Yesterday is a prime example of trying to find the balance for the kids sake. It was the first snow day. Ya, it only snowed a trace, but for a 2 and 4 1/2 yr old...that is enough. I got home from work at 1:20pm and my babysitter dropped off the kids from a play date at her sisters house at 1:45pm. I had to feed them lunch and then get ready to leave for work again. Thur is a long working day for me. Ballet from 9-1 and 3-7:30. I wasn't sure if they kids were going to be coming with me to ballet for the first little bit before my husband could pick them up or if he was just going to make it home in time to get the kids before I left at 2:45. Regardless, it was easy for me to say no to their pleas of going outside because it was not enough time to bundle them up, then unbundle them and get them ready to go with me if they got wet. So, Remington got on the stool by the back door and was looking out in awe. He was pointing at all his toys and yelling at me about what had happened to his shovels, his bike, his trucks, the swing, etc. I got a lengthy video of that moment. When he gets excited he huffs and puffs between words and then says a word several times.
So, I got Madalynn to come in and read. I first read her a book and then we went through a unit of Hooked on Phonics. We did the ending -ub, which when Russ came in and heard her reading he called out the same sentence I did. Rub a dub dub in the tub. Haha. Two parents thinking alike. She is started to have -s on the end of a word and learned about an apostrophe for the first time yesterday. She learned the sight words: who, my, of and reviewed here, what and like in her story. She struggled with the word "but" because she still has the "b" and "d" backwards. I am going to work on that again this week with the rolling dice. She earned two stickers and was a tropper. I read several books to Remington both this afternoon and this evening. I will be writing a post about the board books my kids read soon.
Russ got home at 2:30 and the kids begged him to go outside. He bundled them up like a great dad and out they went. We are going to have to remedy the lack of snow pants for the son, but they had a great time. They had a total of 20 min outside play. Russ taught them to throw snowballs, Remington learned that his hands get cold touching snow, they learned if you sit in it you get wet, I took several pictures and videos and then left for work. Russ made sure to help Remington notice the snow from his boots on the sidewalk. That is what is happening when this video begins.
The rest of these picture were my poor attempt at a sibling picture. I have holes in my tennis shoes, so I wasn't willing to go and stand them next to each other. I just stood on the sidewalk and took pictures.
Priorities: They needed a few minutes, just a few minutes in the snow and we made that happen. They had a full day of play. They learned to listen to the sitter while she took them to her fun workout class. They learned to play nicely with a puppy at the relatives house of the sitter and they played with lots of other kids, getting social interaction. It is definitely hard knowing that they are getting those opportunities and I am not there with them, but I am glad that they get them. If I was home all the time, I would probably tend to stay in my house and they wouldn't get as many of those moments.
When I came home we watched videos of the artist we are going to go see today for Museum Friday. I am super excited we get to see an artist doing his art. We read scriptures with Madalynn and made her read the words that she knows and they went to bed. No, there weren't tons of "teaching" moments, like school type stuff, but the moment I did have were definitely full of wonder. And that is how we go about this business right now.
Hope you enjoyed.
