts. The camellia tree is already dropping its fat pink blooms.  Daffodils and tulips have been blooming around here for weeks.  It’s enough to make one believe winter is over.  Yesterday, O played his first ever T-Ball game, in a thunder-snowstorm. Today was our neighborhood work party, which saw us and many of our neighbors braving sleet and snow to plant plants in the park. When will spring be here?

If we lived in certain previous generations, a five and a half year old would probably have significant responsibilities: meaningfully helping on the farm, for instance, or taking care of younger siblings. In other times and places, he would have a lot of independence, free to roam the countryside or neighborhood, exploring and playing hard. If he was my only kid, I would be doing a lot more projects with him, and we’d be out much more doing things like riding bikes together.

For a few months now, O has had an often unmanageable level of energy. It occurred to me that this may be an unexpected consequence of him starting school late. Because of his early September birthday, he just missed the cutoff to start kindergarten this year. He has friends only a week older who are approaching the end of their kindergarten year. Though he may not have been ready for full time school back in September, by now he absolutely is. I think he’s just bored. His brain and his body are hungry for a lot more challenge and activity than he gets in his half-day preschool and hanging around with me and his younger siblings, where our activities are limited by E’s attention span, J’s naps, and my in-many-directions attentions.

I’m all for a healthy dose of idleness in children’s -everyone’s- lives. I’m cautious about over scheduling. Sometimes the idle times are lovely: kids exploring the backyard, making up games, playing with the neighbors, drawing or painting… But I have to act on what I see in front of me, and more and more often lately what I see in front of me is a boy who needs more challenge and structure than I am giving him. So I do what I have done so many times already in my parenting life: let my former philosophies slip away under the pressure of current observations and realities. I signed him up for a T Ball team and summer Spanish camp. I’m researching other camps. There will be almost daily swimming lessons during the weeks that are not otherwise filled. And I’m so glad he will be going to kindergarten in September!

I’m also working on finding more things for O to do to help out around the house. It’s harder than it seems it should be, to think of jobs he is physically capable of doing that are actually helpful (i.e. I don’t have to redo them), and which do not have to be done at a very specific time, and which don’t end up causing sibling competition. It’s clearly something I need to formalize more than I have so far, and I will work on that.

Ach. How has it been so long since I’ve written here? Time -and creativity- have been occupied, first by the great odyssey of kindergarten research and applications, then by a series of illness and teething that robbed us of sleep, joy, and motivation. We celebrated a birthday (mine, delayed because of some of the aforementioned illness). We took a trip.

We’re getting back to normal. O’s kindergarten is determined, with an outcome I hoped for. J has six hard-fought teeth, and counting. Everyone is more or less healthy for the moment.

There’s a strong inertia that sets in when the blogging habit goes missing for a while.  It has caught me before, causing many months of bloglessness.  This is my first attempt to break out this time!

O said to me yesterday: “Mom, cat and duck rhyme!”  “Umm, no,” I replied predictably.  “Cat and rat rhyme.  Duck and truck rhyme.”

But he was being neither obtuse nor careless.  He was baiting me: “Ha ha, I tricked you!  Gato and pato!”

This was after we had come home from Spanish class.  I am so pleased.

We play a lot of Uno these days. E grasps the game intellectually, but sometimes has trouble not winning or is apt to ruin the game upon being the recipient of a Draw 2 or Skip card. O has figured her out, and when she is not in a good playing mood but he really wants to play, he has a solution: he will go through the deck and pull out all the “good cards” which then become E’s personal draw pile.

He gets to play, she gets to win, and everyone is happy…for a while.

(Lucy is our dog.)

“When Lucy and I are both standing up, I am taller than she is; but when we are both sitting down, she is taller than I am.”

From the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:
http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/index.php/privacy-on-social-networks/

Can you imagine this being produced by the US government?

I thought I’d better post the current doodle, since I’m beginning to feel its time is getting short.