The Club

This morning, a little girl started waving at me as I was walking down the hallway of my school. I was running late and had already been stopped by a teacher who wanted to tell me about a speech concern and a parent of one of my students who was looking for homework for over our spring break. I still had my coat on and had not even reached my office yet. She kept waving as we walked toward each other and I gave a little half wave back and smiled at her. As she gets closer to me I realize I have no idea who she is. She is not on my caseload or anyone that I recognize. She keeps waving and smiling at me as she passes me she says, “See you at the club!”

It dawns on me that she is taking about the after-school tutoring program that our building runs twice a week. I am not really involved in the program. All I do is gather the kids from their classrooms, organize them in the cafeteria, take attendance and give them a snack.

It is probably one of my least favorite things about my day….. no, it isn’t even that. It is a “non-thing” as I do not consider it part of my day, it is just the last thing I need to do before I go home.

The look on this little girl’s face really impacted me all day. She looked so happy to see me. She had this cute little grin that said, “I know her” or “this lady is in my life.”

It makes me wonder how many lives we touch without even realizing it. There are occasions that I try hard to leave an imprint, just to realize that sometimes the imprint that leaves the biggest mark isn’t one I even meant to make. ☺

A hard word

At work today I was called down to help with a child that was having problems in class. When I got to the room she was sprawled out in the middle of the room with desks knocked over and the other students staying well out of the way. The teacher looked like she had just run a marathon.

These situations are a bit tricky because I had no idea what happened or what the teacher wants me to do. I did not have to wonder long because the teacher handed me a discipline slip and a whole pile of work and indicated that this child needed another room to work in. It looked like both the child and the teacher needed a little separation.

I had the student stand up and she followed me out of the room. She sobbed quietly and sniffed all the way to the other end of the building. I set her up at the big meeting table just outside my office and I looked through the packet of work the teacher had handed me. It was spelling word activities and I asked the girl what she wanted to work on first. She worked quietly with me checking on her every few minutes. I brought her tissues and glue and scissors and she finished her work at a fairly quick pace. Once she was done I asked why she was so upset. She explained that she wanted to see what her friend looked like with a mustache so she attempted to write on his face. The friend was opposed to the idea of facial hair on his 6 year old self. This caused the teacher to lower my students "color card" from green to yellow, which made her mad enough to push the teacher, who then lowered the card to red and then all hell broke loose.

I talked to the little girl about choices and feelings and hands to self. All the things I know 6 year olds are starting to understand and need to learn. One of her spelling words had been "happy" and she wrote: "I like when my teacher is happy." So I used that to launch into what makes a teacher happy. She decided to write the teacher a note. The note read, in large letters: "I am sorry. I will be good" She wanted to spell everything correctly and used her finger between the words for spacing. It was painstaking slow for only seven words. As she tried to sound out the word sorry she looked at me and said, "Sorry is a hard word" I sat there thinking about it and had to agree. I have written "I'm sorry" many times.... it is always a hard word, even for those of us older than six. :)

Aligned Planets

Sometimes the planets are aligned just right. Everything is right with the universe. Sometimes that happens with my kids. It isn’t often, there are 4 of them and they are kids. But this week, right now…. Everything is right with my world. Ok, I am taking a huge risk in even discussing this. I was raised believing that you don’t mention things going right….. it was not done. I remember once I said to my Dad, “You know I don’t think you’ve had a flat tire in a long time.” He had one the next day.

But right now, amazing things are going on. Our youngest, Dill has always had us with him while he waits for the bus in the morning. We are going to start dropping him off early at a neighbor’s house and he was a bit nervous about it. He does not usually handle changes well so we were very happy that he is just taking the changes in stride.

Pete is an amazing guy. Our family met some friends while we were out and about the other day and Pete noticed that one of the kids was left out of the conversation. He walked around all the other kids and knelt down by her wheelchair and started talking to her like she was the only person in the world. He does that kind of stuff all the time. I love how he just knows how to be sweet without even trying.

Macy was selected as one of two kids in her school to go speak at the state capitol. She is also doing great at her job and really seems to be thriving in high school. Things weren’t always this way, so we are so happy that she is really turning things around and we can’t help but be so proud of her.

At home, Dori sometimes complains about how busy people keep her at church. She helps out with the nursery and with acolyting and she helps with verging. Sometimes she helps with two services in one day and I think she’d just like to sleep in. Today I was talking with someone that was at a service I missed this week. They said that Dori jumped in and ‘covered’ for the priest while they were doing something else. They said that Dori looks so comfortable and is so good at acolyting that she should consider the priesthood. I do not know that that is her calling but what a nice compliment.

Now I know that soon one son will rip the arm off the other’s R2D2 and the girls will argue over who should take the first shower and who will use all the hot water…. But right now I am basking in the glory of my aligned planets. Such a sweet moment in the life for me as a parent. And, yes Dad I know I am taking a huge risk in even mentioning it but some phenomena are so rare we can't help but stop and acknowledge it. :)

The Nose knows

At Nana’s house we were celebrating Dill’s birthday recently. He came and sat next to me on the couch and I noticed that he was wearing underwear that he had worn to bed at least 2 nights before. I said to him, “Did you put the same underwear on last night after you took your shower?” He said, “Nope.”

I let it go, but a few minutes later he was sprawled on the couch with his feet in my lap. The first thing I noticed was he has huge feet! They looked like big-dog-puppy feet. You know, the cute adorable puppy that has feet WAY too big for its body. So you know that sometime soon, the cute little puppy was going to be a huge, gigantic hulk of a dog. That’s what I was thinking about while I looked at his feet. Then my nose was assaulted by an odor that could rival onion, garlic sardine soup! We were sitting across the room from Nana….. so I normally would not have said anything, but dang! How could his cute little body reeck like this??!

“Dill, how long have you been wearing these socks??”

“Three days,” he proudly announces.

“But you just took a shower last night! Did you put on your old socks again?!” I ask.

“Nope, I faked it.” He states while sitting up and smiling. “See, I went into the bathroom and just turned on the water. Then after a couple minutes the bathroom got really foggy and then I got my hair wet in the sink and I got the towel a little bit wet and took off my shirt and put the towel around me and turned off all the water. You just THOUGHT I washed myself.”

I notice that Nana has as big a grin as Dill at this information.

Nana shakes her head and I could tell she was glad this fell into "parent issue” and did not fall into the “Grandparent” realm as an area of concern.

“Dill, that is so much work to NOT take a shower. Don’t you like to shower?” I ask confoundedly, because when he DOES shower he stays and plays in the water so long the whole hot water tank gets drained.

“I like showers a lot…. I just wanted to see if I could fake one. You did not even notice…. I really tricked you!” he said proudly, as if I was going to lose my parenting license over such a huge faux pas.

“True son," I told him, shaking my head, "You tricked my eyes, but definitely not my nose!!” ☺

Still missed....

It is hard to believe that it has been 12 years, Mom. You are still missed. Every day.

Said during speech therapy…

Sometimes the things my students say during “speech” just tickles me. Here are a couple of the latest.

While working on answering “Where” questions….

“You just checked out a book to take home. Where are you?”

child: the library

“You just bought stamps. Where are you?”

child: the post office

“You just got off an airplane. Where are you?”

child: DISNEY WORLD!!

(Its been a cold, snowy winter….. of course that is where we’d all be if we took a plane somewhere!!)



A 6 year old boy as he comes into the room realizing the school-wide reading night was the night before…..

“I missed family read night last night? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??”