Thursday, December 3, 2009

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Usually car rides get pretty hectic in the morning when my kids are involved. There's usually a bit of yelling, a bit of whining, and a bit of screaming (mostly from the toddler who doesn't like his sisters to touch him in the car, which of course they insist on doing)..

Our mornings are most of the time chaotic, and it's something I'm going to focus on in the new year..

Anyway, this morning WASN'T one of those mornings. I took the day off to deal with some personal issues, so even though I had somewhere to be, it wasn't rushing to be out the door by 7:15. I took Ashley to school, and stopped and got my coffee. Lauryn, Logan and I hopped on the freeway and were driving to daycare. This morning, the Moon was still visible. Lauryn was actually enjoying the scenery outside of the car, taking in all the frost or as she liked to call it "snow" on the grass in the fields, and admiring the chilly effects in the air. Logan really likes the moon, so he spent the drive saying "Moon, Mommy, Moon!" and Lauryn replied, " I don't know why the moon is still up mommy, he should be sleeping, he's probably tired" I asked her why she thought the moon was tired, and she said "Because he was up all night mom!" ..

And then there's Ashley. My other brilliant child. I had to pick her up from school today, because she was supposed to have a counseling appointment. This morning the counselors' office called and cancelled the appointment. So since I was home, I chose to still pick her up and spend some one on one time with her. Her homework assignment for the counselor, was to come up with one word of emotion, for every letter of the alphabet. So last night, I helped her finish it up, she had already come up with all the words, so I helped her make a little book of emotions. I used some card stock, and a letter sticker for each letter, then we wrote the word, and hole punched the side, and tied it all together. It turned out really cute for only spending last night on it! Today, she took it to school so she would have it when I picked her up today to take with her to her appointment. She got to share it in her classroom, and was quite proud of it. One of the words she used was "O is for Optimistic". Each word she used, she had to know the definition of. So along with just knowing the word, I made her know what it meant. I had given her some help with the definition last night, giving her some examples. Well, today, one of the para's had asked her what it meant. She told her that she didn't really know and she had kind of forgot. So she said the para helped her by explaining the difference between Optimistic and Pessimistic. The para told her that Optimistic was when you are happy all the time, and Pessimistic when you say things like "i can't" all the time. So Ashley is telling me this story on the way home, and she says "Mom, which do you think I am? Optimistic, or Pestimistic?" I had to laugh out loud and she says "WHAT MOM?!, Which one do you think I am!?" I told her that I thought most of the time she is Optimistic, but sometimes she can be Pessimistic, and her sister probably thinks she PesTimistic.....