Lighting the Spark

I really, really wish I could tell you all about how wonderful and picture perfect today was. Unfortunately I just can't. This morning started off with a fight over writing. Something that has never been a problem before - but suddenly it was too hard, takes too much time, etc. and moved into the "I want to go to school" argument. This surprised me as I have not had to hear it for a couple of months. One hour later she had finally copied the four lines of the poem that I had asked her to do. Even K left the room during this struggle, chosing to 'read' in her room instead of coloring at the table.

On the other hand MB has decided to become very positive about reading lessons and willing to sit down and do them.

I never know what to prepare for.

Tomorrow my mother arrives for the week and to spend sometime with K before her bday on Friday. She lives on the coast which is expecting Hurr/Tropical Storm Ophelia sometime this week. No one is sure when or where, although as of this evening they were dead-center in the sights for this one Wednesday pm or Thursday am. Normally she does not leave for the storms, and she is not leaving for this one as her trip was already planned. I kept waiting for her to call and cancel her trip up here, but she called me this evening to check on what to pack. She told me she picked everything out of the yard that could be moved and did storm checks on the rest of the stuff. Other than that she isn't going to spend a week worrying about what the storm will or will not do.

It isn't that she doesn't take hurricanes seriously, both my dad and step-dad were part of emergency planning for ages in our county, but this is not a Katrina and really is not any worse than the typical nor' easters they have in the winter.

So this week is going to get busy tomorrow. We will have normal activities, large work project, plus a trip to a local zoo on Wednesday and preparing for K's bday. I was hoping to do more on our Africa stuff - but MB can't decide whether she is excited about it or ho-hum. Kind of frustrating for me as I thought that she would really enjoy it. You know, digging into the books and asking me questions, drawing pictures, asking to go on the internet. The only way I can tell that she has gotten anything is that I overheard her telling a friend that she was building forts with the other day that his needed to be square and her's needed to be round. This comes from an African folk tale.

Well tomorrow is another day. I better get some sleep if I plan on being positive.

Peace,

Amy