If you’re doing something and it works, there’s just this flow and happy joy and you’re exhausted but you feel like there’s a groove, is it wrong?
I wrote this huge long post last night and lost it, so here’s the short deal: I’ve stumbled into a rhythm with Boy G and it works. So I don’t trust it! I’m worried. I cut out circle time, which many people were telling me to cut out because it’s not really meant for two people, it’s meant for a classroom of children. I didn’t like it. So out it went.
What did I keep?
I kept reading in bed. (Should I feel guilty about this?) First thing, we snuggle for about 10-20 minutes, reading together. Then up we jump. First breakfast for him while I shower. Then he gets dressed and out we go for a quick, quick visit to say hi to the garden. (Usually we go put mail in the blue post box around the corner.) Then back for second breakfast.
First major change: We’ve already been outside once. Historically, getting outside didn’t happen until afternoon.
Second major change: Home-work gets done, but I don’t talk about it. I don’t stretch it out or try to get him involved. I do it, it’s over. He can help or not. I sing, I include him in conversation, I don’t let him drift away (if legos get him, he’s lost), I do rudimentary home-work and the basic daily work (Monday laundry, Tuesday vacuum, etc.) and then we go outside again.
Third major change: outside again. It’s still morning, people.
We do something imaginative together. For the last two weeks it’s been pretending that we’re Wilfred and Primrose from Brambly Hedge, and we go traipsing around the countryside on his bike, the good “ship” Periwinkle. I love Brambly Hedge. If you have any Brambly Hedge books and you don’t want them, can I have them? PLEASE?
Luckily, last week a so-far-abandoned lot on our street had its fences torn down. The lot is full of flowering weeds and clover. It is Brambly Hedge, the riverside, and the seaside all rolled into one. The bits of sidewalk that once led up to front doors have become our docks, and we dock the good ship Periwinkle there and have the snack we’ve brought along–on a few occasions, the breakfast. It’s magical, to be eating pancakes sitting on the sidewalk next to a patch of overgrown clover with a cool breeze and warm sun on my face.
When we get back to our house, I excuse myself upstairs, do a quick set-up for story time and the craft for after, and tidy away the snack/breakfast things. Then I coerce him upstairs for story.
After story comes art project. Last week we made popsicle-stick-and-paper puppets of Gnome and Groundhog and made Brigid’s wells out of play clay; this week so far we drew a map with crayon and chalk and a painting of the Queen of the Icy Lands’s realm (with bits of green on the edges to show that the lands are melting).
Lunch. Quiet time. Then variations on park day/swim class/museum day/dance class. Tea. Nighttime stuff with TMoTH.
It’s been flowing so smoothly… today he asked me why we’re not having circle these days, and I tried to explain briefly that the things we did in circle we’re doing while doing other things, but I don’t think it went over really well. He misses circle. I don’t know where I would put it. Because everything else is going really well.
Does that mean I’m doing it wrong?
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