Laundry

My oldest is 10 now.  Wow, do I feel old.  Here lately I have been teaching him how to wash his own clothes.  In fact he complained all week that he had no clean clothes.  Since he is out of school I told him that if he needed clean clothes he knew how to wash and dry them himself.  So Friday I had to remind him if he wanted clean clothes for the weekend, he needed to wash them.  So Friday morning he started sorting after me reminding him, then I walked him through once again the stages of washing clothes.  He actually does a good job and asks questions.

The little one will actually ask if she can sort and wash her clothes too.  She also puts away her clothes without me even asking.  I think that is just a girl thing, assessing a situation and seeing what needs to be done.  (Of course, cleaning her room is another story.)  I have to remind my son a dozen times before he actually puts his clothes away.

I am really determined to get him doing especially this task independently.  My reason,  well when my husband and I were dating he was 21 years old and once a week he would bring his clothes to his moms.   She would then wash, dry and fold his clothes and have them ready for him to pick up the next day.  Needless to say I had to teach him how to wash his own clothes too.  I figure I would teach my son young and save his future wife the trouble.

Next task would be to sit him down and show him how to fold properly.

Not My Momma Anymore

My youngest is quite the challenge, and with her getting older it isn't getting any easier.  Sometimes I have absolutely no idea how to react to the things she does and says.  Last weekend was no exception.

Last weekend my little one decided that she no longer wanted me to be her momma.  In fact she said that her Grammy (my mother) would now be her mother and she would be moving in with her.  Not sure exactly how to respond to this, I decided to go along.  I guess my reaction wasn't what she expected because she proceeded to tell me why she came to this decision.

"Because you don't let me do everything I want to do and you make me drink green smoothies,"  she said.  As if I would say that I would change that.  I explained to her that my job as her mother meant that sometimes she wouldn't get to do what she wanted to do because it may not be good for her.  As for the smoothies, I explained that I wanted her to be healthy and that is why I made them for her and her brother.

Well I guess that is not what she wanted to hear so she continued with her charade.  This started on Friday.  Getting up Saturday morning getting ready for church I thought that she was over this not my momma stuff.  Well she didn't talk to me much, somewhat ignored me.  My husband and her went to church ahead of me and me and my oldest met up with them later.

It was there that I found out she was telling everyone I was no longer her momma and her reasons as stated above.  I guess to see if anyone would agree with her.  I will admit it started to hurt my feelings a bit, but I wasn't about to let her know that,  I just laughed it off.  This continued through out the day, she continued giving me the cold shoulder.  She even ended up spending the night at my moms house.

I didn't pick her up till the afternoon the next day.  But her attitude changed dramatically.  "I love you momma,"  she told me when she saw me.  I responded, "Oh, I'm your momma now."   I am assuming that she must have really missed me because she spend the rest of the day hugging and kissing me and keeping really close by.  I guess I'm not such a bad momma after all.  But it really blows me away the things that this little girl thinks of.

What will she come up with next?? Dare I ask.

Another School Year- Gone

These days my little ones aren't so little.  This past year has been like most, a challenge.    But as a family we press on.

This past school year my oldest started a new school.  His old school started having problems with structure and we realized that it was time to move on.  We had started my youngest in a k-3 program at a church close to our home last year.  It just so happened that the following school year (this past school year) they would also be starting a school from K5-12.  After talking with my oldest ,who is extremely shy if you have realized from past post,  he agreed to go to the same school as his little sister.

I did bribe him the first week of school ;)  I told him that if he went the entire week without any complaints that he would be rewarded.   I wanted him to try to like his new school, not already have his mind made up that he didn't like it.  I figured that if I at least made it worth it to him, that he would at least try. The first week passed without complaint.  The second week did also.  He loved his new school and he made new friends almost instantly.  I felt so relieved about our decision to move him.

We went through an entire year with him only calling home once or twice to come him because he had a stomach ache.  It was awesome.  He was actually a little disappointed when the school year ended.

And for the little one, she absolutely loves it too.  In fact now that the year is over she really misses going too.

I can't believe that next school year I will have a kindergartener and a 5th grader.  Boy how time flies.