Striking a Pose

It's been a week of adjusting to two drop-offs every morning, one for my preschooler and one for my kindergartener.  Abby has been really tired at night, which turns into weepy sensitivity and sorrow.  She has told me several times already that "kindergarten is just so hard, you know, Mama--it's just so HARD."  Tonight she took it one step further:  "It's like, Mama, like...like Cinderella and how she - she has to work so hard for her mean sisters, Mama.  I feel like, like that, you know, and I jis - I jis want to stop kindergarten."

A Broken Plate

This weekend we enjoyed a visit from Grandma Sandra!  We are so glad you came!  Come again soon!

This evening I was making spaghetti while Eric hung our new light over our kitchen island.  Abby hopped up on the counter to brown the hamburger for me while I snapped noodles for faster cooking.  Not to be outdone, Adam reached into the clean dishwasher and began taking out plates.  "I - I - I will set dese on - on the table, Mommy."  My heart melted.

I wasn't paying much attention to his labor until I saw him trying to balance three plates against his tummy--too late.  One slipped and shattered across the floor.

"Adam!"  we both yelled, as in, "Are you okay!?"  He looked shocked and started shuffling, still cradling the other two plates.  "Back up," Eric said, as in "Back away from the shards."  He did.

I scooped him up and placed him smack on the chair that Eric had setting out to use for hanging the light.  We looked him over to see how he was feeling.  He grinned.  "Am I - am I goin' a get a haircut?"

Abby is in Kindergarten!

A Summer of Patience

This has been a summer of learning patience.  We have been practicing how to wait on paperwork, on appraisals, on signatures, on box availability at the grocery store, on harvest, on flooring, on appliances, on estimates, on back orders, on drying paint, on the price of wheat, on potty training, on new desks for my classroom, on rain, on internet service, on tub spraying.  Wait.  Trust.  Don't worry.

Though we haven't moved in to our new house yet, because we're waiting on a bathroom to use, my internet is, as of five minutes ago, up and running in a corner of a room in which we're...you've guessed it...waiting for carpet!

This morning while I was hooking up the various cables that make a computer useful, Adam came to hover nearby and inquire about a spider that had just escaped the business end of my surge protector.  He placed his little hand on my shoulder so sweetly that it inspired from me a barrage of, "You are handsome!  And you are brave!  And you are kind!  And you are my son!"  [I think this is coming from the book The Help!]

To each charge he nodded assent and said, "Huh" in a definite tone, as if to say, "Check."  To the last one, though, he amended, "I - I - am Daddy son, too."

"Yes," I agreed.  "You are all of those things."

He looked back at my full eyes and said, "You are sthings too, Mama."

"Thank you."

"You welcome."  And he walked away to play pirates.