As you can imagine, carving out enough one-on-one time for each of my five children can be difficult. Homeschool has been going SO WELL this year. However, that means that there are many mornings where Lucy is either watching PBS kids alone or with Isaac, or just sort of fluttering around without connection. I hate this. Truly. It just happens. So I've been trying to carve out pockets of minutes for just some Lucy-Time. And it's been fun. :)
Have you ever sat down and had a conversation with a three year old?
They can be so funny...sometimes without even meaning to be!
She told me today that she had a cough and the bless-yous.
Bless-yous. Instead of sneezes. Adorable.
We were chatting: Mostly me just asking questions and Lucy spinning tales. She was telling me how we were going to get some candy. She described the colors and the kinds. When I asked her where we were going to get all this candy, she thought for a moment then exclaimed giddily, "Trick or treating!" No matter that it's March. :)
The public library offers a weekly story/ craft/ lesson time for youngsters not in school yet. This is something I did on occasion with the big kids when they were younger. For some reason I stopped going. There's a good chance it had something to do with having an 8, 6, 4, and 2 year old...and a baby. Ha! Now that the "bigs" are big enough for an hour home alone, I've started taking Isaac and Lucy to the weekly library time. While not one-on-one, it is certainly a different and wonderful chance to bond and grow with the "littles". It's been great fun to see them learn and have fun without their older siblings butting in, helping out, or flat-out doing stuff for them. Lucy gets the giggles there because she has so much fun. Isaac has come home inspired to do more school. Since he was too young to start public school last fall, we didn't make him "officially" start kindergarten at home. He would sit in on Together Time when he wanted to and was occasionally interested in a few worksheets. Since our library trips, however, he has really taken up an interest in daily learning. He's started reading our Dick and Jane books, he's working on phonics, and we're doing some basic math.
Lucy with her Play-do rainbow on Library Day
(in celebration of St. Patrick's Day)
Isaac working hard on his Play-do rainbow
One last bit about Isaac.
Last night, after the kids had been put to bed, he came downstairs crying. When asked what was wrong, he sobbed,
"I miss Big Grandpa!"
I snuggled him on my lap while he cried. I asked him what made him think of Big Grandpa.
His answer: He had seen the clothes he'd worn to the cemetery.
And isn't grief like that?
It's the small things, the small remembrances that get ya.
I asked Isaac what he remembered about Big Grandpa. He said he remembered that he was Grandpa's dad. This made me smile. Then he said he remembered that Big Grandpa had given him candy. Spinning that around back to him I said, "That's because he knew you were coming and he loved you and he wanted you to know it."
And then I cried with my boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment