The Kids

In an effort to stay present and to give my children more undivided attention, I have had several moments over the past couple days that have been nice. While doing so, I noticed a couple of things:

First, Miss M is reading more and more everyday.  She is at the very beginning of her development so it is mostly sight words, guesses from picture cues, some impressive phonemic awareness and a good bit of memorization from other times the books have been read to her.  The mixture of all these components though are proving to be beneficial as her reading vocabulary grows even more quickly by the day.  

It is exciting to see.  But it is even more exciting to see how excited she gets as she reads and feels our amazement.  She beams with pride and giggles in her unique little Muppet way. I'm so glad we have filled her world with books.

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With A quickly approaching adolescence, there have been a number of frustrating moments.  As a result, I worry that my place in her life is more of an angry authority figure barking demands and directives. So it has been a goal to increase the positives with her.  I can't shy away from the discipline.  It is important that she learns many of these things regarding hygiene, diet, manners, communication and so on as she becomes an independent person.  But I also I want her to know me as a loving and caring person in her life.

An idea I had was to turn off the radio in the car.  I have the luxury of seeing her everyday.  So I'm taking better advantage by purposely having more conversation with her as difficult as that may be for her. I try to keep the conversation about her and show a genuine interest in her.

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A and M are sisters.  They get along like sisters do.  They have had an established relationship before the boy came along.

M and E have grown up together quite literally. They have spent a good bit of time together going to the same baby sitter for three years.  A leaves from time to time to be with her mother, but these two stay together. They, like all siblings, have a love/hate relationship that goes from one to the other and back in the blink of an eye. It is a very common thing.  

In addition, they are close in age while A is more of an outlier being 7 years old when M was born. So M and E are close in this respect as well.

Slowly, I see a relationship building between A, my oldest, and E, my youngest though. The disparity in age means there is not much for them to connect with other than being siblings.  Even though they get along just fine, there is not much overlap.

Until now.

As E develops a love for and an interest in sports, he and A are finding a connection.  A has long been involved in different sports and participates in Special Olympics each year. She is my Buckeye buddy watching the games with me over the years. I taught her to dislike TTUN as an infant.  She sings the fight song, Carmen Ohio and any marching band tune you can think of and play for her.

So, M plays in her grand world of imagination, perfectly content on her own (even preferably) as E and A run around the house kicking a baby ball like soccer feeding off one another, sometimes without words and I can't help but smile inside and play along.

Then it ends with someone mad at another or Mom shutting it down as she tries to have some semblance of peace and serenity.

I am excited to see how my offspring's relationships with one another develop over the coming years.